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Monday 16 November 2015

The kindness of strangers - fresh baked apple pies

On the latter part of the way home on Saturday night I spotted a full plastic bag on the grassy curb on Kirk Lane in Ruddington. I had a feeling it might be windfall cooking apples left out for free by kind property owners on the lane.



It was a dark and rainy evening and  I was keen to get home after a busy and tiring day at work. Two bottles of what turned out to be 'more expensive than I expected' white wine were rattling in my shopping bag along with a few other bits and pieces. I thought the wine was a bargain reduction offer of £2.75 each but turned out to be just two bottles dumped on the reduction shelf at Tesco and actually cost £7.10 each!!! No wonder my shopping bill was higher than I would normally pay.

Kirk Lane in the daytime.

Anyway, I picked up the bag of apples and made my way home. On reaching my kitchen I put away the shopping and opened the bag of very nice un-bruised cooking apples. At this point I had no puff pastry or pie trays and I spent a proportion of my Saturday evening happily peeling the apples and stewing them. For extra sweetness I added three dessert spoons of brown sugar and mixed in two cinnamon sticks for added flavour. From the freezer, I got out some local blackberries (picked and frozen in 2013) as well as the remainder of a packet of Summer Fruits.



The next day I bought a pack of four pie tins and some Puff Pastry whilst on a break at work and when I got back home I made two apple and fruit pies and decided to give one to my grateful neighbour Betty.



I went back to Kirk Lane to take the photographs that illustrate this blog post and someone else has left out two big barrels of apples for free. Such is the kindness of strangers and some small comfort in a world where the news is about the terrorist atrocities in the beautiful city of Paris.

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