Let there be Apples

After the 15-miler 14-miler this morning, I tried to find the Kingfield Farmer's Market at buy eggs.  You see I did not get to that last night.  Sadly, I couldn't find it because I didn't look at the address ahead of time.  (Looking now I was only a block away, oh well.)

I came back to my no-egg, very-little-for-breakfast home and made a sandwich of fresh bread (thanks Turtle Bread!), sopressetta and Parmesan cheese.  It was actually fairly awesome.  I made coffee which, as it turned out, was not needed.

Then off to see my pooky bear and Amanda (I still need a good nickname for her, I'm taking suggestions) for picking apples.  Amanda, as it turns out, stopped at Starbucks for the three of us.  Thanks!

This is the last year our orchard of choice will be open.  It was quite obvious; they'd already started selling off the equipment and live stock, allowing people to climb trees, stopped making strudel and donuts (no donuts?!?), and were just generally letting the orchard go.  Despite the slightly depressing feel, it was a nice day.

We started eating apples (another thing we had to do in secret in past years) the second we got out there.  Ripeness counts this year as not all the ones available for picking were completely ripe.  Some varieties one tree was ripe and the next wasn't. 

Generally the best apples are highest up and so haven't been picked yet.  It requires some team work to get them.  Usually, Amanda or I would pull a branch down (with our body weight) and my pooky bear, the tallest of the three of us, would pick the best ones.

It also requires climbing the trees.  We were quite stealthy in the trees this year.

You can't see me!

Amanda coined a new phrase.  "There's apples in my melons".  (It's a good thing she doesn't read my blog anymore and won't see this.)  It's tough to explain the actual context, but this photo should help.

We each picked a variety of apples.  We wound up with harelson, golden crisp and red baron.  The harelson were my favorite.  But the golden crisp should be good too.

We actually made a fairly quick trip this year, since there wasn't food at the orchard anymore.  We went down the road a little ways to another stand and bought some baked goods.  I bought Salsa.  Then Kelly stopped at a gas station so I could get a diet pepsi, something I'd been craving all day.

Since there's basically no restaraunts we wanted to patronize down south, we headed back to the Twin Cities to PF Chengs for a late lunch.  We had a conversation about the chicken-lettuce wraps, and whether not they alone made PF Chengs deserve our business.  I had pan fried noodles which were good but had perhaps a touch too much sauce.  I'm going to see if I can remedy that somehow with the leftovers I'm about to eat.  (14 miles.)