It's Coming Up Apples, the Juicy Kind

A Zombie in Apple Season

I've missed apple season. It's sad, because I love autumn's flavors and possibilities, bits of sunny warmth studded through cold days the way fresh apple bits might stud a quick loaf with little bursts of sweetness on the tongue.

In a typical year, I would celebrate apple season, making the trek to an orchard or two to pick up apples and then cooking apple dishes for an entire weekend. This is what I like to call AppleFest. But AppleFest didn't happen this year.

Instead, I was busy running red lights (something I don't recall ever doing in my life) as I made my sleepy trip to school in the early morning darkness, arriving to an unlit hallway where my heels echoed across the old-school black and white tiles. Lights. I kept thinking. Lights would be nice. But the special key to turn on the lights doesn't arrive until around 7 am, and so I walk blindly through the dark hallway until I reach my office.

There is undoubtedly something wrong about waking at 4 am and coming home at almost 8 and working some more until you fall asleep, five days per week, then working two full days on Saturday and Sunday. When the 12 or 14 hour work days are not just a phenomenon of the beginning of another school year but the norm for a 12-month year, it can seem crazy. Yet it's a hard problem to see in the darkness of early morning when you've got copies to make, think-alouds to go over in your mind, rooms to set up, students waiting, when the line at the copier at 6:15 includes not just you but five others.

One morning, waking at 3:30 in the now chilly darkness of September and driving in a zombie-esque trance to school, I realized something was not okay. It's hard to see the problem when there are others involved, when normal is 12 hour work days that extend even longer into your bedtime once you get home, when you do it under the noble name of teaching. But that morning, arriving at 5:00 am to a parking lot not empty, I began to wonder what was wrong with all of us. All I could think about were the sweet apples ripening on trees somewhere, apples that might have ripened for me but that I will never taste.

Symbolic Apples and Other Teaching Matters

Apples are supposed to be the symbol of knowledge, of teaching. But, when the only apples I've seen this season are the ones in my mind or the bruised and mealy grocery store apples I throw in my lunch box to be eaten while I'm lesson planning, the ones that lack real juice, I can't help but wonder just what kind of knowledge we're passing on. When apples are a part of their own school lunch, students mostly throw them in the trash, complaining openly of their damaged and inauthentic skins, claiming they are not worthy of being eaten. I can't argue with them: my own lunch box apple looks the same, a product of my not having time, not making time, to pick one off a tree, and I don't particularly want to eat it either.

When our children (1 in 3 born after 2001, you know--thank you, Food, Inc.) grow up with diabetes, will it matter that they have the knowledge of calculus, that they can become lawyers, doctors, teachers themselves? When they can't breathe as they walk up the three flights of stairs to their offices and have to pause on each landing, when they die early leaving children who are themselves diabetic, how much will their Reading, Writing and Arithmetic education help them?

Don't get me wrong: education matters. It matters more than most things in this world, I think. But it doesn't matter more than food, which is the sweet truth of it all. Biting into my Tarte Tatin, my Caramelized Apple Skillet Cake, my Apple Cider Muffins and Apple Cider Loaf, (in a flurry of baking I do this weekend instead of working--an attempt to remind myself that I am a living being who needs real nourishment rather than factory-ripened "food," an attempt to make up for the much-missed apple season), I feel like Eve biting into the proverbial apple: there is a type of monumental sin involved. My lessons will suffer. My students will not "learn" as much this week. There will be several things on my "Priority To Do" list that will remain there, unaccomplished. But I know I must take these small steps toward a saner life, a saner world where students might get to eat real apples with juice inside. Where they might want to eat these apples, where the biting into of an apple will only feel like a sin (because of its damn good sweetness) but will in fact be a piece of a healthy and normal lifestyle. To me, this is what the world needs as much as the three Rs, and I just might be in the wrong movement.

Desire: Going to Work in the Garden of Superheroes

In his book, The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan points out that the apple used to provide a sweetness hard to obtain elsewhere before cheap sugar became widely available. In this time before, the apple provided the fulfillment of a natural human survival mechanism: the desire for sweetness. And, this sweetness was nicely balanced with fiber and vitamins.

The author, Michael Pollan (my kind of superhero), and me at the Cornwall, CT farmer's market this past summer. ( I hope I can post his picture on the internet!)

Far from this desire and balance now, however, we turn away from this natural sweetness, denying ourselves the most basic of all human needs, nourishment, denying ourselves the opportunity to pick apples and make sweet apple cake under the name of work.

Teaching allows us to do this more than other professions with insane work hours because it is, without question, important for the world, for kids, and we work these hours under a noble name. It is one thing to question your excessive work hours when you are a lawyer helping rich people divide their assets in a divorce, when you are a stock broker making a pile of money for money's sake, or when you are managing a company with your sole vision being of the bottom line. But teaching, you say to yourself, that is important. How can I not work every waking moment for the benefit my students, who are behind (my ninth graders read, on average, at a fifth grade level; one reads at a second grade level, one at a third, and several at a fourth). It is undeniably important, acutely so, for them to be able to read. But at the heart of it all is this: their education and my life must be balanced, must mirror the sweet roundness of the apple, equal parts sugar and health. Biting into the apple must not only be okay but must be a way of life for all of us.

Although the apple is the symbol of the organization for which I work, Achievement First, the bold checkmark that slices through it is an illustration of what we are are so badly missing.

It is like the worm that taints a good apple, turning it from candy-like sweetness to rotten flesh, making it unhealthy, driving a hole through its core that will render it inedible. If what we are doing is putting a worm through all that knowledge rather than providing our students with a balanced, juicy bite of nourishment, then something is definitely wrong. If the apple is going to be our symbol then it's got to really be our symbol, and it's got to be real: seeds, juice, and all.

Don't get me wrong. AF, like similar high performing charters, (KIPP, to name one) does amazing things for children. Its problem is really not one that belongs to it as an organization, but to the teaching profession in general. AF and similar high-performing schools run on the sold souls of teachers who have given up their lives to spend nearly every waking moment working towards the success of their students. It asks teachers to be superheroes who sacrifice relationships, home-cooked meals, time with their children, and personal hobbies (think Spiderman giving up the beautiful and sweet Kirsten Dunst). AF's success, in other words, relies on the sick (I mean that in the true sense of the word) minds of individuals with a drive not just to help kids but to somehow prove themselves to the world.

These are people (and I'm not giving myself any kind of amnesty here, mind you) who need some serious therapy: a colleague with whom I've been emailing between the hours of 4 and 5 a.m. for the past week whose most recent email champions our obvious "type A" personalities and includes one of those smily-face symbols; another colleague who brags that she and her husband have begun working late into the night, side by side on the couch while their infant son sleeps, unaware of the life he will lead; a fellow teacher who is still living with his ex-girlfriend despite their recent breakup (his long work hours, such an obvious cause of their breakup, were never mentioned during the actual break-up conversation because they were, as he put it, so "implied" they didn't need to mention them); another colleague who proudly told me her mother had said she needed to "find another profession," as she hardly saw her infant son; and me, who can't help but to hypocritically write about all of this here while simultaneously engaging in the very things I criticize. If all of us were to start going to therapy, I believe our school would fall apart.

And, because the education world currently provides no balanced, happy apple-like medium for teachers and students, sometimes I just want to give up on all of it, pick apples and make Tarte Tatin, remind myself that I am human by nature and not superhuman. Sometimes, and not always while the apple chips are down, but more frequently while I'm riding high on my 4 am email wars or leveling books at 7 pm in quiet hallways, I just want to go and work in the garden, the real kind.

Juicy Apples: The Recipes

Tarte Tatin

from the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook

4 T unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, plus more for the pan

all-purpose flour, for dusting

1/2 recipe Pate Brisee (see recipe, below)

1 cup sugar

Dash of lemon juice

2 1/2 medium baking apples, such as Rome or Cortland (about 1 1/4 pounds), peeled, cored, and cut into quarters

Vanilla ice-cream, whipped cream, or creme fraiche for serving (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Generously butter a 9-inch metal pie plate; set aside. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and set aside. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough to a 9-inch round, about 1/4-inch thick. Place dough on the prepared baking sheet, and chill until firm, about 30 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, mix together the sugar, 2 tablespoons cold water, and the lemon juice to form a thick syrup. Bring to a boil over high heat, swirling pan; cook until the mixture turns medium amber, about 3 minutes. Remove the pan from heat, and pour the mixture onto the bottom of the prepared pie plate. Immediately add the butter, distributing evenly.
3. Arrange the apples, rounded sides down, around the bottom of the pan in a circular pattern, starting from the outside and working in, fitting them as close together as possible (the apples will be the top of the tart when served). Drape the chilled dough round over the apples to cover the mixture completely.
4. Bake until golden, about 25 minutes. Meanwhile, line a rimmed baking sheet with a clean nonstick baking mat. Remove the tart from the oven, and immediately invert onto the mat, working quickly but carefully to avoid contact with the hot caramel. Using tongs, carefully lift the pie plate off of the tart. Transfer the sheet to a wire rack to cool. Serve warm with creme fraiche, if using.

Caramelized-Apple Skillet Cake

from The Craft of Baking

by Karen DeMasco and

Mindy Fox

1 cup sugar

8 T (1 stick) unsalted butter, very soft

2 tart baking apples, such as Mutsu or Granny Smith

3/4 tsp. vanilla

2 large eggs, separated

3/4 c plus 3 T unbleached all-purpose flour

3 T coarse yellow cornmeal or fine polenta

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp kosher salt

1/3 c whole milk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In an 8-inch ovenproof skillet, preferably cast iron, combine 1/4 c of sugar with 2 t water, and stir. Cook over high heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar turns a golden brown caramel, about 2 minutes. Remove pan from heat and whisk in 2 T butter.

2. Peel, core, and slice apples into 1/8-inch thick rings. Place the apples in an overlapping ring over the caramel, and work your way from the outside to the center of the pan.

3. In an electric mixer, combine the remaining 3/4 c sugar, remaining 6 T butter, and the vanilla. Beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Mix in egg yolks, one at a time.

4. In another bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt. In three additions, add the flour mixture, alternating with the milk, to the butter mixture. Using a rubber spatula, scrape the batter into a large bowl.

5. Clean and dry the mixer bowl (fat residue will keep the whites from becoming fluffy). Add the whites and, using the whisk attachment, beat to soft peaks. Fold whites into batter in 3 additions.

6. Spread batter evenly over the apples in the skillet. Bake, rotating the skillet halfway through, until the cake is golden brown and firm to the touch, 45 to 50 minutes. Place skillet on wire rack and cool just until arm, about 30 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the pan and invert onto a plate.

*Cake is best eaten the day it is baked but can be kept at room temperature for up to 2 days.

A (Shroomy) Walk in the Woods

I woke up this morning to find I was not the only one whose mind was on morels. Wednesdays are my favorite newspaper days. In fact, I'm sort of embarrassed to admit that most of the time, Wednesday is the only day I even bother to look past the front page photo of the New York Times. I'm sure other food enthusiasts experience the same excitement I do as I flip through the (real or virtual) pages to the food section and devour the new recipes (in my mind, at least). I'm always eager to see what's "in-style" in the food world, though I also have to admit that my eagerness stops there. I almost never actually make those New York Times recipes because while they are always fashionable and trendy, they are rarely sensible and good. The one general exception to this rule is Mark Bittman's simple recipes, which I have sometimes made to greater or lesser success. This morning, we were clearly on the same page, because there was his article on morels and asparagus, "The Flavor of Spring," and, while I haven't tried it yet, it seems like it would be tasty. It is even accompanied by a nice video and a recipe.

Another thing I maybe shouldn't tell you but am going to anyway is that my first mushroom hunting experience was thrilling. I know, I probably don't get out much, but finding secret mushrooms in the woods that are actually in plain sight sent little ripples through my body and made my brain buzz in a way that had me wondering if I had actually found some other kind of mushrooms and not the coveted morels. Seriously, if you've never been mushroom-hunting, I hope you will be lucky enough to find someone who is as gracious as my husband's family was in sharing one of their hunting places with us. If you would like a little teaser, Michael Pollan has a wonderful account of his own mushroom hunt in The Omnivore's Dilemma, and in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver talks about the mushrooms that grow in the patch of grass on her property where an old goat used to live.

After reading Bittman's article, I did a little online morel info hunting, and found this site to be the most informative. It includes a map of where morels have been sited in 2009 as well as a list of FAQs which I think would be worth reading for the new mushroom hunter and the merely curious alike.

A happy mushroom duo.



The Mushroom Hunters

Where did we find them? In the woods.

It was late morning when we went out, overcast and cool, and we headed north on a pre-cut trail. It had been a long time since I'd been in the woods, and for a little while I took it in subconsciously while I focused on following my mother-in-law, Margie. It was flat and grassy, and I kept my eyes along the edges of the trees the path cut through, though we weren't really hunting yet. Instead, we were trying to get to the hills a ways beyond where we hoped we'd find their dark shadows. We hurried along the path while Margie tried to remember which way to go, and eventually we crossed another path and went through a clearing, pausing periodically to make sure everyone was together and to determine in which direction the hills might lie. My husband's compass said we were still going north, and we walked on. I thought about what people had been saying--it wasn't time yet, it hadn't been warm enough, they wouldn't be out until next weekend or the one after. How long would we walk before turning around?

The scenery changed to bushes with thick thorns that snagged my jeans as I walked with my sister-in-law, Tasha, and my husband behind me and Margie's teal green shirt just a few steps ahead. The morels, I'd been told, can be found, but it's not easy. You need an experienced eye, you need to know the secret places. I followed Margie's shirt out of the corner of my eye, imagining all the old-time mushroom hunters out in the woods today, and the delicious fungi they would find. I kept my eyes on the ground, running them up and down the ground, zeroing in on the areas around tree trunks. Was it only in cutesy woods drawings that I'd seen the mushrooms grow around tree trunks? Was it something I'd made up? Suddenly I realized we were going up; Margie had led us to the hills and they were very steep. Out of breath, I paused by a tree and let the others catch up. We walked together for a ways, looking down to see how far we'd come. How long had we been out? I wondered. We kept walking. At one point Steve stopped and asked Tasha to take a picture of us, offering her our camera for the job. Declining, she used her own. Smile. Snap. And then, "I think I found one!"

Tasha's mushroom was poking up out of the leaves a good two feet from a tree, and not right around the trunk where I’d been looking. Located in a dip, exactly the area that Tasha had informed me at the start of our walk they like, the morel lived peacefully until we picked it. We scoured the area around it, and Tasha uncovered another one nearby in the moss, but us, nothing. After that, we grew quiet and spread out, ready to get down to business or give up. I could hear Margie on her cell phone somewhere behind me, and Stephen to my left. Absentmindedly I wandered sideways and up, looking at the places similar to where Tasha had found hers--the side of the hill we were on, a foot or two from a fairly large tree trunk. I began to imagine me happening upon a mushroom, calling out to the others that I’d found one. I held the bag containing Tasha’s two and walked on, silently telling the mushrooms to make themselves known to me, hoping I could will them to show their dark bodies to me, ghosts who only appear when you want them to.

At some point I became aware of Margie’s phone conversation—she was talking about mushrooms. Margie was saying how Tasha had found two and then remarking on times that the other person had found a whole bunch. “Two pounds!” I heard her say, "that’s a lot." Finally, she clicked off and it was silent again and in the silence I thought about how we should get out of these woods and go somewhere where we might find a whole grove of them. Two pounds. I pictured them in my mind, a whole mess of them, and then I turned and saw it—a beautiful morel sticking up out of the ground, its dark, mysterious body revealing itself to me. I looked, my head still fuzzy with thinking of the two pounds, and then I saw another, and another, and another. "Guys?" I called. "I think I found some." It took me a few moments to understand just what I was looking at. The group rushed over as I knelt, dizzy, suddenly conscious of the sweet, musty, oniony smell of wild leeks that was rising up out of the earth when I pressed my face close to the ground near the morels. The group picked as I watched, somewhat stunned, and then I photographed the morels in their natural habitat. If I had looked up to find the Dalai Lama instead, I don't think I would have felt more reverent, and the pungent earthy smell and image of the quiet, growing morels stayed with me for the rest of the day.




A wild leek, picked and lying on the woodsy ground.


Preparing the Morels for Heavenly Consumption

Mushrooms have been washed and are ready to cut.

These cooking directions come from my father-in-law, Michael, and I hope he won't mind my sharing them with you. The whole business of mushroom hunting is pretty secretive since you don't want to give away your magic spot, but seeing as how I'm new to this whole mushroom thing, I'm not quite sure if the same is true of cooking methods. After we brought our bounty home, Margie gave us careful instructions in cleaning the mushrooms, and then later Michael gave me careful instructions in cooking them.

Cleaning and Preparing
Rinse the morels under running water, or soak for a minute in a bowl of water (then drain and rinse) to remove the dirt. Cut the morels in half lengthwise, then soak in a bowl of salt water.


1. The morels are cut in half lengthwise before their saltwater bath (yum).


2. The morels soak in saltwater.

Cooking
Heat some butter in a cast iron skillet (we used about a half stick of butter for about 15-18 mushrooms). Add the mushrooms and cook over low to medium heat, stirring occasionally. The mushrooms will produce a lot of liquid, but the liquid will cook off (see pictures below). Continue to cook until liquid has evaporated. Consume with attention.


1. The morels are cooking in butter and their natural juices. Liquid has not yet cooked off.


2. The butter and juices have mostly cooked off.


3. The morels in a serving dish waiting to be eaten.

The Mighty Legume: Honest Legume Hummus

Some people are scared of the legume. However, I would like to make the pitch that it is a food group worthy of much more than fear. Taste and nutrition wise, legumes are at the top of the food pack, and they are rather versatile to boot. After reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma last summer, I've stopped eating most meat that is not free-range and grass-fed (when appropriate). My husband, Steve, and I have also realized that we just eat too much meat anyhow, so we made a conscious effort this year to eat more vegetarian meals (this should make my sister, Christina, who has been vegetarian for years and is currently vegan, happy to hear). Eating vegetarian has totally opened my horizons, particularly when I'm at restaurants that don't serve happy meat. I've had the opportunity this year to order all kinds of things that I would never have ordered before because they didn't have meat in them. Plus, it's just healthier not to eat meat every day. Mark Bittman, "The Minimalist" who writes for the New York Times wrote a blog post recently titled "Vegan Before Dinnertime" (Feb 27, you can access it here: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/vegan-before-dinnertime/?scp=1&sq=vegan%20before%20bittman&st=cse) in which he extols the health virtues of eating vegan most of the day. I'm not sure I could go as far as vegan before dinnertime (sorry, Christina), but certainly vegetarian before dinnertime might be a good place to start.

One thing you should know about beans is that if you want to have a complete protein, you need to eat them with seeds, nuts, grains, rice, or corn. Some research shows you can spread this out over a 2-day period (eating beans on day 1 and rice on day 2), but I like to stick with some of the traditional combinations anyway.

The Chickpea

The chickpea is, by far, my favorite legume. I like to eat them all ways: in salads, in hummus (recipe below), in a small bowl with balsamic vinegar and salt (a habit I picked up from my sister, Francesca), and in my favorite soup (chickpea and pasta). A half cup contains 6 grams of fiber and 6 grams of protein. Nice.

Hummus: Every Chickpea's Dream

This hummus makes an honest legume of the chickpea. Now that Steve and I work/go to school in the same town, we sometimes get to have lunch together, which is a really nice mid-day pleasure. Today I made this hummus and served it with whole wheat pita and a simple green salad with a mustard vinaigrette. This recipe is based off of a recipe from Ina Garten, also known as "The Barefoot Contessa," but is less acidic and less garlicky. A food processor works best for making hummus, but you can also use a blender, and I have even mashed the little peas with a fork when I haven't had the proper tool.

Honest Legume Hummus:

2 15-ounce cans of chickpeas, rinsed well and drained
1 1/2 tsp Kosher salt (or regular salt to taste)
2 garlic cloves, finely minced
1/3 cup tahini (sesame paste)
2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice (yes, fresh is best, but I have used bottled in a pinch)
3 T water
10 dashes of Tobasco sauce
Paprika

Place 2 cups of the chickpeas along with the other ingredients into a food processor and blend until very smooth. (I think these are the best ingredient amounts and the best texture, but everyone's tastes are different, so at this point you should taste and add whatever you think it needs more of: lemon, water, Tobasco, garlic, etc. You can also blend it more coarsely, but then the chickpea skins remain partially in-tact, which I don't like.) Spoon hummus into a dish and sprinkle with remaining chickpeas and paprika.

Coarsely blended hummus:


Finely Blended Hummus: