Apple Pie Day!

Actually, it's not so much a day as a week, and the week that is being celebrated is the first week in which you get enough apples from your apple tree to make an apple pie, or apple tarts, or apple turnovers.  And this past week has been that week for us.  So far, we've had four apple turnovers and then four apple tarts and next we'll have an actual apple pie but that will take a few more apples--by tomorrow or Wednesday for sure.

The first apples of the year, for us, are transparents.  According to some net source, they originated in Russia and were brought to the U.S. in 1870.  They are not much of an eating-from-the-hand apple, but they make wonderful applesauce and pies/tarts/turnovers.  Just a little sugar and cinnamon and a teaspoon of butter and there you are: food for kings and queens.

When I made the tarts, i ran out of apples for the fourth one, so i just filled it up with blueberries (also ripening now in our backyard) and made it a blueberry/apple tart. 

The thing is, this is the part of summer when we're getting fantastic peaches and nectarines and cherries (particularly from B.C.'s Okanagan Valley), so it's hard for the apples to push into that kind of glory.  But it's just fruit all day long.  Lucky us!