Apple Abundance
How procrastination can cultivate serendipity
We are never ever planting apple trees again.
But no worries, my friends. Not breaking up with my love for apple pie or a crisp fall apple. Rather, I’m realizing, embracing and grateful for the abundance that exists when I take the time to see it. The abundance that sometimes we can only see when we take some time to breath and discover what is around us.
But let me backtrack. Back in June, when we moved to Tamme, we were planning to include several apple trees in the small orchard we were designing along with cherry and pear.
Fast forward four months to now and ‘tis apple season in Estonia. But nope, we do not need our own apple trees.
Because we arrived in June, we missed the spring season and so we never saw any blossoming apple trees. We didn’t see the abundance to come.
Mid-summer, I found one small apple tree walking in the woods that looked pickable and was so excited, only to soon realize the bushel load to come.
When we visited the coastal island of Saaremaa in mid August, we started to see the green and red apples peeking out, growing on trees ALL over the place, often seeing them on the edges of the road. With Estonia’s (and Europe’s) open land laws celebrating forraging, these wild apple trees are fair game for anyone to pick.
Not only pick, but people were generously and abundantly sharing! Once we came back from Saaremaa, we started seeing these baskets overflowing with apples at the end of driveways, like a fruitful peace offering for community sharing.
We started learning Estonian apple varietals – like valge klaar – an early apple. Amidst the abundance we started growing a little more picky, as we have a fondness for the harder, crunchy fruits. We learned these are what folks call “winter apples,” the ones that come later in the season and can be used more for storage apple.
We totally scored when I was returning a bike to a neighbor he had kindly let me borrow and noticed he wasn’t picking his tree. Tom said they were too hard and tart and not good for eating from his lens, but they are absolutely perfect for our palette and my baking. He was happy to let us pick as many as we wanted and not let them go to waste.
My life lesson here? Sometimes . . not always but sometimes . . .you need to simply sit on a decision and let it simmer before taking action.
Sometimes the universe has a bigger (better!) plan for you but she just hasn’t revealed herself yet. In this case, apple overload.
We’ve had this experience multiple times since starting our Estonian life chapter adventure: When we hit a wall — from our printer exploding (whoops . . Wrong voltage!) to contractors not returning our call on this garage we need to build — if we take a breath and give the situation some breathing room . . .stalled a little . . . things often worked out better than planned.
Frustrating in the moment but better in the long-run.
On the printer: Turns out Estonia is such a digital society I (seriously) haven’t received one piece of paper since I arrived. And if I need to print, I can do it via Print In City (another innovative Estonian start-up) for 10 cents a page with multiple locations in Pärnu. And — spoiler alert — we did find a great contractor and broke ground on the garage and greenhouse last week. More updates to come there.
Back to apples. 🍎
I’ve been happily baking all sorts of apple treats, especially now that we have this new KichenAid mixer I got at the Tallinn Food Fair, where I also invested in the spiralizer feature, which is like our old hand crank apple peeler on steroids. So much faster and more even and consistent slices.
Turns out that, despite the abundance of apples here in Estonia, what I would call a classic “American Apple Pie” isn’t really a common thing. Yet. You sense my mission. Folks say they’ve seen apple pies in American movies, but haven’t tried one.
This classic apple pie recipe below is a favorite we’ve been making for over 30 years, the original recipe coming from Joy Rohde, she and her husband Del sold us their farm back in 1996 when we moved to Wisconsin. Something about adding the “syrup” of sugar and milk make all the different in a creamy pie. Recipe from our Farmstead Chef cookbook below.
Made two more of these today.
Other fun apple goodies I’ve been making, with the caveat that – because I have so many apples – I’ve been prioritizing recipes that use a lot of apples, often increasing quantities in recipes.
Four favorites below:
This is a simple cake (add the dusting of powdered sugar on top to pretty it up) that is super moist and stays that way for a couple days (or as long as it lasts!)
I add a lot more apples – around four cups – to this recipe with a shortbread base. I skip the caramel sauce on top. Too sweet and the caramel flavors really come through as the cake cools so it tastes even better the next day (if you can wait! ).
Classic Caramel Apple Bar-Style
Another fall thing I haven’t seen in Estonia yet are caramel apples, particularly the classic Affy Tapple. We’ve been making our own modified ones using this caramel sauce recipe also from Sally’s Baking Addiction, dipping in apple slices when the sauce is warm and then rolling it into crushed peanuts.
Creamy Apple Pie from Farmstead Chef
Here’s the (simple!) recipe for that favorite classic apple pie of ours. Think we’ve made over two dozen of these over the past couple of weeks, sharing the baked abundance.
Ingredients:
1 unbaked single crust pie shell
8 c. apples, peeled and sliced (approx. 1 kg)
1 c. sugar (200 grams)
¼ c. flour (30 grams)
1½ t. vanilla extract
1/3 c. milk (42 grams)
½ t. salt
½ t. cinnamon
¼ c. butter (1/2 stick; 115 grams)
Directions:
Lay apples in the pie crust.
Make a “syrup” (no cooking needed) by mixing the sugar, flour and vanilla.
Add the milk and salt, then stir well.
Sprinkle apples with cinnamon and dot with butter.
Pour syrup mixture over apples and bake 1 hour at 350°F (180 C) or until apples are tender.
Yield: 8 servings.
Check out more photos (and ordering options) from John D. Ivanko on Alamy
That pie recipe looks amazing!
Thank you Lisa for making my mouth drool over these recipes. I've been so busy this fall with political work that I have not taken time to do my normal fall preserving and baking. I know I will miss it this winter, but my heart is devoted to helping a woman become President of the United States.