Apple Season

“I once knew a girl who wouldn’t eat apples. She wove her walking around groves and orchards. She didn’t even like to look at them. They’re all mealy, she said. Or else too cheeky, too bloomed.” —Aimee Bender, “Appleless,” Fairy Tale Review: The Blue Issue

Here in Maine my friends and I have been diving head first into apples for months. Or so it feels that way. Honey crisps, Macs, Galas, Paula Reds, Cortlands. Every couple of weeks I’m sampling another kind of apple fresh-picked from a local orchard. But there’s the kiss of a taste… and then there’s love. This year I have conducted a lengthy affair with the Macintosh.

Last month, after dinner with friends, I was presented with an enormous, bulging bag of red-green apples. “Macs!” they said, and laughed at my confusion. For me? They had filled a corner of their kitchen with them after scouring the trees that came with their land—and why not share the wealth? “What do you do with them all?” I asked, in awe of their pile, clutching mine. Sauce, they said. It freezes well.

The truth is I’ve never been much of an apple fan, which is why I have never been apple picking and why I have few recipes that call for apples. Sure, I eat them. Sometimes I really savor one. But I am a lover of all foods including all fruits, and apples, though perfectly nice as they go, just don’t rate that high on the long list. Still—a huge bag of organic apples, handpicked by my friends and their children. A gift of apples.

First I just admired them and ate them, three or four apples a day. I ate them while gazing at my dining table’s new centerpiece, a large, rectangular basket piled high. The new Macs were crisp and sweet-tart, some of the best apples I’d eaten. I thought about Eve licking apple juice from her palm, as I was doing, glad to be awake to the world. I thought about stupid Paris and his fateful choice. I thought about Newton and William Tell.

By the second week the apples were softening and taking on a more complex flavor that included a hint of wine. The perfume from my centerpiece was intoxicating. Poor Snow White. If her apple smelled like that, of course she couldn’t resist.

The apples were too soft for eating by the third week. So I peeled a few pounds while my husband and I tore through the latest Netflix delivery. The peels came off in long, ragged strips, very satisfying. I used a dull knife to quarter the peeled apple, cut out the cores, slice up the sections in big chunks. Six chunks for the sauce pan, one chunk for me. Eight chunks for the pan, two chunks for me. The flesh was still tasty, almost floral, now, still sweet. Food of the gods. Fruit of Avalon.

On sauce nights my hands never stopped moving, my mouth was rarely empty. When I’d finally carved up the day’s allotment I’d carry the pan to the stove, and in twenty minutes I had apple sauce flavored with a few lumps of brown sugar and a mix of fall spices or lightly sweetened with a drizzle of honey and spiked with freshly grated nutmeg. I’d stir and think about my high school presentation on Johnny Appleseed. I wore a pan on my head and spoke in a manly voice, preaching the Word of the Apple. The orchards Johnny planted in advance of settlers crawling across the frontier were a sign of welcome and a promise that the land would provide. I blew on a spoonful of the bubbling sauce, thinking, yes, this—a simmering pot—is home. The next day I’d find errant seeds in the sofa cushions, embedded in the rug.

Did you know that as Macs age their scent will perfume your entire house? Did you have any idea that you can keep them for many weeks well above their optimal temperature and they will still make a delicious sauce? Did anyone ever tell you that adding a few pears to a batch of apple sauce turns a homey side dish or condiment into a heady, almost exotic treat? And have you read this wonderful and disturbing apple story (click the blue issue cover) by Aimee Bender, published in the Fairy Tale Review a few years ago?

This weekend I peeled the last of my Macs. Most were still sweet—no notes of wine or flowers in the flavor, now, but still perfectly good for sauce. A few, the ones with wrinkled skins, had given up all their sugar in scent, so I thanked them and added them to the compost bucket. This last batch had to go in two pots, which made for a more fitting, longer goodbye. I stirred and watched, spiced and tasted. I made it last.