So on Saturday we drove dout with Dad to Yucaipa where there were a few apple orchards. We went to the one called Snow-Line Orchard and it really is named because it is right at the snow line. I kind of wished that there was some snow about, but alas it wasn't cold enough.

We bought loads of apples to split between Dad, Berek's mom and us. :) They had all sorts of apples including many I've never heard of. Most importantly though, they had Honeycrisp apples there. But we also picked up some Granny Smith, McIntosh, Jonagold, and Old Fashioned Delicious. Yum.

Aside from selling bags of apples, they had other things like salsas, syrups, pie fillings, preserves, dry ingredients for apple breads, brownies and scones, as well as lots of miscellaneous candies and snack type stuff, including candied apples, peanut brittle, corn nuts (not the ones you can buy in the stores though, these were made at the orchard), candy corn and lots of other things. It was great and a lot of fun.

We actually picked up some unsweetened apple butter, no sugar added cherry and apple pie fillings, apple bread dry mix, cranberry syrup, butter pecan syrup and lots of other things. I'm totally inspired to bake now. (Of course, it's that time of year anyway. The time of Harvest.)

The whole experience was fabulous. This may sound funny, but I've never actually seen an apple tree before. I was expecting them to look like an orange tree would. Large and voluminous with individual fruit hanging around. But apple trees are much shorter than orange trees and really gnarly. The apples don't grow sparsely around the foliage, instead they tend to grow in small clusters. It was totally cool to actually see what an apple tree looks like.

After the orchard, we headed down the mountain again and once we hit civilization (by the way, the houses out there were gorgeous. Just sitting on the hills with huge yards and properties. I wouldn't mind living up there at all. :D) we hit a sushi restaurant which was absolutely fabulous. It was called Shogun Sushi and if anyone finds their way out there, it's well worth the money spent. Heck, they even gave us two bowls of green tea ice cream for free! They were really sweet. :)

We headed home around 4:30ish and made it back at about 6:30. Which was pretty good time, considering the traffic. After we dropped Dad off, we headed home to freshen up a bit. Berek had a rough start at the orchard. Because of the rain, he ended up with lots of mud on his pants. In any case, after we freshened up we went to the Gaucho Grill near the apartment and met up with Alan and Christa for dinner. We were so happy to hang out with them. We haven't seen them since June so it was way past time we hung out with them. The dinner was amazing! I didn't know there was such good food a mere short walk away!

Anyway, Christa and I were going to surprise Berek by not letting him know that he was going to dinner with them. Everything was going great until we had that fantastic lunch at the sushi restaurant. We were both so full afterwards. I had told Berek that I needed to be back by 6 to study and I had mentioned that we could go to dinner around 7 after I had about an hour's worth of studying in. So he was cool. Well after lunch, he mentioned, "Well we'll have to push back dinner because I'm too full." I said, "No! We have to go at 7." I knew the jig was up. I'd have to tell him or he'd fight me tooth and nail. He was pleasantly suprised that we had gone to the trouble of planning this surprise for him. :) (That's because you rock sweetie!)

In any case, so we did finally meet up with Alan and Christa and had a wonderful dinner. The food was Argentinian and it was great! (Lots of great food that day!) We got to talk shop and catch up with each other and it was just really pleasant. They're a great couple of people that we just really missed hanging out with. Hopefully, we'll get together with them again real soon. Maybe with some others. *grins*

Sunday was a busy day for me. While Berek was off playing Heroclix, I went to my parents house to hang out with them and help them out with a few things. It was relatively nice. I am always happy to see my grandpa and I think he is always happy to see me. After about 3, Liz came and picked me up and we headed to the new Topanga Mall to wander around and check out how it's changed. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to describe it, but all I can come up with is...big! It's neat, but I do miss the old small mall.

After that, we picked up Ashley and went to dinner at Marie Callender's for a belated birthday dinner for Ashley. (Her birthday was the same as Berek's.) It was really nice and I had a great turkey dinner (although what I really wanted was a pot pie, but they were out.). After dinner I had a piece of a wonderfully delightful double cream blueberry pie. OMG! It was sooo good.

That was my weekend and I'm pretty tired, but feeling good. MUST BAKE NOW! I'm totally jonesing to bake.