Happy New Year!

To all those observing, or at least taking note of the Jewish New Year, L'shanah tovah!
I had my apples and honey earlier before dinner, so hopefully the new year will be prosperous. I suppose the good thing about being religious is that I don't have to go to temple tonight or any other night, but I do get to eat. I thought about buying some matzoh ball soup but it's still too hot for soup.

I was excited to see that honey crisp apples are out now, so I bought 2. They really don't need to then be dipped in honey since they taste so good already, but such is the tradition. I also made myself a quiche, which cooked up very nicely I have to say, except for the sad fact that it was pretty boring. I used Colby cheese instead of cheddar, so it lacked bite and I also didn't have any lemon for the broccoli, so overall the taste was a bit dull. I think a bit of chipotle sauce or some bbq sauce or something would help a bit. The broccoli did come out perfect though, and beautifully green. I had too much milk and not enough egg so although the whole thing cooked well, there was a lot of extra liquid. Oh well, maybe eventually I'll get this quiche thing right.

Apple muffins

So recently I found a use for all the remaining apples. They've already been eaten plain and with cheese, and baked with nuts and sugar but now they have become muffins. I chose two recipes because neither one needed very many apples and I wanted to try them both. One was apple cranberry muffins and the other was apple yogurt muffins. Here's a little visual tour of the process.

First the cranberry apple muffins get mixed up and then off to the oven. Sadly I only seem to have one little muffin tray to work with so its a long process. And the kitchen gets messy.




And apples get naked.
Finished! They came out a bit more crispy on the outside than I wanted and a bit more flat and smooshed but they were ok.

The consistency of the next batter was much lighter and more springy so I had a better feeling about them and sure enough they came out very moist and light. They also got a nice cinnamon sugar topping. Anyone want some? I still have a bunch.

APPLES!!!!!

Despite the very confusing East Coast weather these days, it is supposedly Autumn which means it is apple season. I've recently just had two very apple filled experiences which I'd like to share as both resulted in the consumption of a massive quantity of apple products and apples.

The first apple adventure was last weekend in Ithaca, NY at the Downtown Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival, now in it's 28th year. I had the opportunity to visit some friends and attend the festival with them, which was lovely but also challenging during the peak of the festival on Saturday. The entire commons area of the quaint little hippie town was so jammed with people that it was difficult to even walk. The food however, was delicious! I only managed to pick up one bag of apples for myself which included some hybrid apple that crossed a red delicious ( not usually my favorite) with another type of apple. I did snag some very delicious and filling Indian food and some cold cider.

We purchased a sizable few bags of apples to cook which through some team work and recipe alteration we turned into an absolutely mouth-watering apple crumb pie. Think apples, brown sugar, white sugar, butter, oatmeal and cinnamon in a pie crust. Yum!

When I came home from my Ithaca adventures my family was a little disappointed by the small bag of apples I returned with, however I got the opportunity to make it up to them this Friday with a trip up to Warwick NY to pick my own apples at Masker Orchards. Check them out.
I have to say, every apple we tasted was delicious. Since they literally came right off the tree and into our hands they were as fresh as physically possible. We got a whole variety including Cortlands, Jonagolds, Macintosh, Empire and some we weren't even sure what they were.

The Red Delicious also had the chance to redeem itself from the mealy, soft, boring quality that I normally experience in this apple. The ones that came off the tree didn't even resemble the typical "teacher apple" you normally see. The color was much more vibrant and the shape was much rounder, and the taste and texture far superior to any red delicious I've ever had the misfortune to eat. All in all the experience was a really nice one- walking through the orchards and choosing our own fruit. Now I need to find something else to cook involving a massive quantity of apples, although it seems almost a pity to cook these crisp apples into a mush. I'm extremely picky when it comes to apples, and if they aren't break your teeth crunchy, as my mom likes to say, then I don't want to eat them.

Here's the bag I brought home:

Apples actually are really fascinating, as I learned watching The Botany of Desire, based on Michael Pollan's book. Apparently if you plant an apple seed you don't get the same type of apple as the apple the seed came from. What?? There's a whole grafting process of putting the seed with an already growing branch in order to get back the same type of apple. Pretty crazy and awesome, but I find botany pretty cool in general.