Preamble
I was out driving this weekend when I caught my first glimpse of it — one tree, just a stretch of branch really, gone that pumpkin-orange before anything around it had even thought about turning. Not the whole tree. Just a tease.
And the mornings — the mornings have been so deliciously cool. Sweater weather, my favorite time of year, before the heat of the day catches up. We’re squarely in that in-between now, the dress-in-layers phase, where fall clothes feel too warm by afternoon and summer clothes leave you chilly before nine a.m. Last night I slept with the bedroom window open for the first time all season. The night air coming in was so cool and clean I almost forgot what month it was.
I love how nature handles this handoff. It doesn’t just flip a switch from summer to fall — it nudges. A cooler morning here, one orange branch there, a window worth cracking open. All of it building toward the real show, which up here in the Northeast can be something to behold. There’s actually a name for people who plan entire trips around it — “leaf peepers” — and honestly, I get it. There’s a whole tourist season built around driving backroads just to watch trees change color. We’re not there yet. But you can feel it coming, and that anticipation might be my favorite part of all.
Farm Stand Report
The tomatoes are giving me a lesson in patience. I’ve got just a handful of red ones so far, and a whole lot of green ones still holding out — I’m out there checking daily for any sign of blushing.
I’ve also officially decided I won’t be harvesting my own tomato seeds for next season. I gave the whole soak-the-seeds-and-pulp method a try, the one where they’re supposed to separate cleanly in a little water. And to be fair, some of them did exactly that. But mostly what I ended up with was a moldy mess. Nothing ventured, nothing gained — lesson tried, and lesson learned. I’ll be buying my plants from the local garden center from here on out.
Weekend Menu
Friday
Pink Lady & Goat Cheese Crostini with Pickled Mustard Seeds
Granny Smith & Fennel Pork Sausage Rolls
Saturday — Morning
Honeycrisp & Gruyère Dutch Baby
Saturday — Dinner
Jonagold Braised Red Cabbage with Roast Pork Loin
Mutsu (Crispin) & Roasted Brussels Sprout Skillet
Sunday
Northern Spy & Sharp Cheddar Gougères
Winesap Chutney with Mustard & Ginger, served alongside
Featured Recipe: Roxbury Russet Apple Cake with Brown Butter Glaze
Cake
3 Roxbury Russet apples, peeled, cored, and diced small
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
¾ cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
½ cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ cup sour cream
Brown Butter Glaze
½ cup unsalted butter
1 ½ cups powdered sugar, sifted
1–2 tbsp milk or cream
Pinch of salt
½ tsp vanilla extract
Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan (or line with parchment).
Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a medium bowl. Set aside.
Cream the softened butter with brown sugar and granulated sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Mix in vanilla.
Alternate adding the flour mixture and sour cream to the butter mixture, starting and ending with flour, mixing just until combined.
Fold in the diced Roxbury Russets by hand.
Pour batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top. Bake 45–50 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean and the top is deep golden.
Cool in the pan 15 minutes, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely before glazing.
For the glaze: melt the butter in a light-colored saucepan over medium heat, swirling frequently, until it turns amber and smells nutty, about 5–6 minutes. Watch closely — it goes from browned to burnt fast.
Immediately remove from heat and whisk in powdered sugar, milk, salt, and vanilla until smooth and pourable. Work quickly, as the glaze firms up as it cools.
Pour the warm glaze over the cooled cake, letting it drip down the sides. Let set 10 minutes before slicing.
Notes
Roxbury Russets hold their shape well when baked, so don’t expect the apple pieces to fully break down into the crumb — that’s the point, not a flaw.
Cake keeps well covered at room temperature for 2–3 days, or refrigerated up to 5.
Shoppable List
Pink Lady apples
Goat cheese (chèvre)
Sourdough bread
Mustard seeds (for pickling)
Fresh thyme
Granny Smith apples
Pork sausage meat
Fennel seeds
Puff pastry
Honeycrisp apples
Gruyère cheese
Eggs
Milk
Jonagold apples
Red cabbage
Apple cider vinegar
Caraway seeds
Pork loin roast
Mutsu (Crispin) apples
Brussels sprouts
Bacon
Pecans
Apple cider (for reduction)
Northern Spy apples
Sharp white cheddar
Choux pastry ingredients (butter, flour, eggs)
Winesap apples
Yellow mustard seeds
Dark raisins
Fresh ginger
Brown sugar
Roxbury Russet apples
All-purpose flour
Cinnamon, nutmeg
Sour cream
Powdered sugar
Vanilla extract
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Cookbook Tie-In
If this issue had you reaching for the apron more than once, you might like knowing this is exactly what Jersey Nonna Publications is for. I’ve got seasonal cookbooks built the same way every Gathering is — real recipes, real stories, nothing fussy — and there are more coming soon. Keep an eye out; I’ll let you know the moment a new one lands.
Explore what’s available now →
Nonna’s Notebook
Every fall, we go apple picking as a family, and every fall I forget just how much of a workout it actually is.
There’s an orchard we’ve gone back to for years now, and the varieties are planted in sections up a hillside — which means if you’re after a particular apple, you’d better do your homework first, because ripening times vary and the apple you want might not even be ready yet. Learned that one the hard way more than once.
The real lesson, though, was about where you park. I made the mistake of leaving the car at the bottom of the orchard one year — and let me tell you, a steep climb up a hillside will tell you exactly how out of shape you are. There’s a lot of walking involved, more than people expect, and if you’ve got little ones along, plan on carrying them for at least part of it. Their legs give out long before their enthusiasm does.
We stick to the low-hanging fruit, literally — and there’s always plenty of it. You can spot the seasoned pickers right away, though, the ones with those long picker baskets on poles that twist the apples right off the high branches. That’s not us. Never has been. Picking low as we go has always suited us just fine.
And these orchards aren’t just orchards anymore, not really. There’s the all-things-apple general store, pony rides, a petting zoo — it’s become this whole mini amusement park experience. I used to think that was a little much. Now I think that’s exactly the point. It’s not really about the apples. It’s about building the kind of day that turns into a family tradition, the kind of afternoon the grandkids will remember years from now. Judging by how many families we see picnicking right there among the trees, I’m not the only one who feels that way. Just — get there early. The crowds and the traffic only build as the day goes on.
Around the House
I own four different ways to get the skin off an apple, and depending on my mood — or how many apples I’m dealing with — I reach for a different one every time.
The regular Y-peeler is my go-to for anything small-batch — a couple apples for a snack, or prepping for a recipe where I want control over how thick or thin I’m taking the skin off. It’s fast, it’s precise, and there’s something satisfying about a long unbroken ribbon of peel. The catch is it’s all manual effort — fine for two or three apples, tedious the moment you’re staring down a full bushel.
The section cutter (the kind that presses down and gives you eight even wedges, core removed in one motion) is the one I hand to grandkids, or reach for myself when I just want a quick snack with zero fuss. It’s the fastest tool in the drawer for turning a whole apple into ready-to-eat pieces. The trade-off is you lose control — every wedge is the same size whether the recipe wants thin slices or thick chunks, and it only works cleanly on apples that are a fairly standard round shape.
Slicing by hand, side to side off the core (what I think of as the “restaurant cut”) is what I use when I want fanned slices for something like the Dutch Baby in this issue, where presentation matters. It takes more time and a decent knife, but you get complete control over thickness and you can keep pieces uniform for even cooking or a nice visual layout.
The crank peeler — the countertop-clamp kind that peels, cores, and spirals an apple in one motion — is the one that comes out only when I’m making something in real volume. Pie season, apple butter, anything where I’m processing a dozen or more apples at once. It’s genuinely fun to use, honestly, watching that long spiral peel come off. But it’s one more gadget to store, it doesn’t work well on odd-shaped or very small apples, and for just one or two apples it’s more setup than it’s worth.
None of them is the “right” one — it really comes down to how many apples you’re working through and what you’re making. But if I had to keep just one, it’d be the Y-peeler. It’s the only one that works well no matter the job in front of me.
Rotating Feature: Freezing Apples — What I Learned the Hard Way
I always figured you could just toss apples in the freezer the way you would berries and call it a day. Turns out, apples have opinions about that.
Here’s the thing — apples are mostly water, and when that water freezes, it expands into ice crystals that punch right through the cell walls holding the fruit together. So when they thaw, all that structure is gone. You end up with something soft, a little spongy, sometimes downright mushy. Not what you want if you’re planning to eat them out of hand. But if you’re cooking, baking, or blending them anyway — where you’re breaking them down regardless — that softness stops being a problem and just becomes a head start.
So this is not an “eat them frozen off the counter” situation. This is strictly a “future pie, future sauce, future something-warm-from-the-oven” situation. Think pies, crisps, cobblers, muffins, quick breads. Applesauce, apple butter, that braised cabbage-and-apple side from this issue’s menu. Smoothies, purees — anywhere you were going to cook or blitz them down anyway.
If you want to give it a try yourself, here’s how I do it:
Prep them. Peel if you want to (I usually do), core, and cut into pieces that are roughly the same size, so they freeze evenly.
Keep them from browning. A quick dunk in water with a tablespoon of lemon juice per gallon does the trick. Drain and pat dry before moving on.
Flash freeze first. Spread the pieces out in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet — don’t let them touch — and freeze for a few hours until solid. Skip this step and you’ll end up chipping apple chunks out of one giant frozen block later, which nobody has patience for.
Then bag them up. Once they’re frozen solid, transfer to airtight freezer bags, press out as much air as you can, and they’ll keep for the better part of a year.
One more thing worth knowing — you don’t need to thaw them before you use them. Straight from freezer to pot or batter is fine. Just know they’ll release a bit more liquid as they cook than fresh apples would, so a pinch of extra flour or cornstarch in whatever you’re making will keep things from getting watery.
Worth Knowing
If you’ve never made applesauce from scratch, this is your sign — it’s absurdly easy, and it’s one of those things where homemade genuinely is better, not just different. Peel, core, and chop your apples, toss them in a pot with a splash of water or cider, and let them simmer down until soft. Mash to whatever texture you like — chunky or smooth — and that’s it. No added sugar required if you pick the right apple.
And that’s the part people don’t realize: the variety you use is the flavor. You’re not seasoning applesauce so much as choosing which apple gets to speak for itself.
Honeycrisp or Gala — sauce comes out sweet and mellow, almost no tartness. Good for kids, good if you don’t want to add sugar at all.
Granny Smith — sauce comes out bright and properly tart, a little sharp even. This is the one I use when applesauce is going alongside something rich, like pork.
Jonagold or McIntosh — right down the middle, sweet-tart balance, which honestly makes the most “classic applesauce” flavor of the bunch.
Mix two or three varieties together — this is my actual favorite move. A blend gives you more depth than any single apple can, the way a good sauce or stock benefits from more than one ingredient doing the work.
Once you make it one time, you’ll wonder why you were ever buying it in a jar.
Weekend Kitchen Planner
Thursday
Buy apples: Pink Lady, Granny Smith, Honeycrisp, Jonagold, Mutsu, Northern Spy, Winesap, Roxbury Russet
Pick up goat cheese, Gruyère, sharp white cheddar, puff pastry, pork sausage meat, pork loin
Friday
Make pickled mustard seeds ahead if you can — they only get better with a day or two of sitting
Assemble and bake the sausage rolls; slice and plate the crostini right before serving
Saturday
Morning: mix the Dutch Baby batter fresh, don’t get ahead of this one
Afternoon: start the braised cabbage low and slow alongside the roasting pork loin; trim and halve the Brussels sprouts ahead, but roast them last-minute
Bake the Roxbury Russet cake in the afternoon so it has full time to cool before glazing
Sunday
Make the gougères fresh — choux pastry doesn’t hold well overnight
The Winesap chutney is best made a day or two ahead so the flavors settle; if you’re making it same-day, let it cool completely before serving
Anytime this week
If you’re trying the frozen apple method from this issue, this is a good week to prep and flash-freeze a batch for pies and sauces down the road
Worth Keeping
“We don’t build traditions because they’re easy. We build them because someday, ‘remember when’ will be worth more than the apples ever were.”
Before You Go
That’s the Gathering for this week — go pick some apples, make a mess of applesauce, and don’t forget the layers in the morning.
See you next Friday. Bring your appetite.
— The Jersey Nonna