Fall = Apple+Raspberry picking season

I feel blessed that we live just a few miles from tons of green spaces, parks and a few orchards and farmers as well. It makes taking breaks from routine very easy and enriching; and what that means besides other things is that on a beautiful Fall afternoon over the weekend right before the lethargy from an elaborate lunch sets in, we can escape to the nearby apple orchard and soak up the sun and inhale fresh apples and raspberries.

I sure love it that the girls know their favorite variety of apple by name and can often pick it right from the trees.

We ended up picking almost 15 lbs (7 kg) of apples and 4 pints of raspberries. That’s more apple than what we’d have gotten from the grocery store but it’s so fresh, it will last a couple weeks. Besides DH plans to make some apple Jam and my younger daughter wishes to try making homemade apple sauce.

This year the raspberries are really good. I ate right of the shrubs almost as much as I picked. This was the very first year when we got to pick the pink and yellow raspberries. Now my green smoothies have been tinged pink

DH made a quick raspberry tart and it needed a few more minutes of setting but we were too greedy to wait and gobbled it all up. Even though the filling was a little runny, the taste was just perfect...