I know August does produce a few apples. On a recent Sunday at Baltimore Farmers' Market, Kathy Reid gave me a slice of Summer Sweet, an August apple grown on her family's orchard. It was a fine early apple, but nothing like the Honeycrisp, a September apple that packs an amazing mixture of sweetness and acid tang.
Besides abundant crops, September has other factors working in its favor. One would be the weather. September is cooler and therefore more baking-friendly than summer months. The average high temperature for September is 78.2 degrees, a level much more conducive to turning on the oven and baking a pie than the 87-degree average high of July.
On the beverage front, September is the host month for the most joyful beer celebration of the year, the poorly named Oktoberfest. Moreover, red wine always tastes better to me in September, perhaps because it is the month that many varieties of grapes are harvested.
My final reason September is the best eating month concerns steamed blue crabs.
They are heavier in September than in midsummer months. "In the fall, they are finished shedding and they fatten up as they get close to winter," Shawn Hartman, a former waterman and now proprietor of The Salty Dog, a seafood carryout in Dundalk, told me. "As the water cools, the crabs taste better," he added. Hartman said when customers wanting to plan a crab feast call him, he tries to steer them toward September.
Demand for steamed crabs drops slightly after Labor Day, in part because some households get "crabbed out," that is, grow tired of eating them. I have noticed prices often drop in September.
So in September, the crabs are heavy, the vegetables are abundant, the fruit is ripe, the oven is baking pie, and the beer is cold. I rest my case and head for the supper table.
Look for Rob Kasper's column Wednesdays in You.
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