Tim and I have gone apple picking every single year that we’ve been together. We went during year one, and over the years it has become one of our favorite fall traditions.

We’ll switch up what orchard we go to, but I’d say we primarily stick with Smolak Farms in Andover, Honey Pot Hill Orchards in Stow, and Shelburne Farm in Stow. This year we actually split our apple picking excursion between both Honey Pot Hill and Shelburne, since they are 5 minutes away from each other. We did all our picking at Honey Pot first. After we finished picking apples, we wanted a little snack, but the line was SO long for apple cider donuts that we decided to drive down the street to Shelburne instead. Shelburne Farm has my favorite little farm stand store and food options anyways, so it worked out perfectly!

For the record, that’s pumpkin ice cream you see me eating there. So delicious! We left the farm with cheese, apple cider, some pumpkins for the house, and some pumpkin fudge to have as a treat during the week.

Like most people do when they go apple picking, we had a ton of apples to use up over the next few weeks. We tried to get creative with meals and snacks so our apples wouldn’t go to waste, and I thought it would make for a fun blog post.

I’m all for having an apple as a snack or cutting one up and eating it with some nut butter spread on top, but here are some meal and snack ideas to keep things interesting:

Roasted pork with caramelized apples

Ground turkey stuffed apples

Apple and quinoa stuffed acorn squash

Apple and almond quinoa salad

Kale and apple salads. The picture below shows pears, which we also picked during our apple picking day! We’ve also been getting both apples and pears in our CSA too, and a go to salad format for us is greens (kale, lettuce, etc.) + grain (quinoa, barley, farro) + fruit (chopped apples or pears) + nuts (slivered almonds, walnuts, pecans) + cheese (feta, goat, etc.). I just didn’t have a picture to share of my apple version.

Grain free apple cinnamon chia muffins

Lightened up apple crisp

Crock pot apple cinnamon oatmeal. My favorite mix-ins are either dried cranberries or raisins and walnuts!

Apple cinnamon protein pancakes

Apple pie smoothies. To make these, I threw 1 cup unsweetened almond milk, 1 apple (peeled, cored, and sliced), 1 tbsp almond butter, 1 frozen banana, 1 tbsp cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1 tsp nutmeg, 1 cup kale, and a handful of ice in the blender. If you make this, you might have to add water as needed to mix it all up. It looks disgusting, but I promise it doesn’t taste like it looks! Good post workout snack.

–Let’s chat–
Did you go apple picking this year? What did you make with the apples you picked? Local readers, what is your go to apple orchard?

Here are some more apple recipe ideas from the past, even though we didn’t make these with this year’s apple batch!

• Shrimp lettuce wraps with apple slaw
• Apple salmon burgers
• Fall harvest pizza
• Pumpkin spice and apple stew
• Cinnamon apple brie