Sunday, October 21, 2007

An apple a day


October 21st is Apple Day. There are no events near where I am that I know of, so I thought I'd celebrate with an apple-centric post. Apples are my all-time favourite winter fruits (my favourite summer fruit is the watermelon) and seeing carts full of them at the supermarket is what says to me "autumn's here" more than any other sight, smell or sound.

My favourite variety is the Pink Lady, which sadly isn't UK grown, but has to be imported from Australia and other far away lands with hot climates. You may think Pink Lady is a fancy name for an apple (and you'd be right) but British varieties have even more interesting names - you really can't beat Slack-me-girdles and Cox’s Orange Pippins!

If you're in the north hemisphere and looking for seasonal inspiration in the kitchen, BBC's Food pages list a number of traditional apple-based or apple-enhanced recipes, such as tart tatin, strudel, crumble, pie and also sausage & apple patties, curried parsnip & apple soup and many more. There are also some "lifestyle" recipes (ranging from iced apple margarita to caramelised apple & pate brioche bites) in the Pink Lady website.

As for me, I'm off to pour myself a glass of M&S Pure British Cox Apple juice. Cheers!

7 comments:

Betty Carlson said...

Are apples a symbol of teachers in the UK?

In the USA, apples symbolize teachers (on logos, badges, etc.) because in the past, students used to bring their teacher an apple as a gift.

I was just wondering if the same symbol held true in the UK.

Shionge said...

Cool :D Thank you for this post now I know today is Apple's Day

Tinsie said...

Hi Betty! No, I don't think they do. The tradition of bringing your teacher an apple certainly exists, but I'm not aware of the apple actually being used as a symbol for/by teachers.

See Shionge, it's amazing what you learn from reading blogs ;-)

Have a great rest of the weekend, ladies!

Karen said...

You've inspired me, Tinsie. I'm going to do some apple-themed baking this week.

Will post quiche recipe tomorrow when I'm not so blasted tired. :-)

Tinsie said...

Thanks, Karen!

In the meantime, I think I might bake an apple cake. Mmmmm....

Anonymous said...

Apples are my favourite fruit as well,especially Macentosh apples. While growing up in Canada my entire family would go apple picking almost every autumn on farms just outside of Toronto. Apples remind me of a carefree childhood and always make me smile.
A lovely slice of fresh apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream would probably do the same as well:-) Yummy!

Tinsie said...

Apple picking sounds like fun :-)
The only picking we did when I was a kid was olive picking, and I hated it coz it's extremely tiring, mind-numbingly boring and you have to wait *months* to eat the fruit, so there's 0 instant gratification.