Fall is when I start thinking about apples and apple pie. I rarely have either in the summer.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t care less about eating an apple. A fresh, crunchy cold apple just doesn’t do it for me. Apple pie and apple crisp do do it for me.

I was enlisted to make an apple pie for Thanksgiving at my cousin Richard's. Apple pie is one of the Thayer family Thanksgiving traditions. That and creamed onions — and turkey of course — and we're good to go. Oh! And vodka with cranberry juice. And stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy. Hello.

Anyway. My mother makes the best apple pie (of course — duh) and my father loved it. It was his favorite dessert. He liked a hunk of cheddar cheese with it. I remember going to a restaurant in South Portland with one of the three Jeff Browns from the Boothbay region shortly after my father died. I'm not going to tell you which Jeff Brown it was. I actually only know two of them. Have yet to meet Jeff Brown III.

So. Apple pie and dad and the restaurant. (Does ADD get worse with age? Like everything else?) An older man, no doubt younger than I am now :-), at the table next to us, ordered a piece of apple pie for dessert. It occurred to me that my father would never have apple pie again. I couldn't finish my meal.

Dad taught me to make manhattans too. And I know I've already told you that, but I know how forgetful you guys can be. Oddly, I've never had a problem getting a manhattan down.

I just checked the time. Only 3:58. Bummer.

OK, so I WAS ENLISTED TO MAKE AN APPLE PIE FOR THANKSGIVING. There is a point to all this.

And I know the headline of this is 'Apple crisp.' Relax. We're getting there.

Thanksgiving morning: I had gotten six Cortland apples the day before. I had sugar, cinnamon, butter, flour and a package of Pillsbury pie crusts in the freezer. As all I had to do was make the pie, and creamed onions, and dinner wasn't till 2 or 3, I took my sweet time making a fabulous breakfast of blueberry pancakes and sausage, and lazed around watching the Today Show.

When I finally decided it was time to get cooking I took the package of pie crusts out of the freezer and alas! There was only one in there! I had already used the other one.

I know I could have broken down and made my own pie crust, but that's one thing I'm lazy about. Then a light bulb came on. Apple crisp pie! Pie crust on the bottom and crisp on top. I'm not saying I invented apple crisp pie. I'm not that presumptuous. But I had never made it.

Well, I did, and it was great. But so is plain old apple crisp.

This is another one of those things I don't really have to give you a recipe for, but I'm going to anyway, because everybody makes their crisp differently, and mine is the best. I'm just kidding. OK, I'm not. And I don't think I need to remind you that this column is as much about inspiring you to get up off the couch and make something you might not have thought about if not for the photo above as it is about sharing recipes.

For starters, I refuse to use oatmeal in ANY dessert. Oatmeal is something you eat for health. It has no place in desserts. Desserts and health just don’t mix. Sorry.

OK, apple crisp. Slice up some apples. Cortlands are my choice. Throw them into a buttered glass pan. Sprinkle some sugar with cinnamon and a pinch of salt mixed in over them. Mix around 3/4 cup of flour with 1/2 cup of brown or white sugar, or a combination of both, and a tsp. of salt. Melt a half stick of butter and mix that in. It should be a crumbly mixture with big and little chunks. Throw that over the top and bake at 350 for around 40 minutes, until the apples are translucent. You do not want white apples in a crisp any more than you want oatmeal.

I like my apple crisp with heavy cream drizzled over it, but vanilla ice cream is good, too.

If you want to make an apple crisp PIE, put a pie crust on the bottom. Obviously. Oh and I almost forgot. I threw some pecans into the topping. That was good too.

And if you need more explicit directions feel free to email me at suzithayer@boothbayregister.com. I promise to not be sarcastic. Difficult as that may be.

See ya next week.