Apples Today

The 50th Annual Apple Festival is going on this weekend in Bayfield.  Pete and I made the drive up on Friday. The leaves were still at their peak and the town was just beautiful.

A festive downtown
I didn't know there were
dolphins in the Lake

Pete enjoyed an apple dumpling

We walked down the street and listened to the music of the Blue Canvas Orchestra, tasted apple treats and meandered through the crafts.

The Bay was colorful

and so were the
town's gardens

The visit wouldn't be complete without buying some apples.

On the way home from Bayfield we stopped and picked out a few pumpkins for Halloween.

Lots of pumpkins to choose from

Pete pays for
our pumpkins

Along with two pumpkins we purchased an acorn squash for dinner. I got out my trusty Alice Waters cookbook from Chez Panisse, Vegetables, to check on the baking time and temperature.

In doing so I found out that Ms. Waters enjoys baking the squash with cloves of garlic stuck into the flesh.  I took her tip and added to it.  After halving and scooping out the seeds I filled the two halves with garlic, sauteed onions and BUTTER! I baked the squash skin side down in a baking dish with about 1/4" of water (so the skin wouldn't burn) for 45 minutes at 400 degrees.

The squash was delicious, but what I'm really looking forward to is Pete's apple pie. He and Gwen have already had a telephone conference to discuss the ingredients and the methods. Today he is off to the store to get a few things, then this afternoon the house should be filled with apple pie aroma.  More on that later.

Chip Chip Hooray

It starts out with a pile of sticks and branches collected from the woods. The goal is to minimize the pile with Chip, the chipper.  Chip is my favorite piece of lawn equipment. Today I needed to make enough chips to cover the area between two raised-bed gardens. It took about an hour to collect the pile of sticks and I will probably need another pile of equal size.

A carpet of cardboard.

My colleagues at the Chamber of Commerce have been giving me all the empty cardboard boxes for a month now.  I use them to cover the grass between the raised beds - a weed barrier. The plan is to cover the cardboard with chips.

Pete starts up the chipper.

Maddie Jo watches

In about an hour the pile was gone and the area was covered with an inch thick layer of chips.

Another inch, another day. Maddie toasts the progress with Pete.

Cheers