Fruit Explorer

To All,

After the e-mail on Opal apples (10 Dec 2015), Margy and Doug suggested a trip to Bolton Orchards in Bolton, MA, which is a little over 30 miles from where I live. Margy and Doug praised this as the place to get winter apples. Not only do they store them at the appropriate temperature and relative humidity, as is common, but they store the apples in a chamber with an atmosphere of pure nitrogen. Avoiding exposure to oxygen greatly extends their life. Who would have guessed that bathing apples in nitrogen would prove so beneficial?

With Mike at the wheel, on 30 Jan 2016 Mike, Mei-Mei, and I undertook a road trip to Bolton Orchards. It is set in a semi-rural area; the first picture below shows the entrance, and the second is a close-up of the sign. It's a medium-sized market, though unorthodox in its choice of stock since it focuses heavily on apples.

Apples

When you enter, you have three groups of apples to choose from. First, at the front are apples already loaded into containers; you can buy one quart, two quarts, a peck, or half a bushel. These apples are for the dilettantes who are content to let others select their apples. The pictures show:

A panoramic picture of these pre-packaged apples.
A close-up of the Cortland apples, which are in front.
A close-up of the price list for the Macintosh apples, which are the ones in the back of the first picture.

Second, further back for 99 cents per pound are the so-called bulk apples, which can be used for anything. This is where the action is since in this area connoisseurs gather to select their own apples. Seven types of loose apple were on sale These are displayed in big, traditional bins, and a discerning shopper can paw through the piles of apples to find the most appealing. Here are pictures.

The sign announcing the bulk apples.
A picture from one side showing from left to right the bins of Empire, Cortland, Mutsu, and Macintosh.
A picture from the other side showing from left to right the bins of Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, and Macoun.

Third, off to the right are the utility apples that are not good enough to eat by hand but that are perfect for baking, making apple sauce, or other endeavors where the shininess of the apple plays no role. Here are pictures.

The sign giving the prices. This works out to about 75 cents per pound.
The utility apples in their bags.
More utility apples in their bags.

Scattered around were a number of subsidiary apples products such as apple pies, and there were also the standard items that you would find at a roadside stand such as maple sugar candy and fudge.

I was drawn to the old-timey keg of cider (or at least the facade of a keg) with a tap. You could serve yourself a small paper cup of cider for five cents. I had several. (Modern restaurants have fallen into the deplorable practice of serving portions that are way too big. I approve of being able to buy a nickel's worth of something. Perhaps the Bolton Orchards cider keg will lead the way to more reasonable portion sizes.)

The place also served as a local convenience store. In addition to all these high-end items, there were things like Campbell's soup; they stocked the three traditional flavors of mushroom, tomato, and chicken noodle.

(Continued in Part 2)

(Continued from Part 1)

The Cider Donut Experience

To me the heart of the operation was in the back where two employees were making cider donuts. Here is the scene that gradually unfolds.

As you walk toward the back, you see an employee standing behind a bunch of plastic containers of cider donuts. You don't expect anything unusual.

You walk around this stack of donuts, and, what to your wondering eyes should appear, but a trough of hot oil with donuts in it cooking. What a surprise. The picture below of the deep-frying donuts will be referred to below as the "key picture."

You soon catch on that the employees are making these donuts while you watch. You see the flour, sugar, cider, and other ingredients on the counter. One of the employees is mixing the batter.

She dumps the batter into a contraption shaped like a funnel. The center of the picture below shows the batter-filled funnel suspended over one end of the frying area, which is a trough of hot oil about three feet long.

The first picture below shows the funnel in the process of extruding a ring of batter into the hot oil. The funnel moves back and forth and is precision controlled so that maybe every 15 seconds (I forgot to measure the interval) it would drop a donut-shaped dollop of batter into one end of the frying trough, where the donut would start cooking in the hot oil. The second picture below shows that the funnel has been positioned so that it will drop the next ring of batter beside the ring that it just dropped, so that the rings cook in pairs.

The hot oil is about half an inch deep; it is the right depth to cook the lower half of the donut.
The frying trough moves like a conveyor belt; it moves the cooking donuts forward and makes room for the funnel to drop two more donuts into the trough. The conveyor belt moves discontinuously; every 20-30 seconds it moves forward by about four inches.
As the frying donut gradually moves down the first half of the trough, its lower side cooks. In the key picture you can see six donuts in the first half of the trough; these are a light color since the exposed upper side has not yet been cooked.
When the donut reaches the end of the first half of the trough, its bottom side is fully cooked. The trough is engineered so that the donut is flipped over as it transitions to the second half of the trough. The picture below shows two donuts in mid-flip; you see the light side just before these sides plop down into the trough and start cooking..

What was previously the donut's uncooked top side is now on the bottom and being cooked. In the key picture, in the second half of the trough the upper side of the donuts, which is all that is visible, is now brown; this is because this is the side that was cooked in the first half of the trough before the donut was flipped. The conveyor belt gradually moves the donut to the end of the trough while the underside cooks.
By the time the donut reaches the end of the trough, it is fully cooked and is thrust onto a small, protruding rack where it drains. It's hard to see, but in the key picture the two donuts in front are sitting on this little rack. (There are six donuts actively cooking in the second half of the trough; you can only see four of them because two are blocked by the donuts on the draining rack.)
When the draining is completed, the conveyor belt moves forward and the two draining donuts are dumped into a collecting tray. The picture below shows two donuts as they tumble off of the machine.

A second employee takes the donuts from the collecting tray and rolls each freshly minted donut in a mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon (on the right in the picture below) and places it onto another tray (on the left in the picture).

After a delay, which sometimes is zero seconds, six donuts are placed into a plastic container.
The plastic container is placed with other containers for sale for $4.59 on the counter in front of the trough, and this is the first picture of this section.

I was transfixed by the donut-making process. I stood watching it and couldn't take my eyes away. From when the funnel with a fresh batch of batter was fixed in place until the donuts were picked out of the collecting tray, there was no role played by humans. Mike noted that in this process the product known as "donut holes" was not created. Mike immediately started making plans to acquire a donut-making machine for himself. He figured this would make him the leading figure in the neighborhood.

Lunch

We had lunch at the deli inside the market. I had a large haddock chowder, which pleased me. After finishing my chowder, for dessert I raced to the donut-making area and bought a container of just-in-time donuts. Thanks to my earlier study of the process, I was able to obtain hot donuts just out of the trough. I had three. Needless to say, the travel tip for this e-mail is to go to Bolton Orchards and eat hot cider donuts. Mei-Mei was denied this pleasure since these donuts are not gluten-free.

As I ate my donuts, Mei-Mei counseled me to slow down since they are so heavy. She said that it takes 36 hours to digest a cider donut. (I don't know what that means, but I'm not going to worry about it since, like Thomas Jefferson, I have a digestive system of iron. That night I ate three more. This was an application of Pat Marfisi's philosophy: Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.)

The container of cider donuts did not have a nutritional label.

Purchases

We all made purchases to take home. I bought a second container of cider donuts. Mike had bought a single cider donut for 85 cents when he first arrived to try it out, and he bought a container of six more donuts and a bag of apples. Mei-Mei bought two bags of apples, a loaf of gluten-free bread, and a bottle of high-end olive oil (its being a refillable bottle portends future trips to Bolton Orchards). Here are some pictures. (Except for these pictures, all of the pictures in the body of this e-mail were taken by Mei-Mei.)

A container of cider donuts (closed).
A container of cider donuts (open).
Close-up of the label.
The inevitable fate of any container of cider donuts that is foolish enough to venture into my apartment.

Mike and Mei-Mei bought apples, but I didn't since we are in the peak of the season for large navel oranges. What it comes down to is that I like oranges and cats while Mike likes apples and dogs. Mei-Mei is promiscuous and likes oranges, apples, cats, and dogs.

Mei-Mei claimed that cider donuts could be frozen and would still be good. To test this claim, Mike put three of his donuts in his freezer. He has not yet tried them.

Taste Test

We eventually got back to Mei-Mei's after stopping twice so she could get out her cameras and capture the barren winter scenes. My favorite is below. It shows Route 117 going over the Sudbury River; the understructure of the bridge is made entirely of wood and looks like something out of the 19th century.

Mei-Mei sampled two types of apples--a Macoun and a newly discovered Mutsu, which was green. Mei-Mei said, "The Macoun had a nice flavor, somewhat tart, and was crisp though not quite as crunchy as a freshly picked apple. The Mutsu, which was sweet, was a disappointment because it was somewhat mushy in texture. I plan to buy Macoun and Cortland apples on my next trip to Bolton Orchards."

Mei-Ling said, "I did really like the Macoun, it is crisp, and starts out tart and then mellows on the tongue as you eat it."

Mike said, "A Bolton Macintosh apple tasted as good as a fresh Macintosh from October."

Since my sense of taste is not well developed, I am happy to contract out the taste testing.

Not a Gift Idea

You might think that giving someone cider donuts from Bolton Orchards would be this e-mail's gift idea. I, however, consider this an impractical gift idea since, after buying the donuts, you will eat them before you have a chance to give them away. Even if you buy more than you can eat, you will remember that they can be frozen, so you will re-direct them to your freezer. Some things are not meant to be given away.

Rick

P.S. This trip, which occurred on a Saturday, has a sequel. I did not go outside on Sunday. When I was about to go outside on Monday afternoon, I discovered that my scarf was missing. This is the green scarf I bought in Oct 1970 a month after I moved to Boston; I got it at my boutique, Central Surplus. I figured that I had lost my scarf, which was in its 46th season of use, sometime during the trip to Bolton Orchards, maybe at the lunch table. Losing the only scarf I have ever owned was a blow. I consoled myself with the philosophy, Sic transit gloria mundi, which, roughly speaking, is Latin for, "Worldy things are fleeting." Shaking off this loss, I walked out the front door and, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but my scarf in the street pushed up against the curb. I must have dropped it when I got out of Mike's car. It was filthy, covered with dirt and leaf fragments, and gave evidence of having been run over. I shook it out and have resumed wearing it. I didn't even have to soak it in Woolite. The first picture below shows the scarf just after I picked it out of the gutter; the second shows the refurbished scarf. During the two days it was lying in the street, my scarf must have been thinking, "I was expecting a more generous retirement plan."

P.P.S. The time has come to acknowledge two recurring presences in these e-mails. First, I take most of my pictures on my kitchen table, and many of these pictures show a New Yorker at the top of the picture since I leave the issue that I am currently reading open on my table and read it as I eat. The New Yorker has made various contributions to these e-mails, with the most significant being that an article inspired the e-mail on chocolate (16 May 2015), which was my first venture away from fruit strictly interpreted and into the broader topic of plant products. Second, Herodotus has appeared in the e-mails of 5 Nov and 25 Dec 2015, and he will appear again in an upcoming e-mail on garlic. These two presences come together in the background of the second scarf picture above, in which you can see the edge of a New Yorker opened to Daniel Mendelsohn, "Arms and the Man: What was Herodotus trying to tell us?," 28 April 2009, pp. 72-78; this article is a review of The Landmark Herodotus, which I praised in the e-mail of 5 Nov 2015. As the author states [p. 72], "A major theme of the Histories [Herodotus's title of this work] is the way in which time can effect surprising changes in the fortunes and reputations of empires, cities, and men." The author goes on to note that Herodotus's reputation is subject to a similar cycle; his reputation was at a low point thirty years ago but is now at a peak. I again urge you to read Herodotus. It is the rare opportunity to be hugely entertained while knocking off a classic.