Fall Traditions

Every Fall Miss Yunks goes apple picking with her family, and we usually head to Carlson Orchards in Harvard, MA.  Carlson Orchard has a great selection of pumpkins, gourds, and the apple trees are short enough that it’s easy for us to pick the apples.

Part of our tradition is Dad carries the heavy bag of apples and I always find a cute little apple to keep in my pocket, separate from the rest.

Here’s the winner!

It was a beautiful day for apple picking.  The sky was blue, the apples were red, and you can’t tell how windy it was from this photo at all!

Carlson Orchard sells freshly homemade apple crisp, but this year I really wanted a cider donut.  We headed to Westward Orchard.  I smelled the donuts as soon as I stepped out of the car.  The air was infused with cinnamon sugar.  I ate one immediately.  I ate a second donut a few minutes later   The donuts have a crispy outer edge and soft middle and really don’t taste like apple cider at all.  They taste like warm sugary goodness.  Each time I went up to order more donuts they were warm and freshly dipped in cinnamon sugar. I could have easily downed a half dozen on my own, but I resisted.

Westward Orchard also has a lovely store and sells various products for the home, such as dishes, baked goods, kitchen gadgets, and luckily for me, candle sticks!  I’d been searching for the perfect candlesticks for my new dining table and I found just what I wanted.

The candles and gourds make an excellent center display for my table.  I’ll have to get different colored candles for each season, but I love the cinnamon color of these candles for the Fall.

After we go apple picking, we always go out for Chinese food.  So what if I had just had two cider donuts! They were small.  The past few years we’ve gone to Bamboo in Westford, MA.  In the past, I loved it here.  I don’t know if they were having an off night or if I’ve just had better Chinese food since last Fall (ahem*Myers & Chang) but this meal wasn’t the best.  I started with miso soup.

The soup was pretty tasty.  It had a lot of miso – you can see how cloudy the soup is.  I love soup in Chinese and Japanese restaurants; the special soup spoon is just so fun to use.

Next up, scallion pancakes, my favorite!

They were good, but not great.  Typical scallion pancakes, they tasted like the fried dough that they are.  We also shared vegetable moo shi, which was good but not worthy of a photograph.  And we ordered our usual green beans and rice.  Dad ordered General Gao’s chicken and it looked bizarre – it was more orange than the typical brown color General Gao generally (ha) is.

The green beans were too spicy to enjoy.  But don’t they look lovely?

We were so full after snacking on apples and donuts and dinner that we skipped our other tradition – ice cream at Kimball Farm.   Kimball Farm is right near Bamboo so we usually go to both places, but this day our bellies told our brains NO!

And now I get to feel Fall and remember our traditions every time I look at my table.

What are your favorite Fall traditions?