We received this lovely email from one CSA member, and we adore her enthusiasm, so we wanted to share it with you all. It's great to hear feedback on our featured apples and recipes, and any kind of single-variety taste test like this simply makes us swoon. Keep 'em coming! We want to hear about your favorites!

Hello there!

I just wanted to send you guys a quick message to let you know how much we are enjoying your apples! It's so much fun having the different varieties to compare and contrast. We loved getting that sweet, little Garden Royal. My husband and I split it and we enjoyed it just as much as all the others that we got in quantity.

I made one of the recipes in this week's newsletter and wanted to share:

This is the Apple Pecan Salsa. We couldn't find African Basil so just used Genovese. We love chips and salsa so instead of serving it on meat (as suggested) we ate it with blue corn tortilla chips. It was very fresh, tangy and incredibly flavorful! You would think with all the "top note," flavor forward ingredients it would be overpowering but it wasn't. We really enjoyed!

Also, we wanted to compare your two recommended baking apples so I prepared two small apple crisps for research's sake :) Duchess of Oldenburg on the left and Red Gravenstein on the right. They both were delicious but we preferred the Duchess, at least for apple crisp. It seemed to create its own syrupy juice better then the Gravenstein and got soft but held its shape. I actually plan on making small crisps with each baking apple just to really pinpoint our true favorites. I thought I would share the recipe for the individual apple crisp. It comes together extremely quickly, bakes quickly and is just a simple way to enjoy something sweet (and get your kitchen smelling delicious!).

Here's the recipe:

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/mini-apple-crisp

We're looking forward to getting to know more fantastic apples!

Sincerely,

Emily Buswell

P.S. Love my tote! It's HUGE!