Caramel Apples before noon...

Yesterday, My husband, myself and a friend of ours drove out to Warwick, NY to ring in the season during one of the largest street festivals I've ever been to, the 2009 Apple Festival. We woke up and drove into town early to beat the traffic, but once we hit the center of town we were astounded by the sheer number of people who had gathered:

That huge indistinguishable blob in the center of the photo? That's hundreds, possibly thousands of people.

We wandered the streets checking out all of the different artisans and making note of all the places to stop and buy things from on the way out, so we weren't lugging stuff around. I had my first apple treat by 11:00am; a huge, sticky caramel coated apple. There were so many apple foods... fritters, donuts, pies, cider, gelatto, jam, muffins... even apple stuffed pierogies!

We were even lucky enough to spot Jolly old Saint Nicholas, a sure sign that winter is on it's way.

Once we had seen all there was to see and had satisfied our craving for apple centric baked goods, we went off to the nearby Ochs Orchard and picked some apples! Now, I've never used an apple picker before so this was a first and I'm pretty sure I almost took my husband out a few times!

At the end of the day, we came back home with a few pounds of apples in various varieties (macintosh, gala, red delicious, empire and golden delicious), a big jar of fresh apple butter, a dozen fresh baked cider doughnuts, a jar of fresh honey, a gallon of cider and the curveball of the group... a jar of fire mountain salsa and garlic mustard. It was a wonderful, tasty celebration of Autumn.