Apple Picking at the Farm

Yesterday was the first day of fall, and this year I am intending to get the most out of fall and enjoying these last few warm, sunny days. Fingers crossed that we get pretty leaves this year so I go hiking in that beauty!!

One of my life to-dos that I somehow always miss every fall is apple picking. I think I may have gone once as a kid, but I have no memory of it and I really want to pick my own apples! This past weekend I ended up coercing my friend Steph into taking me (side note- it did not take much to convince her once I mentioned Honeycrisp apples).

We went to Watson's Farm in Bowmanville, which is a really fun little farm! There is a playground and a petting zoo for kids, and you get to take a tractor ride to the orchard!

They had four apples ready for picking- Macintosh, Gala, Cortland, and Honeycrisps. The honeycrisps were double the price of the other apples and had to be put in a separate bag, but otherwise you had free reign to pick all you wanted! Steph and I only skipped the macintoshes, since that is not a favourite of either of us.

We went a little overboard, but picking apples takes no time at all and we were having fun. You could fill up one of those bags with "cheap" apples for $25, which we did NOT do, because what in the world would we do with that many apples? I believe we got 1/2 of a bag of honey crisps and 1/3 bag mixed gala and cortland and paid $30 and $11 respectively.

We also noticed that some people were eating apples in the orchard and not getting in trouble, so we totally broke into one of our honeycrisps. We figured if you are going to steal an apple, might as well steal an expensive one (though we did share it)! Probably not that clean, but whatever ;)

When we got home we got down to making some dinner- which was homemade chicken pot pies AND apple crumble with homemade ice cream. Oh yes, bring it on fall food!! PS- don't tell my diet about this meal, okay? Thanks :)

Now I had about 15 gala and cortland apples hanging out in the condo (I let Steph keep all the honeycrisps), so feel free to leave some apple recipes in the comments- especially if you have any healthy ones! The last couple nights I have been having baked apples with cinnamon & brown sugar, and I think I am going to pick up some pork tenderloins this week to cook alongside some apples.

What is your favourite apple recipe? Favourite fall activity?