Weekend Adventures

I love the weekends! Don't misunderstand, I really enjoy my job but I also really enjoy the weekend. Lately, the weekends have been quite busy but in a good way. This weekend started off by Trevor and I having our date night. We enjoyed a drive on the Parkway, dinner, and some shopping. Oh, yeah, we even watched a movie.... shew...that's a lot for one night. Anyway, the highlight of our weekend was traveling on Saturday to see our nephew play football. He is quite the little football player and we were so glad we were able to spend some time with him and the rest of the family.

                                                                    the "game" face




Oh, I almost forgot to mention that his team won their game and are going to the championship.

This weekend also consisted of more cooking with apples. I was finally able to make applesauce and I was surprised at how well it turned out. I was afraid I might not have the right kind of apples but I used golden delicious and it worked fine. And actually, it was very easy... which makes me happy :) ! So here's how I made it...


First, I sliced and peeled about 10 medium sized apples.

Then, I tossed them into a pot with about a cup and a half of water on medium heat for about 35-40 min.  After the apples had cooked up I added, (I'm not really sure on this part because I was guessing), about a 1/2 C. to 3/4C. of sugar and a few dashes of cinnamon....  because my man likes cinnamon applesauce. Then I used my Kitchen Aid to blend it all together.

I completely let it cool before I put it in the refrigerator. I was really surprised at the taste! It was really good.

Here are the other two apple recipes that I made last week:

Apple Bread

3C. chopped, pared apples                                                   
3C. flour                                                                                 
1 tsp cloves or nutmeg (I used both)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2tsp. baking powder
2 1/2 C. sugar                                                                         
1 1/4 C. veg. oil                                                                        
4 eggs, beaten
1T  vanilla
2tsp cinnamon

Combine all ingredients  and beat on low speed for 1 min. Beat on medium speed for 1 min. Pour into 2 greased and floured loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.  Cool  for 10min.

Apple Crumb Pie

4 C. sliced apples                                    
1/2  C. melted butter                                
2/3C. sugar                                                    
2T flour                                                            
3/4 tsp cinnamon                                            
1/4 tsp nutmeg                                               
1-9' unbaked pastry shell

 TOPPING:

1/2C. flour

1/4 C. brown sugar

1/4C butter

Pour melted butter over sliced apples and soak a few minutes. Combine sugar, flour and spices. Remove apples from butter ( reserve any that is left and use in topping). Coat apples with sugar mixture, pour into pastry shell. Combine topping ingredients and crumble over apples. Bake 400 degrees for 40-45 min. Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Have a blessed week!

Apples and Pumpkins and Happy Birthday!

This past weekend, as a b-day present, Trevor took me to the Apple Barn to pick apples. When we got there, we found out it was the last wekend of the season and most of the apples that were left were higher up in the tree. No problem for us, we just grabbed one of the step ladders and picked the best apples we could reach.

We picked Rome, Winesap, and Golden Delicious and enjoyed eating a few along the way. We ended up picking 24lbs of apples.

From the Apple Barn, we went to Ikenberry's fall festival. We bought a pumpkin and mini hay bales and finished our time out by eating at the Three Little Pigs. Yumo!

When we came home, I decorated my front porch and began coming up with plans for cooking all those apples! I ended up baking two loaves of apple bread and an apple crumb pie.

I hope to make applesauce, fried apples, and applebutter. We shall see...
I'll share the recipes on my next post and let ya know how it goes. It was a GrEAt weekend!!