An apple a day ... may not be enough

Eve saunters over to Adam and holds out her hand. Nestled there is a tiny, tart, perfect gold and brown speckled apple.

"Oh, man," says Adam. "Dad's been here, hasn't he?"

If Adam had been living in our house over the last few weeks, he'd have had no problem resisting that temptation. My father-in-law keeps his beehives in a neighbor's pick-your-own apple orchard and for the pollination stud service, he gets pick of the litter -- meaning he's been bringing us apples.

Lots and lots of apples.

These are perfect, too. They aren't pretty to look at -- you're never going to see one of these homegrown taste factories decorating the logo of Desperate Housewives, but they're the best cooking apples anywhere. They taste tart and sweet like Granny Smiths, but don't get mushy when you cook them. They stay firm, like the Galas or Macs. Even though they're tiny -- it takes about three of them to one Golden Delicious when it comes to volume -- they are worth the effort it takes to peel, slice and dice.

But there are times when you have to cry, "Enough!" So far this week we've had apple pie, apple butter, fried apples, applesauce cake and apple crisp.

I firmly believe you can be too rich, too thin, and too appled up.

Fall may bring visions of pumpkins, Indian corn and gourds to most people's minds, but this year, when I close my eyes, all I see are apples. For that matter, when I open my eyes, all I see are apples.

I know that in a few months, I'll be sighing and longing for a good, crisp homegrown apple, so I've buckled down to channel my pioneer forebears and I'm going to try preserving our windfalls (pun intended). The last time I attempted to make preserves, I was 8 and my mom and I had spent the day picking blackberries. All I remember is seeing the black snake in the brambles and getting burned by the hot wax we put on the jars. The preserves came out runny and all I had to memorialize the day were scars left behind from scratching the chigger bites and poison ivy.

Okay, so maybe my ancestral pioneers were city folk, too.

We've been listening to a lot of NPR lately and during The Splendid Table coking show, a guest was talking about "too much chocolate." I immediately began a petition to have her woman status recalled. Too much chocolate? Only if it's coating apples, maybe. And you can lick it off the apples ...

But her point was, and other than chocolate I agree with her 100 percent, too much of anything is bad for you. Too much water? You can die. Too much iron? You can die -- and screw up local compasses, too. Too much milk, too much caffeine, too much Ben Stiller -- anything in overdose is bad for you health, physical or mental. (Except chocolate.)

The issue is -- how much is too much? Five minutes of Ben Stiller is too much for me, but I can chug caffeine-loaded drinks all day. (And yes, stay up all night.)

Our culture just seems to barrel more and more to overindulgence, whether its the hundred-weight barrel of popcorn at the movie theater or the smart phone that does everything up to and including your taxes.

I was at a Chinese restaurant the other day and had loaded waaay too much on my plate and didn't even realize it until I sat down. I like eggrolls, but do I need three? Wouldn't it be better to just savor and appreciate the one? The same went for the chicken-on-a-stick, the General Tsao's, and that incredible fake crab casserole...

We take this more-more-more mentality into every aspect of our lives. A house is good, but a McMansion is better. A car is good, but a luxury car is better. A tattoo is good, but ... forget I even said that. Too much caffeine.

Financial circumstances have forced the Reeves family to get back to bare basics and it's been hard. We were very used to that more-more-more that landed us in all the trouble to begin with. But you know what -- like picking one eggroll instead of three, like buying the Beetle instead of the Beemer -- it gets easier with practice. Necessity, Aesop said, is the mother of invention, but it is also the mother of circumspection and thrift. We haven't gone the movies much, but we've played family games together. We haven't had steak since our honeymoon, but we've created some amazing recipes out of hamburger, caned vegetables, herbs, spices nand that mystery packer of powdered sauce mix that fell out of a kit meal months ago.

In the wake of a global and personal economic collapse, we're learning to appreciate a lifestyle that might have prevented that personal collapse. Just think -- if everyone else took the time and the sacrifice to do the same, we might have prevented the global one as well ... the greed factory can only sell as long as there are buyers.

So to sum it up, life has given us lemo... apples. Does anyone have a recipe for cider?

Mary Reeves is a Times-Gazette staff writer. She can be reached at mreeves@t-g.com.