Apple Crumble Vegan Gluten Free — A Recipe I Bought a Single Apple For

I bought one apple at Walmart on Sunday afternoon. A Gala, sixty-nine cents, from the markdown bin at the back of the produce section where they put the apples that have been sitting there too long. I do not know why I bought it. I was walking through the produce section and the bin caught my eye, and I picked up the one apple that did not have a soft spot, and I held it in my hand for a minute, and then I put it in the cart. I bought it. I brought it home. I put it on the counter, and it has been on the counter for three days, and I have not eaten it.

I want to write about why, because the why is the whole post this week.

The high in Broken Arrow on Sunday was ninety-eight degrees. The high on Monday was ninety-nine. The high on Tuesday was a hundred and one. The high today, Thursday, was a hundred and two. The kitchen at the Sonic, which I have already told you about more than once but which I want to keep telling you about because it is the most relevant fact of my life right now, has been a hundred-and-five-degree workplace for five days running. Hailey threw up in the back kitchen during her break today, just from the heat, just from the standing for six hours in a hundred-and-five degrees, and Carlos sent her home and paid her for the rest of her shift even though the corporate policy says he doesn’t have to.

I came home tonight at eight-fifteen. I sat on the front porch in the still-hot dark with a glass of water for forty-five minutes before I went inside. The honeysuckle is dead on the fence. The grass on the front lawn has gone the color of straw. The air at nine o’clock at night still feels like an oven. This is what late July in Oklahoma is. I have lived through fifteen of these summers, and they do not get easier, they get more familiar, which is not the same thing.

I have been keeping a section in the back of my notebook for recipes I am going to save for the season that fits them. I started the section in May with the Autumn Pear Salad — which I am still saving for September — and I added the White Chicken Chili to it on the Fourth of July last week. Tonight I am adding the Apple Crumble. The apple crumble is from a recipe column I copied out at the school library on Saturday morning. It is the vegan-gluten-free version, the kind that uses rolled oats and coconut oil and almond flour, the kind that the magazines run in October when everybody on the internet has decided to eat slightly cleaner for the fall.

I am not vegan. I am not gluten-free. There is no scenario in which I am ever going to be either of those things, because vegan-gluten-free baking requires ingredients that cost more than my entire weekly grocery budget, and because I live in a house where ground beef is a Saturday luxury and butter is the only fat I trust. But the apple crumble recipe caught me anyway, because the way it was written down felt like the way fall feels — the way the air feels at the end of September, the way the apples in the bin start firming up at the start of October, the way the kitchen window can be left open at night for the first time in months and the breeze coming in is the kind of breeze you have been missing without knowing you missed it.

So I copied it down. I copied it the way I have copied a hundred recipes from a hundred magazine pages this spring and summer. I taped it into the For When It Cools Down section of my notebook, in pencil, with a note that said, September. Probably the last weekend of September. Buy four firm apples on the way home from school.

And then I went to Walmart, and I bought one apple, and I brought it home, and I put it on the counter, and I have been looking at it for three days.

I think the reason I bought the apple is that I needed to. I am writing this and I am realizing it as I write. I needed to put a piece of fall on the counter. I needed to look at the apple every time I walked through the kitchen and remember that the kitchen would not always be ninety-five degrees. The apple is a placeholder. The apple is a promise. The apple is the way I can hold onto the idea that this summer is going to end, that the leaves are going to start turning in two and a half months, that one Sunday morning in late September I am going to wake up and the air in my bedroom is going to be cool enough to make me want a sweatshirt, and I am going to walk to Walmart on a fifty-eight-degree morning, and I am going to buy four firm apples and a bag of oats and a small jar of coconut oil from the natural foods aisle, and I am going to come home and make this apple crumble, and the kitchen is going to fill with the smell of cinnamon and brown sugar and the windows are going to be open and there is going to be a breeze, and that is going to be the day.

That day is coming. I am going to keep buying apples on the markdown rack one at a time until then, just to keep the placeholder on the counter. I am going to eat the Gala tomorrow morning before my shift, sliced into wedges, plain, with a little salt because we have salt and not much else. I am going to buy a different apple next week. I am going to put the next one on the counter. The placeholder is going to live on the counter until the day the placeholder becomes the actual recipe, which is going to be in late September, which is going to be eight, nine, ten weeks from now.

I want to add one thing for the record before I close this week’s entry. Cody came home Wednesday morning at six o’clock, after eight days gone. He came in the back door while I was at the kitchen table eating cereal before my morning shift. He did not say anything. He did not look at me. He walked past me into his bedroom and he shut the door, and he slept for twenty hours straight. I do not know what happened in those eight days. I do not want to know. He has been in his room for two days now, coming out only when the house is empty. I left him a sandwich on a paper towel on a plate outside his door yesterday and the sandwich was gone this morning and the plate was washed. He came out only after I left for work. He is here, in the technical sense. He is also still gone, in the sense that matters more.

I am writing this and I am realizing I do not have anywhere to put it in the apple-crumble post, and I am writing it anyway, because part of what this notebook is for is the things that do not fit. The apple is on the counter. The crumble is in the back of the book. The brother is in the bedroom. We are all waiting for September.

The recipe is below, the way A Couple Cooks wrote it — vegan, gluten-free, the kind of crumble that holds up in October. I am leaving it in my notebook for late September. If you are reading this in a colder place than mine, or in a colder month than mine, you have my permission to make it now. Buy four firm apples. Use the oats and the coconut oil. Bake until the top is golden and the apples are soft. Eat it warm. Save the placeholder kind of cooking for the people who don’t have a season to wait for. The rest of us — the rest of us know what the apple on the counter is for.

Apple Crumble (Vegan & Gluten Free)

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 40 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• Apple Filling:
• 5 medium apples (about 2 lbs), peeled, cored, and sliced 1/4-inch thick
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup or coconut sugar
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch or arrowroot powder
• Crumble Topping:
• 1 1/2 cups certified gluten-free rolled oats
• 1/2 cup almond flour
• 1/3 cup coconut sugar or brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup coconut oil, melted (or vegan butter)
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven. Heat your oven to 350°F. Lightly grease an 8x8 or 9x9-inch baking dish with coconut oil or cooking spray.
2. Prepare the apple filling. In a large bowl, toss the sliced apples with maple syrup, lemon juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cornstarch until the apples are evenly coated. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish and spread into an even layer.
3. Make the crumble topping. In the same bowl (no need to wash it), combine the oats, almond flour, coconut sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Pour in the melted coconut oil and maple syrup and stir until the mixture is clumpy and well combined.
4. Assemble and bake. Sprinkle the crumble topping evenly over the apples, covering the filling completely. Bake for 35—40 minutes, until the topping is golden brown and the apple filling is bubbling around the edges.
5. Cool slightly before serving. Let the crumble rest for 10 minutes before scooping. Serve warm on its own or with a scoop of dairy-free vanilla ice cream or coconut whipped cream.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 268 | Protein: 3g | Fat: 12g | Carbs: 40g | Fiber: 4g | Sodium: 75mg