Applesauce, plan B

I continue to be amazed by how much I don't know about food. This time it is apples and pears.

Life's hectic right now and I've been wondering how I'd find the time to get to Apple Hill anytime in the next six weeks but managed to clear yesterday, so I took the beautiful drive to the California apple region via Highway 80 to Auburn, and 49 through Placerville. I'd never been before and was by myself (Mark had an activity planned with his Little) so I visited the first orchards I could easily get to that had a wide selection, High Hill Ranch and Boa Vista.

I took along my copy of Chez Panisse Fruit because I don't really know which apples are better for sauce, pies, or out of hand and needed something to reference. This worked out all right but a better resource is The Best Apples to Buy and Grow, fragrant, with unpolished skin and leaves mixed in with the fruit. Picked up two big boxes of apples for the astonishingly low price of $20.

The first box is filled with Gravensteins which will be transformed into applesauce sometime this week; during the drive home my car was filled their intoxicating fragrance. The second box is a mix of varieties I'm familiar with like Rome Beauty, Jonathan, and McIntosh, and others I'd not seen before like Mutsu, two varieties of Winesap, Red Gold, and Empire. I also bought two Red Delicious apples just because I wanted to know if they tasted any better than the ever-present globes you see in the supermarket. I ate one on the way home but it wasn't very tasty so I'll store the other one for a while to see if the flavor improves. Apparently some apples need some time in storage to give the flavor time to develop, and some very tasty varieties are practically inedible without it. These varieties do not meet the "money first, taste last" criteria of industrial shippers so you probably won't ever see them in supermarkets. These are the ones I want!

We'll be making a second trip in a few weeks to pick up the late harvest varieties, Arkansas Black and Pink Lady among others. Boa Orchards had some Bartlett pears but they were ready to eat. I needed slightly under ripe so we'll try for other varieties and different orchards on the next trip.

I always try to buy from Nevada growers first and Agape Organics was my first choice for apples but 2007 frost and fire forced me go with plan B. For my family's needs I define local as anything produced with 150 miles, so Apple Hill is still local because it is 144.24 from my door to the apple tree-filled parking lot, the produce is grown in a sustainable way, and the money I pay goes directly to the people who do the actual work and raise their families in their communities. Do you know that growers receive only about 6-11 cents of every dollar spent on their product when it is purchased in some far-off supermarket? The remainder goes to middlemen and corporations. Doesn't seem right.

Apple Hill is a great family day trip. I've always lived in the desert so a drive that includes trees is endlessly fascinating. It'll be fun to see how the landscape changes as fall takes over the next few weeks. Could there be a trip in your future?