I went apple picking again. Correction– I went apple, crabapple and quince picking, and I went a little crazy. 22 pounds of crazy. The apples are enormous, and delicious, but enormous none the less– imagine the head of a small child, covered in delicate, chewy and edible bright green skin. But apples, unlike so many summer stone fruits, stay fresh for quite some time after picking. Even with this rule in mind, I knew that all of my apples would be needing some assistance in their depletion. So, I made a pie.
I will be the first person to tell you that apple pie is not my favorite; I much prefer the typical pies of summer. I love pie; and I like apples, but I always feel so moderate about an apple pie. So this was a single crust pie that I [...]

For me, the hardest part of going away is not the planning (I guess I’m not really a planner), nor is it the packing (just take all of your clothes and stuff them in a suitcase). It is using up the contents of the fridge for that final week at home, that works me up. Because, yes, in the past I have left that solitary carton of milk on the shelf chilling, and let me tell you, after weeks of sitting alone in the refrigerator, that milk punished my olfactory senses heartily.
Going to the market and buying just a smattering of ingredients has never been one of my strong points. But sometimes, in using up what I already have, it is necessary to actually do a wee bit of grocery shopping, as counterintuitive as it may seem. So cruising up and down the grocery aisles, [...]