Slacker Blogger, and What to do with Fall Apples

Summer has not been a good season for blogging. In fact, I'm not really sure what summer WAS a good season for. I've had a serious case of the blahs for months now. I haven't really worked on much; I've pieced a couple of simple quilt tops, and recently I've been doing some needle-turned applique, just to have something to do in front of the TV. But I'm not really inspired, if you know what I mean.

I can only chalk it up to working too many hours at a soul-draining (but good-paying) job (and yes, I AM grateful to have it in this economy, even more so since my company continues to send more and more of my profession's jobs to India every day).

At any rate, now that my favorite season is here (beautiful Fall after the Texas heat of summer!) I hope to find some kind of rhythm in my life again, not to mention some good old-fashioned drive to create. In the meantime, since I don't have any good work to share with you, I'll give you my recipe for applesauce. Actually, it didn't start out as my recipe; I got it from simplyrecipes.com and made a few modifications.

I made this for the first time last week after buying about 20 lbs. of apple "seconds" at the Farmers Market, and it was the best applesauce I've ever eaten! I'm headed back to the market this morning to get more apples and make enough applesauce to can for the winter. Enjoy!

Applesauce Recipe

Preparation time: 45 minutes. The sugar amounts are just guidelines, depending your taste, and on the sweetness of your apples, use less or more. If you use less sugar, you'll likely want to use less lemon juice. The lemon juice brightens the flavor of the apples and balances the sweetness (don't skip the lemon juice--it really does add something to the flavor!).

Ingredients

• 3 to 4 lbs of peeled, cored, and quartered apples. (Make sure you use a good cooking apple like Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Fuji, Jonathan, Mcintosh, or Gravenstein.) (Note: I used whatever was in the "seconds" bag; a mix of sweet & tart, I think).
• 4 strips of lemon peel - use a vegetable peeler to strip 4 lengths
• Juice of one lemon, about 3-4 Tbsp
• 3 inches of cinnamon stick (Note: I also added about 2 t. ground cinnamon)
• 1/4 cup of dark brown sugar (I ended up using more--about 1/2 c)
• up to 1/4 cup of white sugar (I substituted Splenda for the white sugar, and used a little more because my apples weren't that sweet)
• 1 cup of water
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Method

1 Put all ingredients into a large pot. Cover. Bring to boil. Lower heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes. Taste and add more brown/white sugar or Splenda and cinnamon, if desired.

2 Remove from heat. Remove cinnamon sticks and lemon peels. Mash with potato masher.

Ready to serve, either hot or refrigerated. Delicious with vanilla ice cream or vanilla yogurt (I added some to oatmeal for breakfast--yum!).

Freezes easily, lasts up to one year in a cold freezer.

Pasted from <http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/applesauce/>

Who Knew?

They say your tastes change every 7 years. Not just the things you like, but the things you like to EAT. Either this is true, or something strange happened after I got sick, which may well be the case, since I don’t love coffee the way I used to.

Anyway, it seems that I now like coconut, after a life-long and major dislike of it. Not only do I like it, but I’ve actually been craving it, and, for the first time in my life, I bought some the last time I was grocery shopping. It’s probably hard to imagine that someone could reach their late 40s and not know the first thing about buying coconut (sweetened? natural?), but there it is.

Today I made really tasty coconut cookies from a recipe I found on allrecipes.com. I love this site both because it has wonderful recipes as well as reviews about them. I typically only try a recipe if several people say it’s good, and this one got well-deserved good reviews. These cookies taste very much like chocolate chip cookies, except with coconut instead of the chips.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/3 cups flaked coconut

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C.) Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, cream the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg and vanilla until light and fluffy. Gradually blend in the flour mixture, then mix in the coconut. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Cookies should be about 3 inches apart.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until lightly toasted. Cool on wire racks.

I love to bake, which isn’t good for either my waistline or my sweetie’s, so my next step will be to play with this recipe and start substituting for the butter and the sugar. In the meantime, I’m off to enjoy a couple of these with a cold glass of milk.