Apples, apples, more apples and beets

If you haven't already reserved your local turkey for Thanksgiving, there's still time. Shady Mile, Piper's Meats and various poultry vendors at farmer's markets are still taking orders. A local bird and fixings is the only way to celebrate a holiday that commemorates the local bounty.
(Local apple and peach crisp)
I was blessed with an generous invitation to join some friends for a weekend excursion to Saltspring Island. With a string of farms to visit and sunshine to soak in, it was a much needed break from this roller coaster schedule.

We visited a number of sheep farms to buy up raw fleece and rovings for our 100 mile fibre projects. I managed to talk them into visiting Apple Luscious Organic farm who are the the hosts of the tastings next week for the Apple Fest.

Harry and Deb were gracious guides and showed us around their orchards and rose gardens with much passion and knowledge. They will be hosting tasting of hundred of apples on their farm on Sept. 30. There's also a number of other events and farms that are participating in their glorious celebration of my favorite fruit!
Here's some photos of our orchard tour.

Harry & Deb of Apple Luscious Organic Farm.





















































One for the road.

It was so amazing to see such an incredible variety of apples. They're still adding more varieties to their orchard. Apples for baking, apples for eating out of hand, apples for jelly, apples for sauce, there were apples for any and every thinkable use.




I've been eating apples non-stop since getting home Sunday. Along with the apple & peach crisp I made above with apples from the Apple Luscious farm and peaches from the farmer's market, I'm also dehydrating a batch for trail mix.
For breakfast, I had a simple but sublime meal of apples, cantaloupe and Moonstruck's ash ripened camembert. The cantaloupe and cheese were bought the Saltspring Farmer's market.













This is the only cantaloupe I bought all year and man, it's worth the wait. Perfectly ripe and juicy. The flavour was so much more intense than I'm used to and has a great bouquet of fruity, floral yumminess.














Since I had the oven on for the apple crisp, I also threw in a bunch of beets in a pan to roast. Simply wash the beets, cut them into halves or quarters if they're bigger than golf balls. Pop them into pan and cover with some foil. Let them roast at 350F until they're fork tender.

As you can see, I had red and golden beets. Look like jewels ;)











With my roasted beets, I made a borscht with red cabbage and red onions that I bought at the Nanaimo Farmer's Market.
Here's my Fast & Dirty Borscht recipe that I posted last year.

I'm going to eat apples all day and listen to my newly downloaded Ani Difranco album. I've been waiting since 2006 for iTunes to get it since I've made a deal with myself that I would not buy any new CD's due to the amount of material, packaging and transportation that is involved the that. It doesn't make any sense since there're options like iTunes where I can get the same music without all the plastic, wrappings and fuel consumption.
So my $$ iTunes habit is helping save the environment ;)