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From the Tree to the Tummy
Monday Sep 25, 2006.
By Julia Steinberger
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 Using the easy guide at pickyourown.org, I found Ziegler's Orchard, a friendly-sounding place about an hour northwest, outside of Grayslake. I called and a cheerful woman named Carol gave the skinny: The orchards are open for picking until 5 p.m. on weekends. It's $1 per person to enter, and each picker must buy at least $6 in apples, or five pounds worth. She explained that while Ziegler's is not organic—it sprays once in spring to keep pest eggs in check—it keeps its use of chemicals low. I decided that was OK with me. With promises of pies and homemade sauce, I enlisted the help of my better half and set out. We were handed a Xeroxed map of the orchard and a few plastic bags. A smiling but tired woman at the entrance told us the trees were color-coded: A stripe painted around the trunk would tell us what variety we were picking. We could also taste and eat as many as we wanted along the way (!). The Jonathan, Cortland and Macintosh apples were ripe, but the Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Fuji and Mutzu apples needed a few more weeks; the whole orchard would be ready to pick by the end of September. "Oh, and a lot of the Banana Apples are ready to go; they're more toward the back," she said, pointing to a line on the map. Wait, rewind. "Banana apples?" Mike and I were intrigued...this was a variety we'd never heard of. We decided to work our way toward the mysterious trees. You're allowed to drive slowly through the rows of trees if you want to make a major haul, but my Taurus isn't really equipped for orchard-driving, so we set out on foot. The first tree we saw sported a green stripe, meaning Jonathan apples: medium-size, with red-and-green skin. We were so excited at the proposition of tasting anything we wanted that we sunk our teeth into the first ones that came off in our hands...crispy and tart, totally perfect. Next up, Mike's favorite: Macintosh. The juiciest of the lot, these are also tart enough to make your tongue curl. And they're tiny. The same size bag that held 14 Jonathans took 23 Macintoshes, and we gobbled up a few as well. We had to taste the enormous Cortlands as well, splitting one between us. It was sweeter than the first two varieties, and seemed to be a favorite both with bugs (for the first time, we were brushing bees and mosquitoes off our arms and tossing half the apples aside due to insect holes) and people. There were almost no ripe apples left on the trees, but since they're so large, it didn't take many to fill up bag number three. Our paced slowed from our bulging bellies and bags, we finally saw them: the yellow-stripe trunks that announced we had indeed found the Banana Apples. Despite our bursting tummies, we crunched into the plump, golden-yellow fruit. Crispy. Sweet. And yes, there it was, a hint of a flavor I can describe only as banana Laffy Taffy. Pleased with our 20 pounds of pillage, we tromped back to the farmhouse and checked out the homemade jams, honeys, pastries and caramel apples, rumored to be the best around. Adding another apple to the list was a rather queasy proposition so we packed ourselves into the car, wrote a $24 check for the apples, and headed back to city life. We arrived home tired, happy and inspired. Experiencing your food on a mano-e-mano basis can help ground those of us living the vacuum-packed-and-delivered lifestyle: simply put, it's good to remember that the fruits, veggies, meats, nuts and grains we chew and swallow for energy came from a living system fed by the earth, cultivated by people. And it's not bad to get a dose, however small, of how much work goes into the process on the people end, either.
Get in on the action: What can you do with 20 pounds of delicious apples?
 photo: Julia Steinberger I'm not much of a pastry wizard, but this super-easy recipe is foolproof and never fails to produce impressive results from scratch:
Aunt Wendy's Apple Pie
Crust: Mix the ingredients until they become dry and dough-like. Using copious amounts of flour, roll the dough out very thin and flat, and press into pie pan. If the crust tears, patch it up as needed; it doesn't matter, because the fat will melt in the oven and bind everything together seamlessly.
Filling: For the topping, fk together brown sugar, flour and margarine until the mixture is crumbly. Pour over the top of the apples and press into all of the cracks. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes. After four greener-than-average college years as a co-op dweller-turned-aspiring-permaculturist, Julia Steinberger finds it hard not to feel guilty about her one-bedroom apartment, daily commute and indulgence in the occasional dollar burger. She'd like to dream that she could live in a tent/treehouse/rabbit hole, but the truth is, she'd rather stay in the city while doing her best to leave a lighter footprint on the earth. You can contact her here.
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