After apple-picking

 

I felt guilty not doing something with these Sparta apples from our tree. Mom and both my grandmas would have been shocked to the core :-) if I threw them in the compost bin.  Slightly wormy? No excuse for wasting fruit. 

And in the old days, even the bruised windfalls were carefully pared down for pie or went to the "cider apple heap." Remember the poem "After Apple-Picking" by Robert Frost?

"For I have had too much of apple-picking..."

I cooked up a pot of simple applesauce for the freezer. It's really good, compared to canned applesauce, which I almost never buy. We're more into chutney with meat. But when the weather cools down, maybe an old-fashioned pork roast with onion gravy and mashed potatoes?

 

Speaking of weather whiplash, we've gone from record rain to record heat this week. Almost 80 today in Seattle, almost unheard of for late September. 

We've been following the dire fire situation in California wine country. The entire lovely town of Calistoga, where we've had so many enjoyable vacations, has been evacuated. It could go up in flames and be gone forever, just like that. 

It feels like the world we once knew and loved is shifting away, right under our feet. Between the climate, pandemic and politics, a slow-moving earthquake and a feeling that things will never be the same again. Thank goodness for applesauce and pork roast.