Apple Holler

If you live in the Chicago area, Apple Holler is your place for apple picking this fall. It's a charming orchard just over the Wisconsin border that we like to frequent as the air starts getting chillier, and as we're looking for a place to usher in that cozy combination of jeans and layers. Apple Holler. An hour and 15 min. drive with the city skyline in your rear view mirror, and you're there.

Truth be told, while picking apples off the tree and tasting the sweet and tart of each variety is all kinds of wholesome and wonderful, it's the fresh apple cider donuts that are really my main event.

Along with us, in pursuit of said apple cider donuts, came Kyle and Josh, two of our many favorite (are we allowed to say that?) students. Spending the day with them was fantastic, and it's then that you realize that sometimes your relationships with students can become, more than anything, a friendship. With all that I could say about them, I will say this: they both have bright, bright futures.

{Kyle, Josh, me, Neal}

{Love him.}

{Our bag was mostly Jonathan's.}
Because my Momma raised me right.

{We do like Cortlands too.}
Great for eating, salads, sauces, pies, and baking.

{Cider & Donuts to bring home}

{We drove around for 20+ min. looking for a Starbucks}
We stopped and asked a guy on the way out of the orchard where we could find one around this small town. He looked bewildered, and for a moment, I felt ashamed that I appeared to be a city girl who thought Starbucks is the center of the world.

I felt the urge to tell him that I grew up between 3 corn fields, and that I very well know that porches, babies, and quilts made by your momma are truly the center of the world.
But we just wanted a little coffee to go with our donuts.

{That view that we love on the way home}

{The sights of fall. Thank you, Apple Holler!}

A day of baking apple pies, with the most delicious Thompson family crust, followed soon after.

Now I just need to call my Grandma Lu for her homemade caramel dip recipe.

Do you lovelies have any favorite recommendations for apple recipes?