Apples hold a place deep in my heart. Autumn in Apple City (Watsonville‘s nickname from the early part of the late 1800s to the 1970s) isn’t the riot of flame-toned umbers and scarlets of the archetypal autumn of New England. We knew autumn had arrived when we saw the farmworkers in the apple orchards, picking. The cavernous packing sheds filled up with bins and boxes of red and green and golden apples, stacked high up to the rafters. The scent of ripe apples was thick around the packing shed where we always bought a whole wooden crate of apples, forming one of my most cherished memories.
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My father had built a temperature-controlled room in the garage to store his wines. This cool place also held home-canned preserves and the box of apples. We ate the fresh, crisp apples out of hand but also cooked and baked with abandon. Then came fried apples, baked apples, apple pie, apple crisp, apple cobbler, apple cake, and towards the end of the box, with the slightly-past-their-prime apples, apple butter, and chutney. Opening the heavy door to the wine room, a blast of apple aroma would wash over you: heaven!
I tried to count the apple recipes in our book, Sharing Tea: The Road Back to Civilization, and gave up pretty quickly, lost in a sea of “apple” that popped up in the index. I did persevere enough to comb out four apple cake recipes:

• Blackberry Apple Upside-down Cake recipe from Rose’s blog, Tea Travels August 2022
• Rudy’s Watsonville Caramel Apple Cake recipe from Rose’s blog, Tea Travels December 2019
• Apple Crown Cinnamon Cake recipe from Kathleen’s blog, Cakes and Tea August 2017
• Apple Sharlotka recipe from Rose’s blog, Tea Travels March 2017

All four are free on our website, myteaplanner.com, and will help you celebrate apple season, in cake form. I also encourage you to browse other apple recipes on the old website. You’ll find recipes as diverse as Apple Butter Bars, Kosher Apple Cake, family favorite Spiced Apple Gelatin, elegant Tarte Tatin, Kugel with Raisins and Apples, Homemade Apple Butter Pie, Ozark Pudding and so many more.
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I hope you all find a little farm stand, farmer’s market, or nice grocery store to pick up a crate or a big bag of apples as soon as this year’s crop is ready. Please buy more that you think you need and have a big bowl on the kitchen table to enjoy and then get to try a new apple recipe or an old favorite. Whatever you do, get into the spirit of autumn by celebrating with apples.
 

Postscript
I sent the first draft of this blog to Suzi and she replied with this lovely remembrance:

Of course this is dear to my heart. My father loved his Apple orchards. I do not know why but that was his little piece of heaven. It’s incredibly important to my family and my heritage.

When I was little our lives revolved around our orchards. I don’t think many people have my love or history with Watsonville apples. I remember taking my brothers clean “tube” socks and polishing the apples. My job was to pick up all the apples that had fallen on the ground. We threw them in these huge wooden bins, and we would take them to Martinelli’s to make cider. One of my fondest memories is taking the apples to Martinellis. They would take me into the coolers and let me taste the apple cider.  I would never have imagined that Martinelli Cider would be known worldwide, to me, it was a special treat for my boys. I’m not kidding when I remember those huge bins in the back or this old truck that had a chain link fence as a gate and we would ride in the back. It was so fun.
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I should mention that the charming, original Martinelli’s plant is across the street from Watsonville High School, and we were in school with various Martinelli kids. The sweet plant is still there though they have expanded operations to a huge, modern facility in the industrial section of Watsonville. Both are on Beach Road, which, you guessed it, ends at the beach. That sort of sums up our youth, apples and the beach. To quote Suzi, “It was so fun.”
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