The apple is New England’s fruit. This belongs to us. It’s our heritage. The original Clover truck had a big cardboard box with a little sign saying “take one.” Every fall, we would give away hundreds of apples per day.
Apples were our original gift. I wanted everybody to taste a real apple. The apples I love are crisp to the point that they even make a little “snap” sound when you take a bite. They smell complicated, like flowers and fruit. They dribble juice on you when you eat them. You can’t help but eat the whole apple as soon as you take a bite. The apples I love are magical.
Like most of our fruit and veg today, that magical apple experience has been sacrificed in the name of convenience. The apple I love is available just a couple months out of the year. But the apples most people eat are blah because they are varieties selected for industrial farming not flavor and they are old and far from their homes.It’s autumn. I love this season. And you may not have gotten out to pick apples. So we’re bringing the farm to you.
The first 150 two-or-four-person Meal Box sign-ups starting NOW will get a gift of a Golden Russet apple and an Empire apple from one of my favorite orchards in the world: Autumn Hills.
I met Lyn Harris in the first years of Clover and he would come to the food truck to do apple tastings. Notice the blurry pic – iPhone 3GS. Lyn was amazing and taught me so much about apples. He supported apple giveaways back in those early days. Sadly he passed away a few years ago. And we’ve been thankful in the time since that his wife Ann has taken on the running of the Orchard, a massive job. We’re sharing some of their beautiful apples and I hope you all get a chance to experience that magic.
We’re also going to be giving away apples at our restaurants this week (individual apples not bags of apples).
And I’m doing something else really special for the Meal Box customers this week. The most delicious thing in the world that I know how to make is an Apple Dumpling. I’m going to share my Apple Dumpling recipe via a video for Clover Meal Box customers. I haven’t seen Apple Dumplings anywhere for sale. But they are something we always had at home. My mom loves them and they punctuate my childhood memories. I won’t go into more detail here but I’m really excited to share these. They are so so yum. You can use your apple gift to make them.
