My husband and With-a-Why are in Big City Like No Other for the weekend, so I figured I might be all alone in the house on Saturday night. When I returned from a long day in the woods with my students, I was chilled through. I brought some firewood in from the garage and built a fire, the first of the season.
I think there’s something magic about crackling flames in the fireplace. Within the hour, my living room began filling up with people.
Shaggy Hair Boy and Smiley Girl had gone apple picking with Dandelion Niece and Taekwondo Nephew. They lugged a big bag of apples into the kitchen and began immediately cutting up the apples. “We’re going to leave the skins on,” Shaggy Hair Boy announced. “That’s how Smiley Girl’s Mom does it.”
The method was certainly faster. Within minutes, they’d filled a huge pot with apple chunks. As the applesauce began to simmer, the house filled with the scent of cinnamon.
Tall Boy returned from a Pro Disc Golf tournament with a trophy. He’s apparently really good at the sport; the champion in this part of the state. He showed me his winnings —$600 in cash stuffed into an envelope. Disc golf is still a pretty new sport, which may explain why the prizes look like drug money.
Beautiful Smart Wonderful Daughter arrived by train. She’d gone to a wedding with Sailor Boy, who is still living about five hours away. Boy-in-Black came home by airplane. He’d spent the week in Germany at a conference for computational physics.
Dimple and First Extra were last to arrive. Dimple showed us all a photo on her phone: First Extra holding a trophy. Apparently, he’d been first in HIS category of disc golf at the tournament.
I sat by the fire with a bowl of homemade applesauce, slowly growing warm again after the day in the woods. When I went to bed, there was still a gang at the kitchen table, playing cards.
I think there’s something magic about crackling flames in the fireplace. Within the hour, my living room began filling up with people.
Shaggy Hair Boy and Smiley Girl had gone apple picking with Dandelion Niece and Taekwondo Nephew. They lugged a big bag of apples into the kitchen and began immediately cutting up the apples. “We’re going to leave the skins on,” Shaggy Hair Boy announced. “That’s how Smiley Girl’s Mom does it.”
The method was certainly faster. Within minutes, they’d filled a huge pot with apple chunks. As the applesauce began to simmer, the house filled with the scent of cinnamon.
Tall Boy returned from a Pro Disc Golf tournament with a trophy. He’s apparently really good at the sport; the champion in this part of the state. He showed me his winnings —$600 in cash stuffed into an envelope. Disc golf is still a pretty new sport, which may explain why the prizes look like drug money.
Beautiful Smart Wonderful Daughter arrived by train. She’d gone to a wedding with Sailor Boy, who is still living about five hours away. Boy-in-Black came home by airplane. He’d spent the week in Germany at a conference for computational physics.
Dimple and First Extra were last to arrive. Dimple showed us all a photo on her phone: First Extra holding a trophy. Apparently, he’d been first in HIS category of disc golf at the tournament.
I sat by the fire with a bowl of homemade applesauce, slowly growing warm again after the day in the woods. When I went to bed, there was still a gang at the kitchen table, playing cards.
4 comments:
There really is nothing quite like applesauce, by that i obviously mean the applesauce one makes for one's self and especially the chunky kind and maybe even with the skins on. how can something taste so good?
Hmmm... How do you know what drug money looks like?
:-)
I leave the skins on too. I started it on the premise that the skins contain most of the nutrition in apples, so if I was to make this for Yo, then I should leave the skins on. But the skins contain most of the pectin, so the consistency of this kind of applesauce is a bit different--thicker, gooier, and I think, better.
When I first started reading your blog Shaggy Hair Boy and With-a-Why were both still in high school (With-a-Why may have been in middle school) and I remember hoping that these domestic scenes would last.
Glad to see you guys are still at it.
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