Cooking What's in Season - Cinnamon Spiced Apples

I had someone at the farmer's market today ask me what I was doing with my apples this fall.  I figured since I just did a canning class this past weekend and we canned Cinnamon Spiced Apples I would show you what we did. 

First I washed the apples...

Then I peeled the apples.  You can peel with a knife, if you don't have one of these little jewels!

Next, I used the apple wedger to remove the core and cut the apple into wedges... 

This step can be omitted if you use the apple peeler corer slicer (the little handy dandy doo-dad above this pic) to cut the apples into a spiral shape.  I wanted wedges so I just used it to peel the apples.

I tossed the apples in a citric acid solution, called Fruit Fresh.  This step can be skipped as well if you don't care if the apples turn a little brown (which they will be by the time you dump cinnamon all over 'em), or if you're going to cook and serve them the same day.  Since I was having a class and sending a pint home with everyone who attended I went ahead and used it.

I tossed the apples in the cinnamon spice mixture till coated well...

Last, I melted a little butter, and tossed the apples into a pot to cook till fork tender...

  After cooking for a while the sugar and apples will create a nice juice.

This is a wonderful fall side dish that complements many different foods.  It can be used as a topping for pancakes, a side dish at dinner, or even over vanilla ice cream for dessert.  If you get a large number of apples you could try your hand at canning them, or if you're not up for that yet, cook just enough for a meal or two.  C'mon, make yer granny proud!

Here's the recipe:  Cinnamon Spiced Apples

When Life Gives You Lemons... Make Quark!

The other day I made a fresh batch of yogurt and I let it culture a little longer than usual in an attempt to make it more of a custard style yogurt, but, for some reason, the longer I let it sit the thinner it got.  I wasn't happy with it, so I decided to turn it into 'farmers cheese', also known overseas as 'quark'.  This kind of cheese has lots of different uses.  First off, here's how the cheese came out:

The first way I used it couldn't be more simple... just spread it on bread of any kind!

After we all tried it on bread, Racey and I agreed it might be really good in a pasta-bake style dish, sort of in place of ricotta since it has a bit of a 'dry crumble' type of texture to it.  So tonight I whipped up a simple dish of penne pasta, spaghetti sauce (all couponed of course), tossed in a pound of browned ground beef, three cloves of minced fresh garlic, a few dashes of garlic salt, and mixed in 3/4 of the ball of farmer cheese until it melted and was spread through the whole mixture.   I dumped it all into a 9x13 casserole dish and baked it for about 15 minutes until the sauce was bubbling hot and then sprinkled the top with about 1 1/2 cups of shredded mozzarella.  I let that bake another few minutes until the cheese was melted and slightly browned on top and served it up.

The lesson for today?  Just because something doesn't come out quite right or may even seem ruined, it can probably be saved somehow.  Racey is quite fond of telling people how I once flopped six loaves of bread and now we have more bread crumbs than we could use in two years!

Tomorrow I'll post a quick little how-to on making the farmer cheese so you don't feel too disheartened if you try the yogurt how-to and it doesn't come out quite right.  So when life gives you lemons... make quark!

Simple Gifts

  
Many times people associate the "Simple Frugal Life" with hard work, sacrifice, little to no entertainment, and an endless line of things you can't have because it doesn't fit into the budget.  I guess for some it is that way, but for me I choose to admit to myself and my peers (no fronting here) that I do have budget limitations, but I have endless resources at my fingertips and an abundance of time and love in my heart.  It's very true that we can't splurge on expensive gifts, dine-out meals, or the latest clothing fashion, but what we can do is recreate the gift, meal, or fashion our self.   

A friend of mine recently celebrated her 40ith birthday, and had a wonderful get together with several couples.  As usual, a gift was not expected, or even anticipated by our birthday girl, but I wanted to give her a little treat to show her how special she was to me!  This is how I got around a budget that has zero dollars in the gift category.

I will admit, I did spend money on this gift, but the total was under $10.00.

This is how I did it:

• First I picked a theme, and since it's turned into fall around here I thought it would be nice to make a little "just for me fall escape pack" as a gift. 

• I bought the wine at Wal-mart and it was my big splurge item.  The cost was $5.64 (if I remember correctly) and I was able to take it out of my monthly food budget. I used ribbon I already had, and took a few sprigs of wheat from the fall decorations I had decorating my own house.

• Next I made her a Pumpkin Spice Sugar Scrub, and used a recycled jar and ribbon.  I had all the ingredients for the scrub in my existing pantry so no out of pocket cost there.

• I bought a votive candle and glass holder for $1.00 for the pair.  I suggest to keep your eye out for things like this at thrift stores.  

•  The bag was bought at Goodwill for $1.21.  I love the bag personally!  It was one of those times as a woman when you find something that is just up your alley, and you want to keep it for yourself. But you sit there for a minute or two and wrestle with yourself over how much you really like or love the person who you are giving it too!!  Well as you can see she won out! ;-)  The tag inside was from Bath & Body Works, I love it when other people buy nice things and then just dis-guard them as trash.

• Last on the list is chocolate.  What kind of friends gives you wine, body scrub, and candle lighting but no chocolate?!?  I know it's the cheap chocolate, but it still does the job!

 As you can see a little thought, work, and sacrifice went into getting this gift ready, but is that not what gift giving is supposed to be about?

I encourage you to try your hand at something like this. Even if your budget can accommodate gift expenses this is a nice way to show someone important that you really thought about them, not just the fact that you bought something.

~ See you tomorrow...