Pilgrimages to the mountains this fall by my grandparents have yielded this Farmer with apples aplenty. Pies, cakes, and tarts have abounded this season and finally, after much persistence i.e. nagging and
begging on my part, Mimi has made her Apple Butter.
This delicacy has a longstanding place in my memory of warmth and delight, for Mema, Mimi’s mother, would make this and the smell and taste bring back memories of her. She would fill dough with this apple concoction and bake apple turnovers or fry apple fritters. Mimi has perfected the recipe and we use it on breads, biscuits, poundcake, or simply as dessert itself. I take only a spoonful at a time, yet, still, the jar keeps diminishing in volume. I suppose it is the spoonfuls throughout the day that cause the diminishment.
This sauce is that good – you’ll find yourself sampling right off the stove and right out of the fridge… hot or cold, warm or cool, Mimi’s Apple Butter will surely become a favorite. With the holidays fast approaching, jar some apple butter to give to your neighbors, friends, and loved ones, that is, if you can bear to share!
A roasted chicken goes a long way in our house. It is one of those easy dishes that requires very little prep. Stuffing the cavity with a whole lemon cut in half, a whole garlic bulb cut in half, some thyme, salt, and pepper creates the simplest of flavors. Smear the body with soft butter, lots of kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, toss in the oven for about an hour and a half. Serve it with some roasted carrots and some sort of green and dinner is on the table for just a few bucks.
Or maybe I should say citrus was California?
But no, despite the Southern California citrus industry going the way
of the subsequent aerospace industry, I still think citrus is
California. I was inspired to write about California citrus by an
article that recently ran in the Sunday Los Angeles Times’ L.A. Then and
Now column: 
When I was a child, for two weeks every summer, my family would go to a small town in Norway called Fevik. We would stay in a hotel called the Strand Hotel, which is, now, a home for the elderly. We were a large family, four children, (I was the youngest), my mother, my Norwegian father, and his sister, Else.
Every summer when we were kids, my brother and I would visit my grandparents on Lake Minnetonka in Orono, Minnesota. We spent some of our days waterskiing on Mud Lake, seeing plays at the Guthrie, and riding the rollercoaster at Mall of America. But most of our WASPy Midwestern days were spent at the Woodhill Country Club playing tennis or lounging poolside. Many teenagers were bored by Woodhill’s sea of Lilly Pulitzer sundresses and Brooks Brothers’ monogrammed golf-sweaters, but I was fascinated. I was convinced (since I was a teenage TV junkie) the Woodhill Country Club, built among some the largest estates of suburban Minneapolis, was built on a bedrock of scandal.