Apples

My fruit eating habits are very seasonal. Oranges in the winter, cherries and peaches all summer, and now that  it's fall - it's apple time.

My favorite apples are Honey Crisps. I tried them for the first time last year and cursed all the years I had spent NOT eating these beauties. If I peel one and serve it with sliced cheese - a nice, sharp cheddar, for example - my husband will eat the entire plateful.

My least favorite apple is the Red Delicious variety. It is a beautiful apple to look at. The color is gorgeous, and I love the ones that have tiny "stars" all over them. There's one problem - someone forgot to put in any taste. Plus I always eat the skin on my apples, and the peel on Red Delicious tastes like exploded balloon to me. Except thicker and harder to chow down.

Gorgeous to look at, but - no thanks.

For pies, I prefer the hard types that aren't as sweet. Granny Smiths are an easy choice. I hear Pippins are good too, although I've never had one. (I dream of trying a Cox's Orange Pippin, which I hear are spectacular.)

I'm not above having a caramel apple if it's homemade, although I'm on a diet now so I suppose I can't do that. They are delicious in salads as well, green and chicken, and a pork roast isn't complete without some apples on the side, IMO.

My daughter has been bugging me to go apple picking for a while now, so today we are  going to venture out and give it a try. I see that it is cold and cloudy - a perfect fall day for picking apples. Afterwards some of us can have mulled cider and apple donuts. (Not  me - diet, etc.)

Did I mention that I love Bulmer's hard cider to wash down a hearty meal of roast chicken? Because I do.

Or with brown bread? Yup, that works too.

But my favorite way to have apples is the time-honored way - held in the hand, unpeeled, as I take a big, crunchy, juicy bite. There's nothing better than that.

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Spider!

Every year, around this time, the spiders come out of the woodwork or the webs, whatever it is. The babies hatch and scuttle around the steps and hidden corners. Momma arrives too, and as for Dad - I suppose he has already been eaten.

During my lifetime I have cultivated a tolerance of spiders. I know on some commonsense level that spiders are good things to have around. They destroy the bugs I seriously hate, such as mosquitos and ticks. 

Although, I did find a butterfly and a ladybug in one web the other day - not cool.

Still, last night, when the LARGEST, FASTEST SPIDER IN THE WORLD emerged from some dark spot and ran across my kitchen floor ... well, let's just say there may have been shrieks, and leaps, and bashings of brooms. 

I don't like it when they have what my mother used to describe as "muscles," see. A Daddy Long Legs is tolerable, but a tarantula? There are glutes involved there. No thank you oh so very much.

It all makes me think of an October morning, one year ago. I was out on the front lawn with the neighbors and my daughter, waiting for the bus. One of the kids pointed up and said, "Hey, cool Halloween decoration!"

I looked up and saw - now, I live in a tall house, and the thing was just under the roof - the living grandmother of all spiders ever born. This thing was huge. And it had a huge home. I'm talking handspan here.

Shall I bump it up another level? Brace yourselves - it also had and egg sac. Nay, TWO egg sacs.

You're still awesome, though, Charlotte.

Suddenly I received a vision: of hundreds of spiders just like that one, crawling all over the grounds. And in the house. 

Did I say crawling? Allow me to self-edit. They would have been pounding around. There would have been audible footsteps involved. 

So just maybe I cried, and perhaps I forced my husband up the long ladder to get Mrs. Arachnid and her young and fling them far, far away.

Yes, I can put up with spiders. I will capture most with a cup and a flat sheet of paper and release them out into the wild. However, I won't do that with the muscular ones that took steroids. No, sirree.

(BTW, I just read a fantastic blogpost from my friend, Johanna Garth, here. If you are a writer you can't miss this one.