Elana's Apple Cake

1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
sprinkle of salt
cut up apple chunks in bottom of baking pan

350 degrees

This is all my pink index card says because this recipe was given to me in the best way a recipe can be exchanged, sitting in my house, telling stories with loved ones.  My sister in law had come home to visit tiny and quaint little Chatham from fancy and exciting LA, where, despite the raging cleanse trend, some of the residents still consume solid foods.   This apple cake is something Elana makes in her LA apartment because it is inexpensive, delicious, and easy.

I recently became the proud owner of three, large, reusable shopping bags full of apples because my children and I think playing farm laborer is a fun activity and apple picking is high on our list of favorite farm chores.  After forking over a rather large sum of money to pay for our Sunday entertainment Ariel sighed, "Well, I guess the only way we can throw away thirty pounds of apples is if we buy them fifty pounds at a time". 

Another activity I've come to enjoy after sharing a home with Ariel for twenty-one years is becoming very offended when he points out any of my many, obvious flaws.  I then like to vow to prove him completely wrong as if the flaw never actually existed and certainly will never rear its ugly head in the future.  So in this case, I've been on an apple using mission because how dare he insinuate that I ever waste so much as a drop of food especially where over priced fruits picked primarily for sport are concerned?!?!

On the first day I baked a three foot tall, double crusted apple pie.  Later in the week I prepared a heart shaped apple crisp (which prompted a heated debate on the difference between a crisp and a crumble).  Every lunch box that has left this house for school has had an apple lovingly tucked inside and most meals and snacks involve apple slices, maybe with peanut butter, maybe with cheese, maybe solo, doesn't matter.

This morning I proudly looked at my dwindling supply of apples and designated eight of them to represent each member of our family in something I would bake today because my sister Alyssa told me it was important that I bake something on the equinox.  Baking today didn't really seem like a great idea to me because three days ago I took all of Basil's shorts out of his dresser due to the cool, autumnal weather we'd been having.  This, of course, brought on an immediate heat wave and I've done nothing but sweat ever since.  Sweating doesn't really inspire me to bake but Alyssa said it was important so I decided to find that apple cake recipe Elana recited to me the last time she was in town.  Somehow the months had passed without me ever making the cake.  Today seemed like as good a day as any.  My only other plans for the day involved rigging a clothes line on my fence but as soon as I had that thought the sky turned dark with rain storm clouds.  Apple cake quickly became priority number one.

I took my eight apples to the table, having decided to peel them, and began dicing them into a buttered baking dish.  Basil grabbed a ninth apple and stabbed it with a peeler a few times before pretending it was a mallet made especially for smashing into the dining room table.  His apple eventually exploded all over the place and he picked up one, really small speck of apple off of the cutting board and threw it in the baking dish (or "glass basket ball hoop" as he called it). I wondered what his speck of apple would do to the symbolic integrity of my representational apple family and briefly considered an eight week miscarriage I once had.  Then I decided to sprinkle cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger over my diced up apple family (and speck) because who's ever even heard of an apple recipe that didn't have cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger in it?  I mixed up all of the other ingredients that weren't apples because that seemed like a reasonable thing to do.  I spread the batter this created over the apples with a vague memory of thinking this recipe sounded like cobbler when Elana told me about it, (which at the time prompted a heated debate about the difference between a cobbler, a cake, a crisp, and a crumble).

My metaphoric family didn't look quite tucked in enough with the one cup and one cup mixture so I mixed up a second batter and smeared it all over the dish as well.  I'm much braver about cooking this year than I used to be.  Since my mother gave my children a small flock of chickens I can use all of my mistakes as chicken feed and I no longer share my husband's fear of food waste, even though he has tried at least once to convince me that "chicken feed" is not the same as "not wasting".

Content that my "family" looked comfortable, I slipped my baking dish into the oven and crossed my fingers.  Every once in a while I checked on the dish figuring that it required the same "or until golden brown" time everything else I've ever baked has.  I don't know how many minutes it took to reach that desired color but I can say it was long enough to nurse Basil to sleep, watch a bit of Victoria Season Three on Amazon Prime, squirt some of that nasty cheese like stuff in a can on some crackers for Dorothy and Israel, call Ariel and tell him  one of those, "Israel was so funny but in such a bad way that it was all I could do not to laugh in front of him" stories that he is so fond of, and get a very sad call from a very sad Alyssa sharing with me news of the man she took care of poetically passing away at noon on the equinox.

Here I am;  on the equinox, with my children, waiting for a rain storm and for my husband to come home so we can cut into the most attractive (and only) Equinox Cake I've ever baked. I'm feeling overwhelmed with gratitude for my apple family and my actual family and these moments we still have to share together.  OH!!! And for whipped cream, which I'm just remembering right at this moment that I made yesterday afternoon and still have lots left over to put on the cake because this is not LA and we can be as plump as we please in Chatham.  I am grateful to be overweight in a small town with a big family and I think that is what Mabon might be all about.