IT'S FALL! We live in a state where there is fall! FINALLY.

We are back in a state where one of the main agricultural products is APPLES. The apples here are tart and crisp and delicious, as opposed to blah and mealy! There are so many kinds available! THERE ARE VARIETAL APPLE CIDERS. The only thing missing is the actual trip to the cider mill, during which we pick a bunch of winesaps, then sit outside drinking hot apple cider with whipped cream and eating a bag of warm doughnuts, the long, twisted, glazed kind. Oh man!

Lacking that, I brought home a bunch of apples, the name of which I cannot remember. After we ate several of them outright, plain or with peanut butter, I decided it was fall enough that we needed to cook them. The most obvious way to cook apples is in pie, but we didn't have any pie equipage whatever. No flour, sugar, spices, rolling pin, pie pan, or even a cookie sheet on which to shape a rustic galette. All we had was butter and apples. Stupid temporary housing!

We did have an onion, though, and I've read Farmer Boy enough times that it gave me an idea.

Apples and onions

apples
yellow onions
butter/flavorless oil

This is super easy and tasted excellent piled on a toasted english muffin.

Cut an apple or two into fourths, core each piece, and slice into thin slices. Peel and thinly slice an equivalent amount of yellow onion. I used one apple and 1/2 an onion for just me.

Melt some butter in a medium-hot frying pan. Throw in the apples, arrange them in one layer, and let them cook for 4-5 minutes, or until they begin to get soft. Then shake up the pan and flip all the slices over. Don't worry too much about being exact; they'll all get soft and buttery and tasty no matter how they fall.

When the apple pieces are soft on both sides, add in the onion and stir to mix. Cook slowly, stirring when needed, until the onions are sufficiently wilted and the apples are turning golden brown.

If you want an english muffin, now is the time to toast it. We had Whole Foods wheat english muffins, which were surprisingly good as well as lacking in corn syrup. So there is actually a reason to go to Whole Foods, especially if your baking equipment is all still in storage.

Other things to do with your apples and onions:

- Serve them on top of a whack of mashed sweet potatoes, or I suppose regular potatoes. Or bake a potato, break it open, and stuff with apples and onions.
- Serve them on top of a bowl of fall-oriented soup: butternut squash, cream of roasted cauliflower, something in the chestnut family.
- Eat them with a bunch of wilted dark greens and a good grain pilaf with lots of nuts and cranberries.
- Make them as one of the twenty side dishes you need to have at every major fall holiday dinner.
- Mix them with cooked rice/etc and use them to stuff a squash.
- Actually cook them differently: add some grated or finely sliced fresh ginger, or spice them with cinnamon and clove.