Hungry Travels

If there’s a bigger apple picking nerd than me, I’ve yet to meet him. Or her. I love apple picking to a degree that’s almost embarrassing.

What’s great about it?  Well, lots of things: gorgeous scenery, the sweet smell and serene open space of the orchard, the elusive search for the perfect apple, pumpkin patches, cider, and of course, donuts hot out of the fryer.

Apparently, others agree.

I’m a Wilkens Farm guy.  Hadn’t been to Outhouse Orchards in several years.  Holy crap was it packed.  People everywhere double fisting funnel cake and pizza.  Put it this way: When an orchard — an orchard — requires traffic cops?  It’s crowded.

Thankfully, most of the crowd was on the farmstand side where all the food and activities were.  The orchards themselves across the street were fine — much more manageable.

My friend Danielle and I carefully scrutinized the orchard rules. As it turned out, we would violate rules #3 and #4, and fully understand why they included rule #7.

Because it’s late in the season, the remaining apples were high up in the trees, requiring a picker.  It was heavier than I remembered, but we got pretty good at snagging apples with it.

Let me tell you, we worked for our apples.  They were up there. Slowly, the bag began to fill.  This apple was particularly nice.

Rule #4: No Climbing Trees
Good in theory, but the apples were so high up that Danielle and I had no choice but to get up in those branches to reach them. Plus, we both like climbing and it was really fun.  Shhh, you didn’t hear that from me.

Rule #3: No Throwing Apples
Umm… yeah, we violated that too.

Rule #7: Pick at Your Own Risk
The strategy with the picker is to work the apple off the branch so that it falls into the bag at the end of the picker.  Problem is, half the time the apples miss the bag and fall to the ground, so it’s like an apple air raid.

Incoming!

I took one apple square in the face. That hurt.  Danielle and I joked that we should have worn our bike helmets.

By the time we were done, our bag was ready to spill over.

And we’d worked up an appetite.  Time to head across the street to the food court and the sea of humanity…

Where there was a lot of food, for human and non-human consumption.  Like these gourmet dog treats.

The calzones looked good.

So did the enormous turkey drumsticks, although they reminded us of one of those creepy Renaissance fairs where the guys in tights take their role-playing just a little TOO seriously.

I don’t have a picture, but there was one stand handing out free samples of pumpkin cheesecake.  Delicious.  And not cheap.  The cheesecakes were $20 a pop.  Later, while waiting in the donut line, a girl — who let’s just say looked like she was used to getting her way — came up to her boyfriend with one of the samples.

“Pumpkin cheesecake.  It’s unreal,” she said to him.  ”We need one, right?”

We wandered through all the food stands weighing the options, including a BBQ stand serving beef brisket sandwiches.

“I think I want the brisket,” Danielle said.

I agreed.  ”Me too.”

So it was back over to the BBQ stand, where a man was wiping “brisket” off the dry erase board.  A moment’s indecision and this was the result: sold out.

Terribly disappointing.  Once your mind is set on something, that’s all you want. We shuffled away with sad looks on our faces, and continued the search, ending up somewhere near the giant turkey legs.

But every once in a while, a person performs a gesture that makes you think, “Gee, that was extremely thoughtful.”  We turned around, and it was the woman from the BBQ stand, who had somehow tracked us down through the thick crowd to tell us, “I have enough for one more brisket sandwich.”

Wasn’t that nice of her?

“She must have seen how disappointed we were,” Danielle noted.

The nice lady prepared our sandwich and only charged us a few bucks for it.  A little hot sauce and North Carolina vinegar sauce on top, and we dug in.  It was excellent — all the bits she had scrounged up were tender and flavorful.

Thank you again to the BBQ lady!

Finally, no visit to an apple orchard is complete without a pilgrimage for cider donuts.  Just like at Wilkens Farm, the line snakes out the door, and you end up waiting a good 30 minutes or more.  I compared it on Twitter to a line at the DMV, only this line smells much, much better.

It’s an exciting moment when you finally reach the counter. You’ve been waiting forever, and now, at last, you’ve made it.

A hot batch of donuts was coming out of the fryer and being sprinkled with cinnamon just as we reached the window.

We ordered a half dozen cinnamon, and took the steaming hot bag outside to sit down.

Maybe it’s because they were so fresh and warm, but I dare say these were some of the best donuts I’ve eaten since my family’s trips to Schultz’s in Armonk.

I sipped hot cider, and we munched on our donuts.  Later, Danielle and I split up our freshly picked apples and I began planning out several recipes.

Apple picking is the best.

Outhouse Orchards
130 Hardscrabble Rd.
North Salem, NY
914-277-3188