One thing leads to another.
A friend’s daughter reads Orangette, where she recently saw a recipe for blueberry-oat scones. She made the scones for my friend. My friend sent me the recipe.
How could I resist?
Thinking about the blueberry scones made me think about things I could slather on them before shoving them into my mouth.
The abundance of the beautiful peaches at the farm stand coinciding with the recent publication of a recipe on Smitten Kitchen made my decision obvious: peach butter.
Meanwhile, I was ruminating on ways to use four perfect, orange, duck egg yolks that were left over after making H an egg-white omelet.
Still thinking about spreadable things that go with scones, I came across a recipe for lemon curd, which I’d never made before.
Isn’t that a puddle of sunshine for a rainy day?
I was worried that I’d have extra lemons and have to figure out a way to use those, but that didn’t happen.
What we did have, though, was an excess of rain. And rain. And rain.
Enough to finally topple our antique Golden Russet apple tree, laden this year with one of the fullest crops of apples we’ve seen it bear in our 17 years here.
In the scheme of things, compared to the farms, barns, houses, roads, and bridges lost and damaged in Vermont in the past week, a tree is not a big thing. Still, we will miss our old friend and the apples it produced, perfect for cider making and unmatchable for pies.
We went out in the drizzle and gathered a bag of apples, nearly ripe and ready.
We’ll make a pie.
Grongar 
The rain did the tree in? Rain, or was it windy and stormy too? So you’ve neveer made lemon curd before. Isn’t it amazing? I haven’t had too much access to duck eggs, but it’s true what they say about it being amazing for baking.
Well, to tell the truth, it was rain plus old age. Old tree, had lost a major limb in previous years, so all the apple weight was on one big limb, and it was full of apples, and all that wet just pulled it down and snapped it off the trunk. No real wind here, fortunately.
And it’s true I’ve never made lemon curd before. I have no idea why (thought it was difficult?). So easy, and wonderful! We have a friend who gives us duck eggs whenever we see her (in season). I love baking with them, especially when making Challah. The yolks are amazing, huge, rich.
When life gives you apples…
Keep them! Because, hey, free apples 🙂
Oh, so sad to lose a tree…they are like friends really…lovely friends who put on a show for us season after season. The scones look wonderful, I like anything with blueberries in it (well anything that doesn’t contain chocolate of course), and peach butter looks like the amazingly perfect choice for adding a little bling. (Bling is not clearing Spellcheck, btw.) Lemon curd…oh, yeah…a couple years ago I went on a lemon curd tear and made like 8 different kinds to see which one we liked best. Someone had to do it.
oooh. i only wish i had made peach butter to go with the scones. and the lemon curd looks lovely, too. now i want it to rain this weekend so i can have an excuse to make delicious things to put in jars 🙂
Came away from this piece sad…but full (yummm!) 😉
Thank you, William. I know exactly what you mean.