Apples in summer!

Apples in summer! Yes, it's the natural order of things, even though we think of apples as a fall crop. Summer apples are one of August's treasures.

Early apples include Gravenstein, Transparent, and the Transparent lookalike Lodi. Gingergolds and Gala/Royal Gala make their appearance in August too. One thing I think they all have in common is that they're best enjoyed at the time of harvest. True, Galas are available year 'round, but their mellow texture makes them best eaten fresh off the tree.

Good luck finding any of the others at any other time of the year, because none of them are great candidates for long term storage even with modern means, and their comparatively low crop volume makes them fairly scarce.

We neighborhood kids in 1960s Bothell had a precious treasure right across our street: the original farm of the Quartman family. Adolph and Doris Quartman retired to a new house they built on part of their land, and our 1950s ranch houses popped up on what had been their pastures. Our street was a former tractor path between crop parcels, potholed and nearly impassable in the wet, muddy seasons. Drivers had to rev their engine at the foot of the street and take a running start to get their car up the hill, slaloming around the giant holes. Kids didn't routinely wear shoes in summer back then,  and when the road was coated with oil and topped with gravel, we trod barefoot across that slimy, smelly, oily layer to reach the agrarian paradise that was the remnant of the farm.

And what a paradise: the old farmhouse with its generous porch had been burned in a practice drill by the fire department after the Quartmans moved to their new place, but the granite foundation remained, ringed by the rhododendrons and pines that survived the volunteer fire fighters' inferno. The well was there, uncovered and mysterious, but understood by kids to be a hazard to avoid. We'd watched enough episodes of Lassie to know that Timmy being down the well wasn't a good turn of events.

In spring, crocus and daffodils still popped up in the tall grass, and we had the run of the woods and the fields. Under our bare feet, the land was still furrowed in rows like waves, a memory of the final crop of corn planted there. The orchard yielded a bounty of apples, pears and plums, and grapes wove through the trellis row that was starting to give way to blackberries. 

We climbed it, picked it, ate it all, and every August when I have my first bite of Gravenstein, so floral and sweetly tart, I'm transported to those moments of kid perfection. Of course, no childhood is perfection in reality, but the process of memory smooths out the potholes, and the things kids were shielded from make the Cuban Missile Crisis and our duck-and-cover drills seem frightening only with increased age. 

By the time we were a little older, the world wasn't shield-able anymore, and our consciousness expanded to include the horrors of assasinations, the struggles of the Civil Rights era, violence in the streets, starvation in developing nations, and a war served up to us on the nightly news. Innocence lost; that's the natural order of things. But for a moment there, we had golden moments, and every summer apple I eat now, brings with it wispy hints that there are times when all seems right with the world.

GRAVENSTEIN APPLE BARS

---I adapted this recipe from my mom's old "New Better Homes and Gardens" cookbook, where it lives as "cinnamon-Raisin Bars. Use your favorite apple. You see what mine is.

1/2 cup butter 

1 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 cups sifted all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups quick cooking oats

Apple filling

Cinnamon frosting

Prepare filling and set aside to cool: 

In a medium saucepan, combine 1/4 cup granulated sugar and 1 tablespoon cornstarch. Stir in 1 cup water and 2 cups diced, peeled apples. Cook over medium heat until thick and bubbly, cool.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar. Sift together flour, soda and salt, combine oats with sifted ingredients and mix together. Add 1-2 teaspoons of water and combine until crumbly. Firmly pat about 2/3 of the mixture into an 8" cake pan. Top with the apple mixture, and sprinkle remaining crumb mixture on top. Bake at 350 about 30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack and drizzle with cinnamon frosting.

Cinnamon frosting: mix 1 cup sifted powdered sugar, 3 tablespoons softened butter with 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon vanilla. Stir in enough milk, about 1 tablespoon to reach drizzling consistency. 

ABOUT SUMMER APPLES---enjoy them when you see them!

GRAVENSTEIN: an orchard antique from the 1700s. Short season, limited crop quality, does not store well, so enjoy it for sauce, pie, cidering and eating if you like tart apples.

GALA/ROYAL GALA: In the 1970s, Gala was introduced to the US from New Zealand, a sweet and mellow descendant of the Golden Delicious apple. The Royal Gala is a larger, redder cultivar of Gala, and was called "Royal" after Queen Elizabeth took a fancy to it. Galas have a very large crop volume and are available year 'round, but we think they're best summer thought fall.

TRANSPARENT/YELLOW TRANSPARENT: Transparents have thin, greenish-yellow skin and are a European heirloom apple with different countries claiming them as their own. Their flavor can range from sharp and tart to pleasantly sweet, and are most often used for cooking.

LODI: A 1924 cross between Yellow Transparent and an east coast apple called Montgomery Sweet. Like its Transparent parent, the skin is light green, the flesh is open textured (also called "coarse") and is used as a cooking apple.

GiNGER GOLD: a Southern US apple from the 1960s, a cross between Golden Delicious a pippin, with bright yellow skin often flushed with a pink blush.

Fruitfully yours,

Karin