It has been a crazy week and a half. When our friends from Washington, DC, Annie and Andre, came to visit, we enjoyed idyllic sunny days, lovely drives on country lanes and wonderful meals made with Vermont vegetables and not much else except for the night that Andre made pasta from scratch. They planned to visit friends on the Connecticut coast and their daughter in Brooklyn on their way home. With warnings about hurricane Irene filling the air, we suggested that they stay with us until the storm had passed but Andre was certain that the storm would “fizzle out”. So, they left Vermont on Friday.

Locust Creek by Kathy Fiske

Saturday was a quiet day – laundry and leftovers. The rain that woke us on Sunday was heavy but not alarming. By noon, friends had moved their computers out of a riverside studio in their house on the bank of the Ottaquechee River. When Charles and I crossed the Quechee covered bridge just after noon, the river was high and roiling but still within its banks. … read more

The delicate, white blossoms of spring have been transformed by sun and rain and with help from the bees into the bounty of red, green and yellow apples of early fall. They fill trees that have been planted in orderly rows in orchards, solitary trees carefully tended in gardens and trees growing wild in abandoned pastures and at the edge of the forest.

Nine months after we moved to Vermont, I saw branches of white blossoms on trees near a deer trail. I mucked across a muddy stream and discovered that our house had come with a long abandoned, five-tree apple orchard. The trees were growing in a hollow, overrun with weed trees, sumac and tall grass. We left our first harvest to the deer whose narrow paths had led me to these trees. The following year we rescued the trees from the weeds. Since then, we share the apples with the deer.

The first step in making anything with apples is harvesting them. I found a small wire fruit picker that looks like a basket with fingers at the hardware store and clamped it to a long pole. It made it possible to harvest the apples without dragging a ladder to the orchard. Apples have a natural, waxy coating that prevents dehydration so I don’t wash them until I’m ready to cook them. After I picked the apples, I made applesauce and apple jelly with the same pot of apples. Here’s how I did it:

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It’s been nearly thirteen years since that church supper that inspired all this pickle making.

I’m not quite so naïve but I still marvel at the beauty of Jersey cows’ eyelashes, I’m a member of that church and I design the poster for Red Flannel Hash Supper each year.

I decided to use apples is this recipe that is the last, for the moment, in my refrigerator pickle series. In all of the refrigerator pickle recipes, measurements are arbitrary; the amount of sugar and spice can be varied.  When I don’t have enough liquid to cover the fruit or vegetable, I use vinegar to top off the jar. These pickles will keep in the fridge for at least two months. These pickles are nice with a sandwich or served with grilled chicken. Here’s how I made them: … read more

Last Saturday was a quiet, rainy day. Rain meant no farmers’ market for me.

It was a perfect day to work on the  unfinished painting waiting on the easel in my studio. When I saw our six tree orchard in the painting I wondered if our apples were ripe. From previous owners I knew the orchard had been a source of apples at least since the 1940’s when growing fruit and vegetables was a patriot effort. I walked to the orchard in the rain and came home with a basket filled with fragrant fresh apples from the old trees.

What could be more fitting, then, than to look for a recipe in the 1930 edition of the Chicago Daily News Cook Book that had belonged to my mother-in-law?

In the section titled Cakes and Cookies I found a recipe handwritten on grease stained piece of brown paper. Although, I had been planning to make an apple pie this very short recipe titled “Crumb Cake with Fruit” was intriguing. It read, “Use fingers to mix together one and a half cups flour, half a cup sugar, half a cup butter, and a pinch salt. Add spice. Save three-quarters cup of crumbs. Put rest into bottom of pan. Put sweetened fruit on top. Sprinkle rest of crumbs around. Bake until golden.”

Pretty simple. But how big a pan, how long should it bake and at what temperature? I would have to fill in the details. Here’s how I did it.

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