Pi Day

This week I was in charge of the teacher's luncheon something our school parent group does during every conference week.  We figure that since they are at the school all day and well into the evening we can at least make sure they have things to eat.  Some people brought in pasta salads, veggie/fruit trays, macaroni and cheese, cookies and other assorted nibbles.  In honor of National Pi Day I made an apple pie for the teachers to enjoy.  I adapted the recipe from Taste and See.

Apple PIe

Single Pie Crust (I love the one from Pioneer Woman's cookbook)

4 large granny smith apples (about 2 pounds)

1/2 C. honey

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 tsp. cardamom
dash of salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. cornstarch

topping:  1C. flour

1/2C. brown sugar

3 TBSP. butter

1/4C. rolled oats

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  Peel and dice your apples, place them into a large sauce pan with the honey and spices.  Simmer so the apples are slightly soft add the cornstarch to help thicken up the sauce.  Roll out your pie crust and add the apples.  In a bowl cut the butter into the flour and brown sugar until it is well incorporated mix in the oats.  Top the apples with the crumble.  Bake for 40 minutes  Enjoy!!!

Out with the old in with the new

 It is so nice to finally have some stuff going on around the homestead that I can share with you guys :)  Last week Jeff finally decided that the Pine Tree in the front yard needed to come down.  I've been asking for a few years for fruit trees but he was reluctant about it.  I'm not sure what changed his mind but one day at TSC we saw the trees and he said grab them, who am I to argue with the man! 

 This little guy is a golden delicious which is Jack's favorite.  They didn't have many varieties unfortunately.

 And this is a red delicious that is Molly's favorite.  They will cross pollinate with each other I guess and so there will be apples.  I'm still reading up on the whole deal but I know we have a few years before apples appear. 

As you can see from the top photo Jeff decided to take the tree down by hand axe to see if he could do it.  He did rather successfully (albeit to the wonder of many neighbors who offered us their chainsaws).  If you look at this post you can get an idea of the tree a bit.  It was large in the middle of the yard and really blocked the house a lot.  We left the stump on purpose, Jeff has an art project in mind for it.  Since I got my new trees finally I can't say anything about his art.

Apple Pie

 

Autumn is in the air and apples are coming in at the Farmer's Market!!!  The kids and I are so excited about the delicious things we are going to make this year.  We of course had to start with apple hand pies.  Last fall I was very inspired by this blog post at A Cozy Kitchen  

I diced up two honey crisp apples and one granny smith (Miss M's favorite).  A squeeze of lemon juice, 

1/4 C. sugar, dash of salt stirred around with the apples.  In another small bowl I mixed a tablespoon of flour, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoons ground nutmeg, 1/8 teaspoon ground allspice, 

1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom and 1/8 teaspoon of clove.  Mix in the apples.  I wish that I would have used brown sugar but didn't think of it until I had already poured in the white sugar.

I totally cheated and used premade pie crust.  Pie crust is my enemy and I still can only get one in four to turn out well :(  The nifty tool came from Target it's by Nordic Ware.  The back side cuts the dough in the perfect sized circle.

I placed the dough in the pie mold and only about a tablespoon of apples fit in without tearing the crust.  Maybe if I had peeled the apples they wouldn't have been so sharp?

Out of two pie crusts I got five pies there should have been six but I tried to over stuff one with apples.  Before baking I cut small slits in the top for venting.  

They baked for about 25 minutes at 375 the whole house smelled of apple pie goodness.  We had ours with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce delicious!!
There were a ton of spiced apples left over (probably enough to make a full sized pie) so we saved them in the fridge and then used them up in oatmeal for school the next day.

Dried Apples

This past week we were gifted to grocery bags full of apples.  We got our dehydrator last summer and hadn't used it yet.  So we sliced up one bag of our apples and placed them in the dehydrator.  Just before bed Jeff played musical layers with them and put them in reverse order from were they started since the bottom ones were getting done much quicker than the top ones.  About 24 hours later the apples were done.  I"m not sure that we were the most efficient with how the vents were open but we don't have a manual and can't find one online (crazy right?) so we are winging this thing all the way!  What's in the jar is all that is left from what we started with mostly due to the kids eating them like candy, so much for stock piling supplies :)  Oh well at least they are going over well with everyone.