Apple picking leads to love and pastries
Love blooms in unusual places, but this one takes the cake, the pie, the cobbler and the jam.
Heidie Peterson and her husband, Bill, courted while picking apples in the lush fruit orchards of Michigan.
Don't laugh until you've tried it, says Heidie, who insists that orchards have a certain romantic quality.
"You can hear the birds and the bees, the lake is not too far away so you can hear the water," she says. "I think it is being in the outdoors, the scenery, it is just so pleasant."
Fifteen years later the Petersons still pick fruit together at least six times a year, using their vacation cottage north of Sawyer as home base. They have branched out from apples to blueberries, raspberries, cherries, peaches, plums, apricots and even chestnuts.
From that bounty Heidie bakes wonderful pastries -- apple pies and cakes; peach cobblers, pies and cakes; raspberry rhubarb crisp and raspberry jam.
Some fruit they just eat out of hand.
"We'll pick 30 pounds of blueberries, 60 pounds of peaches, 80 pounds of apples; it's absurd the amount of fruit two people can pick," she says.
The daughter of a former home ec teacher, Heidie warmed up to the culinary arts while working beside her mother at home. She experienced a mini epiphany as a teenager when she baked a peach pie to take to Michigan for a weekend outing with friends.
"It was just to die for. I remember everybody saying "aah," Heidie says.
That weekend hard-wired her love for baking and for summer cottages in Michigan.
A chemist at Dow Chemical in Buffalo Grove, Heidie took to heart her mother's advice to "be creative." She particularly enjoys working with her hands, cooking dinner most nights, knitting and gardening and even refinishing wood.
Fourteen years ago Heidie and Bill, president of the Glen Ellyn Historical Society, purchased a vintage Victorian in Glen Ellyn and restored the 80-year-old house themselves.
"Bill would strip and I would sand, fill, stain and varnish," she says. "We know the wood very intimately."
Because of Bill's involvement in the historical society, Heidie became a regular contributor to the annual Glen Ellyn Historical Society Bake Sale at the Glen Ellyn Farmers Market.
The sales will be held on Friday, Aug. 3 and 17. The booth opens at 7:30 a.m. and is usually sold out by 11:30 a.m.
Heidie is donating a peach and a blueberry pie for the sale Friday and Aug. 17. They will be among roughly 30 pies and a host of other baked goods for sale all three dates.
If you can't be there, you can try Heidie's pie recipe at home; she includes variations for strawberry rhubarb, peach and blueberry.
We also have her Peach Dessert Cake, versatile enough for breakfast, tea time or an after-dinner dessert, even if you don't drive to Michigan to pick your own fruit.