My husband had bought Northern Spy apples last time he went food shopping. Inspiration for an apple pie. He adores apple pie. I thought I'd make this one a little differently than the usual. So I set about doing just that. In the end, it isn't that much different, taste-wise; an apple pie is an apple pie. Spies are the right kind of apple for a pie, other than MacIntosh, so you can't go wrong with either.

I decided this time I'd snip about a quarter-cup of candied pineapple in with the sliced apple for the pie. I could have used candied ginger, which would have been a better choice. I never peel apples since much of the vitamins and minerals reside right under the skin, and the skin provides a good source of roughage. Just quarter the apples, deseed them, and proceed to slice them very thinly into a waiting bowl. Mix a quarter-cup flour with 2/3 of a cup granulated sugar and a heaping teaspoon of cinnamon into about four-and-a-half cups of thinly sliced apples and dredge the apple slices with the flour-sugar mixture, mixing gently.

As for the pie dough, easy enough. I decided for a crumble-top pie. So one-third of all-purpose flour, a scant third of a cup dark brown sugar, a quarter-cup butter and another teaspoon of cinnamon were worked together with a pastry blender. Then I grated a quarter-cup of old cheddar, mixing it into the crumb topping; last, about a half-cup of chopped walnuts. In retrospect I should have confined the crumble-top to either the cheddar or the walnuts, since I found in the baked pie that the walnuts hid the cheese flavour.

The next step was the pie pastry which called for a halving of the usual two cups of flour since I wouldn't be rolling out a top crust. For the crust then, I needed a cup of flour, a quarter-teaspoon of salt, one-third cup of Crisco shortening, crumbled together with a pastry blender. Then I added two teaspoons of lemon juice, and enough ice-cold water to bring the mixture together in a firm kneaded ball, more dry than moist.

After rolling out the bottom crust, it was filled with the prepared apple filling and topped with the crumble-crust, and baked in a 350 oven for about 50 minutes until the apples were bubbling and the edges of the bottom crust turned light brown. Good tasting, though there was no hint that we could detect of the candied pineapple, but a nice, moist, cinnamon-flavoured finished pie.