Trees of Antiquity

The apple trees by the office aren’t pretty anymore. They are bent as if by arthritis, with dead branches way out of the reach of pruning saws.  But I know their names and remember when my mom and dad bought these two Ozark Gold trees for us after we moved to this farm. We planted these, a dozen or so Golden Delicious, an Empire, an Earliblaze, a couple of Galas and one Blushing Golden.  These were varieties my folks were familiar and successful with at their mid Missouri orchard. 

 And so, in August when we begin to hear the thud of apples falling outside the office window, we know it’s time to pick one of those yellow green fruits and take a bite to see if it's ripe.  An Ozark Gold is not a super sweet fruit like the popular Honeycrisp or Gala or Pink Lady. But it’s not sour either like the old time Lodis, good for sauce and nothing else. We used to get a box of those green mammoths from my folks’ tree and believe me, measure for measure, it took as much sugar as apple! An Ozark Gold is tangy, and juicy, and pretty darn crisp for an August apple. It makes a dandy pie but still cooks up into a lovely golden sauce with just the right amount of texture to savor.  As we grow them, they aren’t lovely; many have some cosmetic spots that peel off easily, but there is enough clean fruit to keep a bowl in the fridge for munching. This week we froze a half dozen pies or so, ate a big apple crisp with ice cream, peeled and chopped enough for a round of apple breads for everyone and still have four loaves stashed in the freezer for harvest lunches. 

Millie came up one afternoon to “help apple”.  When she suggested we pull out the apple peeler, an ingenious tool for sure, I told her our apple were more dimpled darlings than carbon copies, thanks to some early season hail.  They needed the hands on treatment. I needn’t have worried. Millie’s been peeling fruits and veggies for longer than...well, let’s just leave it at “longer than. Armed with a couple of knives and one of many peelers, the bucket of odd shaped Ozark Golds were soon tucked into pies while Gma Millie took a tasty streusel topped dessert home for Grandpa’s supper…Years ago, Millie was the one hidden by a cloud of flour while she rolled out crusts for freezer pies, while I, a disciple of comparative advantage, stood at the sink up to my elbows in apple peels.  Days spent canning or freezing produce are good days and fondly recollected even after the jars are empty.

Speaking of jars…we grab our canner full of empties from the basement shelves, hoping to avoid the ones with dead spiders and crickets inside.  They are scrubbed and then examined for chips or rough edges. It’s kind of a treasure hunt and history lesson rolled up in one to guess the vintage and origin of each jar.  The Kerr jars are the easiest since I know the date is stamped on the screw top. I handle them tenderly, picturing my grandmother carrying these jars from 1964 down to her basement full of peaches or applesauce from my grandfather’s orchard.

One of these jars is from 1976.  It doesn’t have the Liberty Bell on it like some Bicentennial jars, but it could have come over from my mom’s cache, a jar of pickles or beans from Millie’s canner, or even a hand-me-down from my mom’s long time friend Carol Findling.  

And finally, I wash out a jar dated 1986.  That one has some age on it too, but I know it’s mine and has been up and down the basement stairs who knows how many times.  Canning is a tribute to our past, a ritual handed down like these jars, a trip down memory lane captured in something as ephemeral and as lasting as glass.  

It’s ironic that some of these canning jars are going to outlast those two Ozark Gold trees out back. I looked up the variety online, but it seems Stark Bros. no longer grows it for sale.  I seem to recall my dad saying something about the root stock, but perhaps its decline has more to do with the customers' desire for super sweet apples. And even though it has fantastic keeping qualities for an ‘early’ apple, it is not an apple for storage.  Still, an Ozark Gold can be used in so many ways….and carries with it so many memories, that I am determined to find some baby Ozark Golds to replace our oldsters.  

And I have.  A nursery called ‘Trees of Antiquity’ is still growing Ozark Golds for sale.  And while I don’t think a tree introduced in 1970 quite qualifies as ‘antique’,  I guess I could be wrong! In the tradition of the people who gave us the first trees, and the ones who passed down the canning jars, I’m going to order a couple more Ozark Golds to ensure our grandkids will continue to pick russeted yellow apples for eating, for pies, and for the first fresh loaves of their grandmother’s apple bread…..

Let Us Eat Cake!

Let us eat cake!  Let us celebrate!

My turn to make cake........but the birthday girl gets to choose what kind.  And the winner is?  Applesauce cake with caramel frosting! Happy birthday, dear Leo....happy birthday to you!

I love making this cake for so many reasons.  First reason is the cookbook itself, a gift from Millie almost 40 years ago.

 It is what we fondly call the 'old St. John's cookbook', full of well known names past and present.  There are kitschy little quatrains and helpful household hints in the margin.The pages are stained, sticky, and yellowing at the edges. The apple cake recipes have all been sampled, except for the one with coconut, an ingredient I don't regularly have on hand.  Even though I've made many cakes from this cookbook through the years, I still have to stop and read the recipes to ensure I am getting ready to bake the right one: no to the raisins and the cake flour, yes to the cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and cup and a half of applesauce. No to Mrs. Anna Rolf's recipe; yes to Mrs. Adolph Kemper's.

I've got a tall quart jar of homemade applesauce.  I used to cheat and throw in a whole pint jar for the 1 1/2 cup applesauce the recipe calls for just because I hated to have that little dab of sauce left in the jar. Bad idea! Better to open a quart jar and avoid a result that is more 'sauce' than 'cake'. Besides, that leaves a part of a jar for the kids to finish at lunch!

I sample this sauce...mmm, it's pretty and pink, sweet and tart simultaneously....a jar of Macintosh from the tree by my mother and father's back door. Macintosh apples are not for eating out of hand and they don't keep well as fruit, but there is no better apple for sauce...and thus for breads and cakes year 'round.  When I stir up this cake batter in my big Kitchenaid, I am mixing up the ingredients of our family's heritage. What better way to celebrate a family birthday!

As a purely practical manner, this recipe is always perfect after 30 minutes at 350 degrees.  No guesswork, no toothpick, no angst.

It is also a perfect vehicle for a batch of caramel frosting.  Another vintage recipe from a vintage cookbook, this time a Kitchen Klatter cookbook that was already a classic when I received it as a shower gift from Grandma Hurst's friend, Mabel Pursell, back in 1976.

The cover is gone, but there are two frosting recipes in this book that are nonpareil.  One is a quick fudge frosting notable for its sheen and smoothness; first step for this one is beating an egg to frothiness.  The other is the 'Elegant Caramel Frosting'.  I'd swear on a stack of cookbooks of its infallibility if I hadn't managed one time to burn it to inedibility.  But, honestly, the exception proves the rule: this is the next best thing to a homemade caramel candy minus the risk of damaged dental work.  Caramel frosting is at least half the reason to bake this cake and this recipe piles it generously on all four corners.

Finally, the interpretation of "fruit" in our family is lenient and the leeway allotted to a birthday celebrant is broad. IF, perchance, there is any  applesauce cake remaining after dessert is served, it is completely appropriate to eat it for breakfast the next day.  Carpe diem!

Another day, another birthday. Another chance to bring together past and present, to light candles and have the little ones blow them out in a gust of smoke, to dish up tradition and thanksgiving around a big table.

To eat cake.

Apple Lion

What a crummy year for tomatoes! This summer of 2015 has granted cool nights and drenching days: fabulous for flowers of begonias, not so conducive for blooms on tomatoes.  I bring in the harvest one handful at a time...enough to decorate either three BLTs or two iceberg wedge salads. I am disheartened when my photos from Septembers past feature buckets of juicy fruits, gold and striped, pink and scarlet.  There they are: in the garden, arrayed on the picnic table to ripen, on the countertop cored and cleaned ready to be cooked, and steaming out of the canner...meals for the cold season, just add beans or pasta. 

Well, that was then and this is now.  Thankfully, the Lord doth provide: 

9Out of the ground the LORD God

 caused to grow 

every tree that is pleasing to the sight

 and good for food; (Genesis 2:9).  

Ben with apple, circa 1987

Josh helps himself, circa 2011

If there be not tomatoes, or peppers, or other garden bounty as the calendar turns to September, we look to the trees.... where there will be apples. They may not be beautiful; they may not be bountiful.  But apples will be there for the picking....

We are apple people. I was raised on the Stark Brothers fruit tree catalog.  My grandfather tended his adopted orchard with diligence and brought fruit for tart sauce and fruit for sweet pies to my Granny; we kids pounded the tether ball he planted in the center of the orchard for our entertainment and assumed the long low hanging limbs were welcome mats to literal tree houses. 

My folks planted fruit trees on the terraced field south of their farm house.  The trees benefited from drip lines during dry spells and the careful cultivation and pruning of these meticulous growers.

 Visitors to the farm were treated to boxes of apples that exemplified the breed; regular customers called to see when their favorites would be ripe.  The litany of  Missouri apples and their place in the great march from summer to frost are markers in our family calendar: the great green Lodis, sour and saucy;  the lovely spreading Earliblaze, not much for keeping, but tart and almost crisp out of hand, first summer apple to pick and eat before they carpeted the ground. Rosy honey sweet Galas, moody and susceptible to all nature of disease, but as pretty as a blushing peach. Little Jonathans for pie. Beautiful big red and green Mackintosh for the tastiest, fruitiest, chunky applesauce.  

( A mere zephyr would drop a Mackintosh; after one fell came an avalanche.)  Ozark Golds, so versatile, perfect for lunches those first days of school and not half bad keepers for a hot weather summer apple.  Then, as the days shortened, it would be time for the All Stars of Missouri apples: the Golden Delicious, green and gold and juicy and crisp.

Lastly, the Blushing Goldens would be nestled carefully in boxes lined with newspaper and carried down into the fruit cellar to keep and use all winter.  At Christmas time, my father would fetch a box of Blushing Goldens for us to take home, their barely wrinkled skins giving notice to the concentrated sweetness underneath.  Blushing Goldens: without them, no Apple Breads for treats in January and February!

Lee and Ann and Ben learned proper apple picking etiquette: to use two hands to pick so the fruiting spur would not be damaged and to set, never drop, the apples in the basket or box. The kids were always eager to help if it meant a ride back to the shed in the wagon behind the four wheeler.  Grandpa always told them to stay in the mowed path or the Apple Lion might get them.....

I don't remember the origin of the Apple Lion; perhaps he was related to the BarkaBoos that we humans couldn't sense  but that would get the dogs all riled up.  Ann thought the Apple Lion looked like Aslan from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but I assumed he was a merry prankster....kind of like his creator...with the enthusiasm and bright button eyes of Tigger in Winnie-the-Pooh.  Either way, the Apple Lion proved to be elusive and invisible, as such mythical creatures can be; he was a scapegoat for all kinds of unexplained phenomena, but served to keep the kids on the mowed paths and out of the reach of ticks and other unfriendlies.....

Like an up to date version of Johnny Appleseed, my folks brought me twenty little apple trees to civilize our homestead not long after we moved to the farm.

 Over the next few years, they came up to visit us early in the spring...and to give the apple trees a professional pruning and good start in life.  These same trees are well past middle age, apple tree wise, and have fallen prey to ice and drought, disease and wind, but we still fill boxes and bushels,  flower pots and ice cream buckets with our favorite fall fruit and have enough to share with friends and family and the resident bee hives. 

 Apple bread for breakfast?  Of course!  Apple pie a' la mode?  Why not?  A Dutch apple pancake some chilly evening?  Can't wait.....