Edible Jewels of Autumn

I’m thoroughly lost in a honeycrisp apple the size of my two fists put together plus one of Patrick’s, and won’t be answering my phone until well after the last bite. Close your eyes for a minute (read to the end of this sentence first) and imagine a crunching sound so clear and crisp you almost need earplugs.

Rethinking that afternoon cookie snack now, aren’t ya?

(Confession: I’ve also got a 12oz slab of halva—Mediterranean sesame fudge—nearby, topped with a rough blanket of crushed pistachios. In case of an emergency. But the apple went in first, for the record).

Since January 2018, I’ve been clocking in at around two apples a day, sometimes three if they’re small. A high LDL number and some research in the opposite direction of taking a statin led me toward pommes as a go-to snack instead of toast or Mounds bars. I was obsessed at first, having no less than five pounds of them in the fridge at all times and sitting down virtuously each morning (yes, weekends too) to a Gala, my favorite for months and months until I accidentally bought a bag of Fujis in a harried afternoon after-work run through the produce section. Now it’s Fujis, then Galas, and then Honeycrisps, but only organic (additional research offered a scary list of all the fruits and veggies most drenched in pesticides. I didn’t sleep well for a while. Apples topped that list, and I’d ingested about a week’s worth until I was enlightened). Now Patrick will come home with a bag without even asking first. What a dear.

I don’t remember as a kid going for apples much unless we were at our maternal grandparents’ place in Tiffin, Ohio. Opa had a couple of trees that bore a variety called “transparent” in his back yard. The fruits were fist-size and golden yellow, and we’d climb the short trunk to pick a couple and eat them with a sprinkle of salt. It’s important to note that Opa brought his extensive gardening know-how with him from Holland when he came to America at all of eighteen years old. Fifty years later, his grandchildren got to wander through a wonderland of a backyard where that botanical expertise had the lion’s share of the real estate. He could cut the small patch of grass at the edge of the slate patio with a push-mower and not even work up a sweat. The rest of the space between the house and the detached garage was filled with pear, cherry, and hazelnut trees which grew next to a row of gooseberry bushes just on the other side of the raspberry canes. Where the canes ended, rows of potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, ground cherries, lettuce and squash were bookended by pole beans at one end and an airy chamomile patch at the other. The latter was so prolific, we knew we’d find a generous harvest of the apple-scented buds drying on an old copy of the Toledo Blade’s “peach” section every time we opened the door to the potting shed. Black raspberries grew next to the kissing gate that opened into the alley, and behind the garage, red and black currant bushes decorated the cinderblock foundation like a thick and festive fringe. We ate well in every season, as Opa’s wife, Opoe, was a master canner. I come by my foodie tendencies naturally, and miss the heck out of those trips north.

In my college days, there’d be boxes of apples at autumn charity walk-a-thons weighing down the folding tables at the finish line, and I don’t recall getting lost in any of them. Picked too soon and trucked across a few states, they were slightly bitter and left my mouth dry. I ate them in hopes that the next bite would yield the sweetness promised by the ruby red skin. It never did (thank goodness someone always brought donuts).

Now I have un-adulterated apples just a few yards from my back door; they’re the humble remnants of a once-thriving orchard but we haven’t kept up and the fruits are misshapen, a little sour, and occasionally wormy. They still do in a pinch, and the ones that fall before we can eat them smell lovely as they ferment on the ground, wasps and hornets swarming drunkenly from one drop to another. In the spring, we hold onto every ounce of hope that these stalwart survivors of winter will saturate the air with that unmistakable and heady apple blossom fragrance. It’s enough to get a body though the wet and final days of April.

Until then, I’m pleased to announce that the two-year, twice-a-day apple practice has been a helpful strategy in a constellation of statin-free options that has brought my LDL down to almost where it belongs (when your doctor says “keep on doing what you’re doing!”, that’s the extra spring in your step as you head out of her office). It’s one of the most delicious and noble pursuits I’ve ever undertaken.

I think Opa would be proud.