How many apples did you pick?

Homemade applesauce, yum! My grandmother had the best recipe for homemade applesauce that I have ever tasted.....plenty of cinnamon and sugar for that sweet tooth my grandfather and I have always had. I can remember many years watching and often helping my grandparents wash, cut up, and grind apples by hand in the old food mill (that crazy looking metal pot with the screen-like bottom and the handle you manually spun around until it felt like your arm would fall off). By the time I got married it had long been the only applesauce I would eat (unless there was an absolute emergency and I had to settle for store bought). I insisted my wife learn how to make it, and thankfully God kept my grandmother alive long enough for my wife to copy down many of her recipes (the applesauce being just one of many) and learn the art of "creating" each one with the special touch and taste that only grandma had mastered. (To this day my wife is the only one in my family who can cook anything like my grandmother. God really blessed me with this woman.)

Well, what started out as a treasured recipe to make my grandmother's applesauce for me turned into God's careful plan to prepare my wife and I for a needed food stock for our middle daughter. You see our second oldest, Shannon, was born with Cystic Fibrosis and has to take enzymes with every meal she eats, whether a small snack or full feast. The only thing these enzymes can be placed in (for a child as young as she to agreeably swallow) is some type of fruit because any other food will cause the enzymes to begin breaking down the food before they are ingested and reach the stomach. Yes, I said fruit. And of all the things the doctors could have suggested we use for a "carrier" of her enzymes, the first food item they mentioned almost every time was applesauce. See how God planned that all out? Tell me anyone can suggest that was a coincidence.

To make a long story short, we began to make large quantities of applesauce annually. It's a tradition you might say, and one we have passed on to several of our friends. Much of it gets used each year by us (mostly Shannon) but we also have extra that we pass out to friends and family. (There almost isn't a dinner we go to, be it at church, family holidays, parties at friends' houses, etc that my wife's applesauce isn't asked for.) This year, however, my wife decided we should begin adding a new step to our "family tradition". She decided we should pick the apples ourselves instead of purchasing them from a local produce seller who has them trucked in each year. She spent some time looking for the right orchard (it had to be one that grew the right apples - northern spies - or the applesauce just wouldn't be correct), but eventually she found one we could drive to. I then took off a vacation day from work this past Tuesday, packed my three giggling children and expectant wife (due in January with our fourth) into the mini-van, and headed out on our short journey.

Arriving at our destination, the weather looked as though it was going to cooperate. It wasn't too cool and the rain, which had been drizzling on and off for several days, lifted to just a faint mist. We exited the van, and after being picked up in a John Deere gator by the owner and whisked out to the section of spies in his orchard (a ride which all my girls enjoyed), we set about picking three bushels in the bags provided. It was an adventure I'll not soon forget. More giggling ensued, little hands reaching at every round object in site (ripe or not) on the branches they could get to, and shouts of "I've got another one!" echoed so that I thought everyone living close by would soon be coming to see what all the commotion was. After instructing our oldest two, Breanna and Shannon, to only pick the larger fruit and let the others stay to grow longer, it did not take long to fill our quota, load the bags back into the gator, and head back to the parking lot. I lifted the girls into the back, told my wife to sit in the front seat with the owner, and I enjoyed a liesurely stroll back on foot.

As I walked back I thought of my grandmother and what she would be saying that day. I'm sure she would have enjoyed seeing all the fun my family was having picking those apples to make her applesauce. I can imagine her laughing and asking each one "How many apples did you pick?" It's funny how the simple things in life become the most treasured. Thanks for the recipe, grandma. And thank you God for the apples of my eye - my wife and kids.