APPLES!!!!

I know. You're overwhelmed by the enthusiastic nature of the title compared to my usually dry titles using long words and trying to be more thought provoking and complicated than they are, so I'll say it right now: get over it, I'm excited.  The reason for this happiness about a round red fruit is that I have found the best one, the perfect apple for raw consumption and eating warm in any sort of baked anything.  The site of this discovery was the Charlottesville Farmers Market. My mother and I had just eaten a leisurely breakfast and we were strolling the tents, not looking for anything in particular except for maybe a few fresh veggies to go with our generally boring and mainstream dinner dishes my parents had planned for the week.  Then we happened upon a tent near the end of the row, full of baskets of apples, and next to each basket was a plate with slices cut from that type for you to taste. Being pretty much your typical American, I am an absolute sucker for a free sample, and so I pulled my mother under the tent and proceeded to try each and every apple type.  Then, all of a sudden, the fourth apple, was the quintessence of everything you hoped an apple could be. It was crisp, sour with that underlying balance of sweet, it was like the love scene in a cartoon where the mans eyes bug out and everything seems to move in slow motion and gospel singers start belting chords because every moment in your life was leading up to this one. The moment where I found my apple, the Gold Rush apple and it made me weak at the knees and ready to bake with it.  I'm hoping that I can make my next post about something I made with these apples we bought (seven, will it be enough?!?!), and that maybe it'll be a Thanksgiving apple pie!