Where this day began was out in the yard watering my plants which are miraculously still alive on September 6. Then the plan was to lock myself into my studio and slipcover cushions for eight hours but on my way back into the house I tripped over the 40 pound barrel of apples we picked on Tuesday night, so, something had to be done with those. I dug out my handy dandy vintage apple-peeler, corer and slicer with little hope that it would work for these mini apples. It has its own temperament and usually plays coy but it was in fine form today. It did everything it was supposed to with those little apples and then some and I decided I had better make an apple crisp to see how the apples tasted when cooked. Not all apples work for baking and I had no idea what kinds apples these were. No name brand? I didn’t want to waste the rest of the day making apple pies that nobody would eat.
How do you like them apples?
When I first started making apple crisp for my husband in our first year of marriage the response was usually ‘this is not how my mom makes it”….”Maybe you should get her recipe”. I should have slapped him but being the young submissive wife and eager to please I asked for Roses’ recipe and have never looked back. It was delicious. The main difference in the two recipes was that my mom’s recipe had oatmeal in it and Roses’ did not. Ironically, my husband loves to eat oatmeal every morning of his life and usually does, so why there was a problem with it in the apple crisp I have no idea. Simply because ‘this is not the way my mom makes it”?
I thought to myself (Louis and I like to think to ourselves)….I’m going to reintroduce the oatmeal to my apple crisp. Roses’ recipe with a little oatmeal added. Those apples were so pleasing to the palate. Perfect for baking. Just the right amount of tartness with a little sugar…ok, a lot of sugar! This recipe was every bit as good as Roses’ and every bit as good as my mom’s. I tweaked the family heirloom recipe to make it my own.
Now that I knew first hand that the apples were going to be great for pies I called up my mom to see if she had the day free and wanted to join me. So much more pleasant spending the day in the kitchen with someone, especially mom. I often wonder how many opportunities I will have to spend great days like this with my mom and I cherish our time together making memories. We both love being in the kitchen whipping up something delicious. We stopped for a Starbucks, put on our aprons, turned on Harry Connik Jr and mom started running apples through our secret apple weapon while I began rolling out pastry.
We managed to get 14 pies and 2 apples crisps out of the apples. I thought I hadn’t picked too many – as I had no idea if I would be able to use them but…14 pies. Not one apple left. So now I am thinking of going back for more.
We are having guests tomorrow night so I’ll bake one of the crisps for dessert. Naturally I had to make some homemade ice cream. May as well do it up right. I made some caramel pecan homemade ice cream to eat with the crisp. That stuff is so decadent. Real ice cream. No preservatives or chemicals. Just whole foods. Eggs yolks, sugar (well hello? ice cream?) cream, whipped cream and whole milk, some caramel and pecans. Nobody said it was low cal. Its very rich with all that creme but its real food. You can feel good about serving it and eating it (in moderation..yeah, yeah, yeah). It seems when I make the ice cream, we fight over it. How many bowls did you have? Well I only got one. None left? I didn’t realize I ate that much. Fortunately, the only way to get the ice cream off the mixing paddle is with your finger. So I get to lick my fingers which usually leads to a three spoon quality control . That means I end up tasting it and taking a new spoon for each taste…no double dipping. At this stage it’s soft serve ice cream but no one usually gets the benefit of that except me. There are perks to being the cook.
The Red Plaid Apron 