Season's Eatin's to all—and my favorite season's eatin's is what I call Al's Once A Year Apple Strudel.

I've been making it for many years, usually once a year—usually in the fall, apple season—but now that I'm in Sacramento, what we used to call Fall back in Pennsylvania, is more like Winter here. So, winter is my now season for Once A Year Apple Strudel. You can call it climate change if you prefer.

What is Al's Once A Year Apple Strudel? It is merely an utterly delicious pastry composed of Granny Smith apples, raisins, currents, walnuts, honey, lemon and cinnamon all wrapped in a nearly see-through dough and baked to a golden finish.

The story began back in my early days of marriage when Adele was telling me how her mother used to make strudel. She remembered that as a child, she would help her mom lay out the dough on a table, let the dough overhang the edges and gently stretch the dough until it became amazingly thin.

I said to Adele, "That's wonderful, why don't you make it?"

"You got to be kidding," she replied. "It's too much work."

Well, them's fighting words. "Then, I'll do it," I retorted.

Well, at this point I decided to check with Adele to make sure I got the details right. "Well," she said, "that was OK, but nothing like when you decided to make puff pastry."

She reminded me that back, 44 years ago, she had just come home with our second daughter and it was a record hot day in Connecticut, 105°F, when I had the urge to make puff pastry. Maybe I heard a lecture and got excited. After all, Adele was focused on the baby and what did I have to do?

So I got out the ingredients, made the dough, let it rest in the fridge, and then began to apply the butter between the layers. I think that's about when I discovered why they call it Danish pastry—because you have to keep the butter cold.

I had to work fast, and in the 105°F heat with no A/C, the temperature was starting to get to me. About the third go round, I was weakening and put the dough back in the fridge and sat down beside Adele and asked for help.

As she tells it, when she got to the kitchen, it was covered with flour and she was in no condition to either clean up the mess or finish with the pastry-making process. Somehow she did it, even the filling and baking—heat on top of heat—in a small kitchen.

I think it was good—not really sure. All I really remember is that I promised never to make puff pastry again.

And I didn't—I switched to strudel.

Adele tells me that the first time out, I tried a stretch recipe. I worked it out but I still had not overcome the—flour all over the place—problem. Subsequently, she got me onto a rolled dough recipe—that helped, and also subsequently, I started using a food processor, that helped more. Then, I used a slicer/corer on the apples… one-by-one my recipe came together.

I could give you the recipe but a lot of the fine tuning requires watching this old pro go through the steps first hand.

So, this season I made three loafs of Al's Once A Year Apple Strudel.

Wonderbar! My favorite—Season's Eatin's to all and to all a good bite.

~ Al Zagofsky