Autumn Tradition

It was an absolutely perfect day for apple picking. A group of about 15 of us headed out to New Jersey early Saturday morning. It's about an hour and a half drive and as we left the city behind us the colors got more and more beautiful! I love seeing the trees change colors. Looking at a hill from a distance where pockets of gold, orange and red stand out among the green. They almost look like they are on fire!

Our first stop was an apple orchard where we were in search of apples great for baking. We came away with Macintosh, Mutsu (my favorite) and Golden Delicious. Of course we had to sample some along the way to make sure they were what we wanted :) What else did we sample? Fresh apple cider and warm apple cider donuts. Oh my.. 
Next it was off to Ort Farm for the pumpkins. We took a hay ride to the pumpkin patch. Field? Anyway, remember our new friends Domi and Bini from Germany? They came along with us and I think really enjoyed this American tradition. Bini said that she waned the FULL experience so we got pumpkins to carve as well as a pumpkin to make into puree for my pie. They are going to come over sometime in the next week to carve our pumpkins together. More on that later :) Look at these cute little baby pumpkins we found! Crazy to think that they grow into those huge orange things right? God is so creative!

Speaking of creative.. check these out. Anybody know what the heck some of these are??

After getting some apples and pumpkins, and throwing the football around we went to a diner for some grub and then to make a perfect ending to a perfect day we went to Dairy Queen! For all you Minnesotans who read this and have Dairy Queens at your fingertips, take a moment right now to imagine life without Dairy Queen. You would be imagining our life. Granted we have New York pizza, italian ice, gelato and cannolis, but if we want a Blizzard we have to drive almost two hours into New Jersey and pay about $13 dollars in tolls just to get there. This is almost the same story if we want Perkins. And Panera. But that is a whole other woeful blog. It was delicious. I highly recommend that you go to Dairy Queen soon and get the pumpkin pie blizzard. That's right- pumpkin pie blizzard.