Crisp air, nostalgia and sweet, sweet pie!

It’s September now and there’s already a distinct crispness to the air. The days are comfortable, albeit rainy, and I’ve had to don my flannel jammies for the past few nights. I love the arrival of autumn; sleeping with open windows, bundled in cozy sweaters, the changing colours of the tress and field behind my home and, of course, harvest time!

There’s something about this season that gives me the warm fuzzies. It seems that the bulk of my fondest childhood memories stem back to fall. I remember walking in the Gatineau hills every year with my family, jumping in piles of brightly coloured leaves, religiously planning out my Halloween attire and spending countless hours making decorations for my parents home - printing out ‘clip art’ Frankenstein cut outs on my father’s old dot matrix printer. It was a simple time and I relished every moment of it. Even as an adult, I’m equally enchanted by the season and I find myself trying to relive moments of my childhood; there’s a certain comfort that comes from keeping traditions alive. I imagine I will be ten times worse when I have children, but for now I’m enjoying bonding with hubby over these little bits and pieces of my past and trying to make them part of our new family tradition.

This weekend I’m hoping to kick off the season by visiting an apple orchard. As a child I remember going on hay rides with the family to pick out several buckets of apples. When we got home, Mom and I would begin washing, peeling and preparing the apples for pies. I remember sneaking gobs of apple chunks covered in brown sugar and cinnamon (still a favourite treat to this day). Once the pies were made, we would freeze them and have enough to last us well into the next year. Looking back, I think this is probably where my love for baking and my obsession with “all things apple” came from. Old habits die hard and I now find myself yearning to pick up the torch and start mass producing the old family pie recipe with hubby. The only glitch in my plan, is that we don’t actually have a deep freeze to store all the pies. Something tells me, however, that my parents won’t mind me taking up some space in their freezer, so long as I continue to cook the big holiday feasts. An added bonus – I won’t have to make any desserts this year!

Fingers crossed folks; hopefully the rain will hold this weekend and hubby and I can get out to the orchard.