In honor of my father, a war hero whose favorite dessert was apple pie
The other night I heard a philosopher speak about the human race and our connection to generations past. He used food to illustrate his point. Our connection to people from thousands of years ago is right here in the fruit we eat off the trees. Just consider: When you pick an apple off a tree and bite into it, you are biting into an apple that grew from a tree planted by someone many years before, with seeds that came from another tree planted many years before that, and on and on it goes. Seeds that originated millennia ago bring us the apple that has become a symbol of life itself. The people who came before us are truly feeding us in a metaphysical sense.
The philosopher said the same is true of the trees and sky and mountains and ocean, given to the earth so very long ago. Just imagine how many others through the millennia have stepped on the very spots on the grass or mountains upon which we are now walking, or those who have swum in the very same waters—touching upon our very real connection to people through time.
To think of life as a continuum of connections is a perspective to contemplate—at least for me. To think this apple I eat was grown on a tree that came long before us makes me wonder what the person who planted seeds in yesteryear would think about the way life is this year. I wonder if this same person knew that what he planted then would beg to be carried on into the future and the greatest rewards of planting might not be experienced in his lifetime. I dream of all the ways life begets life.
And then I wonder who originated the planting of the seeds that ended up growing the food I eat. Does the apple we eat today come from the same original seed as the apple eaten by Abe Lincoln? President Lincoln loved apples, and he saw their perfection in another way when he spoke of the Declaration of Independence as the biblical “apple of gold.” My imagination takes me back to Adam and Eve. Then I remember Sir Isaac Newton formulating the theory of gravity, inspired by an apple falling straight to the ground.
I wonder what it was like to live on the planet before there were cars and technology and how simple it must have been to plant and nurture seeds on your own land. Or how it must have been in the 1950s to cut down California’s orange groves to build housing developments, and whether the farmers back then would be shocked to see their grandchildren selling their farms because the land was worth more than what the farm could yield.
Besides our ancestors planting seeds, Mother Earth herself also plants our food. Imagine: Nature blows the wind that carries the seeds that self-plant into the ground, growing and duplicating with new generations of seeds–the process of endless reproduction to feed life’s succession.
Nothing can match the hydrating, delicious circle of life of a crisp, fresh apple. Our bodies thrive on its nutrients and vitamins. I’m not tempted by baked apples, apple strudel, apple crisp, apple fritters—but I do love caramel-covered apples on a stick. My father’s favorite dessert was apple pie, and he loved parfaits. So I have combined our favorite apple delicacies in my recipe Apple and Eve’s Caramel Parfait. This connects me with my father, the apple of my eye and a World War II hero, and all the other heroes who loved the apple and all-American pie.
Warmly like apple pie,
Sherry Plum
And now I present the melt-in-your-mouth Apple and Eve’s Caramel Parfait for a sweet future.
