The apples of my eye

Yesterday's rain remains an unfulfilled promise in our area. Tonight's outlook is more promising but we'll  not hold out breath while we wait. Meanwhile, thanks to an inspired suggestion from the Better Half [BH], and the effectiveness of our  air  conditioning, tonight we'll push summer into apple season. I'm going to fix grilled cheddar cheese and sliced apple on sourdough sandwiches. I first discovered the recipe in my copy of The Apple Lover's Cookbook.

a bowl of ripe apples

Photo by J. Harrington

Friday nights are usually my turn to take care of dinner. Many of my standbys have become shopworn and this morning I awoke with an urge to fix grilled cheddar apple sandwiches but no desire to run around to pick up the ingredients. That's when the BH suggested a trip to our local bookstore and the food coop next door. I can only conjecture that the heat and humidity has affected my brain to the extent that such an obvious solution never occurred to me.

So, we now have local food, independent local book dealer, contributions to our local economy, and no subsidy for a billionaire space cowboy, leading to a tasty Friday night meal. After dinner I'll start to read the book I bought at Scout & Morgan, All We Can Save, Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. I am, admittedly, late to arrive at the particular party described in that book but, as we note, better late than never. I continue to vacillate between desires to save our world versus the urge to condemn the world we've created, or allowed others to create on us. As I bounce back and forth, I keep remembering the Japanese saying about resilience: "fall down seven times, get up eight."

A Short History of the Apple

Dorianne Laux - 1952-

The crunch is the thing, a certain joy in crashing through
living tissue, a memory of Neanderthal days.
   —Edward Bunyard, The Anatomy of Dessert, 1929


Teeth at the skin. Anticipation.
Then flesh. Grain on the tongue.
Eve's knees ground in the dirt
of paradise. Newton watching
gravity happen. The history
of apples in each starry core,
every papery chamber's bright
bitter seed. Woody stem
an infant tree. William Tell
and his lucky arrow. Orchards
of the Fertile Crescent. Bushels.
Fire blight. Scab and powdery mildew.
Cedar apple rust. The apple endures.
Born of the wild rose, of crab ancestors.
The first pip raised in Kazakhstan.
Snow White with poison on her lips.
The buried blades of Halloween.
Budding and grafting. John Chapman
in his tin pot hat. Oh Westward
Expansion. Apple pie. American
as. Hard cider. Winter banana.
Melt-in-the-mouth made sweet
by hives of Britain's honeybees:
white man's flies. O eat. O eat.

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