Apples

I went apple picking at Honey Pot Hill Orchards, in Stow, MA. I got some empires, cortlands, and a bag of winesaps for my sister. I made a pie with the cortlands. It was delicious. I recommend following the recipe, though and avoid putting in more apples than the recipe calls for. Otherwise, the liquid doesn't dissolve enough, and the apples don't cook all the way through.

The winesap apples are delicious! They taste like apple cider - crisp, sweet, and a little bit tangy. My sister made a pie out of them and it was unbelievable.

It's Pumpkin Season

It's pumpkin season and all the local coffee joints are serving up pumpkin this and pumpkin that. I'm into it. Here's what I've tried so far:

Dunkin Donuts Pumpkin Spice Latte: This was too sickly sweet. Much better was the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte, but with only 2 pumps of the pumpkin syrup. The syrup is sweetened and the standard 4 pumps would probably be disgusting.

Dunkin Donuts Pumpkin Donut and Pumpkin Spice Muffin. Both are incredibly delicious, moist, and pumpkiny. The donut tastes pretty much like the Pillsbury Pumpkin Quick Bread, which is really good.

Calamari

I had some really excellent calamari and some pretty terrible calamari recently. First, the bad, to get it over with. I was at the Gardner Ale House and three of us split the calamari. It has half rings, and half tentacles. Now, does anybody really want the tentacles, or whatever they're called? I don't think so. I tried some just to be a good sport. They weren't that bad, but really, all I could taste was breading, which wasn't that tasty. The rings were kind of rubbery, which is always bad, and they weren't spicy. I prefer the hot and spicy calamari, like the appetizer at...

O'Connor's. That's right, the Irish restaurant makes a mean calamari. It comes hot and spicy, they were cooked perfectly, not at all rubbery, and no tentacles, or whatever they're called.

You can also get delicious spicy calamari at the Boynton on Highland Street.