Of Apples and Llamas

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Last Saturday, Nathan and I took a trip to a local orchard. We were able to pick our own apples, which neither of us had ever done before. Unfortunately, it was late in the season, and the only varieties left were red delicious and golden delicious. We could have gotten other varieties from the store, but we wanted to have the experience of picking them. 

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We also had fun going through their corn maze. It was interesting going through with Nathan. He has a really good sense of direction, and somehow he was able to track every turn we'd made and which paths we had and hadn't been down. I would have been wandering through for quite awhile had I been alone.

We also got to hang out with a llama and a couple of goats. The llama refused to let me pet him, but I was kind of worried he would eat my hand off anyway.

We had lots of fun, and today I got to have fun with some of the apples we'd bought. Neither of us really enjoy eating raw apples that much, so I decided to make some of them into apple crisp. I used this recipe, cutting it in half. It looked easy enough, but halfway through the baking I noticed the apples looked like they we're getting a little dry. I ended up taking it out after 50 minutes (the upper end of the recommended baking time). The apples still weren't particularly soft, but I was worried they would get way too dry if I'd left them in longer.

It wasn't bad though. Nathan gave it a B+ to A-. He said sometimes his mom's apples crisp was really good and sometimes it wasn't, so I was happy with these results for my first attempt. It may have been better with a different kind of apple.

Any tips on making apple crisp?