apples & oranges

So, we finally made it to the apple orchard this weekend. It may have been a 4 hour drive up into the mountains, but it was oh so worth it. Just look at all of those apples!

And, to think I was worried about it being a little too late in the season to have much left to pick from. We ended up with a half bushel of apples. And, in case you don't know what a half bushel is... let's just say it's more apples than I know what to do with. We've given some to a couple of our neighbors, and even managed to pawn off some of our stash on these little guys that lived at the orchard:

Anyway, anyone with any exceptional recipes using apples, please send them my way! I'm already planing on an apple pie in the next couple of days. Perhaps an adventure in apple butter-making. We'll see.

We had so much fun at the orchards. Everyone got in on the picking...




And, Hazel found this littlest of applets...

She promptly declared, "This is my little friend, and I shall call her Lily." She has yet to put it down since. The child is weird... what can I say?

Anyway, after we hauled back our apple treasures, had them counted and bagged, and picked up some fresh-pressed apple cider (YUM!), it was off to the pumpkin patch (here's where the "oranges" part comes in). Look at this perfect selection we had to choose from:

These weird little fellows immediately struck Hazel's fancy...

Luka was drawn to this enormous guy...

Seriously. That was the biggest pumpkin I have ever seen available at a patch. We couldn't even lift the freakin' thing! Of course, Hazel had to have her picture taken with it too...

Apple and pumpkin pickin' is hungry business! After a couple of hours at the orchard, we drove back into the town of Flat Rock, NC. Little did I know, this was one of the towns I had recently read about in an issue of Souther Living. I immediately recognized this store from the article, though...

Inside The Wrinkled Egg, there was a fabulous restaurant. It was a little rustic deli with a brick oven that they fired pizzas in. It was very reminiscent of some of my favorite sandwich and pizza spot in Anchorage. Places like that are nearly impossible to find in this neck of the woods. And, the food was soooo... yummy! Hazel and Luka shared some hearty baked potato soup...

And, Bryan and I shared a delicious BBQ chicken pizza...

It was a fabulous trip... one that I hope to repeat on a yearly basis. I hope everyone else had as wonderful a weekend as we did. Stay tuned tomorrow for some Label Tulip sneaks!