Thought for Food

Oct 30, 2009

Last night, M., Akiko, and I made history.

Let me back up. We went to our CSA’s end-of-harvest potluck dinner in a community center in the East Village (never seen so much vegan food in my life). After dinner, the CSA director announced we’d be playing some “farm games,” starting with an “apple pie relay race.” We had no idea what that was — but apple pies? Competition? Oh, we are SO all over that!

When he asked for volunteers, M., Akiko, and I stepped bravely forward. Together with a woman named Lee we faced Team Squash — a quartet cleverly dressed as “winter squash” and “summer squash” (all carried squash rackets and wore hats and mittens or Hawaiian shirts and shorts). We called ourselves Team Kumquat because kumquats are awesome and so are we.

The goal of the relay race was to make an apple pie as fast possible, with a few extra challenges…

The video is, sadly, quite dark so I’ll talk you through it: first there was a potato sack relay (which M. and I did), then a wheelbarrow race relay (which Lee and Akiko did). M. started off so fast that we left Team Squash in the dust from the get-go.

The next part was the apple pie-making — which started with M. bobbing for five apples. You have never seen anything like that man bobbing for apples (1:00). I mean he stuck his WHOLE HEAD in there and came out with a big ol’ apple in his mouth and water splashing everywhere and running down his beautiful shirt. (“When I take my tie off for something,” he said, “I damn well go for it.”)

“That’s my boyfriend!” I shouted, proud as punch.

The next step — peeling and slicing apples — was really kind of unfair because it was Chef Akiko’s task and the lady has MAD knife skills. She peeled and chopped three apples so damn fast and perfect it was unreal. Skip to 4:00 to see the knife fly.

Then I added brown sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, AND lemon zest (‘cause we’re fancy like that), dumped the apples into a pie crust, and Lee ran with the pie to the oven while Team Squash was still chopping chunks of apple with a meat cleaver.

We finished in under 6 minutes. Seriously, have you ever made an apple pie in 6 minutes? PLUS did a wheelbarrow, potato sack race, and bobbed for apples? That’s right. Didn’t think so. And so you see: history was made.

GO TEAM KUMQUAT!

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