Bunny Apples

I just visited the Raleigh Farmer's Market.   It's the perfect time of year to do that because you can still see all the colorful summer produce, and the fall produce is starting to come in, too.  The rainbow palette of eggplant to peaches to tomatos were showcased right next to the multiple varieties of apples, corn and yellow pumpkins.   It's still too early for the orange Halloween kind of pumpkins but not too early for the creamy yellow squash pumpkins.

I bought a peck of Honey Crisp Apples.  A peck.  What a neat word that you get to almost spit out of your mouth like a watermelon seed.  Peck.  It kinda makes me want to live on a farm.  Kinda.

So, I've brought my PECK of apples back to the hotel, and I'll eat one as I watch cable TV that we don't have at home.  I usually eat an apple by biting in to it whole, letting the juice drip down my chin as I bite deeper into the fruit, making my whole face sticky.  The best way to eat an apple, though, is when someone you love cores it and cuts it up into thin slices and puts them onto a pretty little serving dish for you.  They are crisper, sweeter, and more flavorful that way.  And, if someone REALLY loves you, they will cut the apples up in to little bunny shapes.

My Mom used to do this for me.  She learned from other Japanese mothers who packed their children's lunches how to make a lunch with tender care and attention.  She didn't ever cut slices of carrots to look like sakura blossoms, but she did make bunny apples for me.  They looked like this.

When I opened my obento box up by lifting the metal lid and saw bunny apples, I knew my Mommy loved me.  And they're not even in the shape of a heart.