Blue Jeans and Cotton Tees

One of our favorite family traditions is our Annual Iron Chef Competition at the Remix.

Since we are a family of foodies (people who love to read about, talk about, think about, make, and eat food) our very own Iron Chef Competition just makes sense.

Our rules are simple. The official judges (Nana and the grandkids) chose a secret ingredient and announce it a few weeks in advance. Any one – of any age – can enter as many entries as they wish.

The day of the event all of the entries are placed on a table, labeled and given a small plastic cup to hold the votes. Whenever we are all assembled and quiet (now that’s a major undertaking!), each chef shows their dish and describes the ingredients.

Then we all go around the table taking samples of everything. We each have a small cup of M & M’s that we use for voting by putting them in the cups of our favorite dishes.

This year’s secret ingredient was apples.

We had everything from apple muffins to apple salads. We had apple brownies, apple snacks, and apple desserts. We even had apple butter pancakes!

Some of the amazing entries were:

The simple: “Thick Skinned Apple” – an apple that was peeled, then peanut butter was used to re-apply the peel.

The Chocolate: Caramel Apple Bars

The Unique: Apple Salsa

The Artistic: A Rice Krispie sculpture of William Tell’s Son complete with apple and arrow!

It was a fun and delicious family activity!

Here’s a heart-healthy recipe from Nana that fits right into any fall menu…

Our family likes to pass magazines around, round-robin style, and it was in one of those magazines that I found this heart-healthy recipe.

Since we hosting a weekly Bible Study, I need to create a different snack each week and since we had some delicious “handed around” apples, this recipe was the perfect fit!

What is a Snickerdoodle?  It is an old-fashioned cookie using basic ingredients much like a sugar cookie, except it is rolled in sugar & cinnamon.

It probably originated in the late 1800’s in New England with people from a German and Dutch background.  Unfortunately there is no clue as to how they got their name.

This modern “healthy” recipe has no eggs, uses oil instead of butter and has whole wheat flour. The cookie has a cake-like texture.  It’s good with a glass of milk, a cup of coffee, tea or hot chocolate!

Snacky Apple Snickerdoodles Cookie
From: Heart Healthy Magazine
Yield: 36 cookies

Ingredients:

1 Cup All-Purpose Flour
1 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
½ Cup Non-fat Dry Milk Powder
½ tsp. Baking Soda
½ tsp. Ground Cinnamon
1 Dash Salt
1 Cup Low-fat Vanilla Yogurt
½ Cup Honey
4 Tbs. Unsweetened Applesauce
2 Tbs. Oil
1 Cup Peeled & Diced Raw Apples

Topping:
2 Tbs. White Sugar
½ tsp. Cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375°F. In a large bowl, combine flour, milk powder, baking soda, ¼ tsp cinnamon, and salt; Set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the yogurt, honey, applesauce, and oil.

Stir the applesauce mixture into the flour mixture all at once, stirring until just combined. Stir in apples until just combined.

Using a rounded tablespoon, spoon dough onto ungreased baking sheets.

Combine sugar and cinnamon to make topping. Sprinkle over dough.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool.  After cooled they can be stored in freezer containers in the freezer for up to 1 month, if they last that long!

Until next time,

Nana

There were over 20 bushels of apples on my back porch.

I avoided that porch for days because I really didn’t want to deal with them. It seemed as if they grew in number every day. I would close my eyes at night and see gigantic apples rising up and chasing me.

So what does one do with over 20 bushels of apples? A lot.

First we needed to determine the kind of apple. While red delicious apples are wonderful to eat, they aren’t good for cooking, sauce or baking. So they are carefully picked over and left in a cool spot to be eaten. My unheated porch works well, but a refrigerator would also work.

The Granny Smith apples are very firm and hard. They are waiting patiently to be made into pies, crisps and other delicious treats.  They will do fine in “cold storage” on the porch for a few weeks or even months. If they start getting soft before we use them- we’ll cut them and freeze them.

Before we store apples we always look for bruises or blemishes and eat those fruit first. An apple with firm flesh and no bruising or cuts will keep much longer. The saying “one bad apple spoils the bunch” is absolutely true!

The Yellow Delicious, Red Rome and Jonathon we processed into applesauce, apple pie filling, and apple butter. We also used our apple corer/peeler on some and froze them in quart bags to be used all winter in pies and crisps.

I now have a 3 year supply of apple butter, a 2 year supply of applesauce, and enough apples in the freezer for several pies this winter. And I still have apples!

So I boxed up several bushels and shared them with my sisters, my sister-in-law, my friend from Michigan, and anyone else who happened along and looked hungry.

Crate by crate, box by box I’m making a dent in the piles! What an amazing harvest!

The last two years we’ve had dismal apple harvests.

They’ve been so bad that last year I had to import apples from my sister-in-law in North Dakota to make applesauce.

This year is a totally different story!

Apple trees that have never had an apple are loaded this year. There are so many apples in southern Iowa that I’m afraid to look people in the eye for fear they will offer me some.

I’ve even heard of people leaving random bags of apples on the porches of unsuspecting neighbors. We might need to start locking our car doors.

Every potluck and church dinner has row after row of apple pies, apple cobbler, apple crisp, apple salad, and apple muffins.

I’ve already done over 58 quarts of applesauce and we have barely touched the apple tree. Can new apples sprout over night?

Right now I have 4 banana boxes of apples sitting in my porch reminding me that I’m not done yet.

Yet, I want to get as much out of these as I can because I don’t know if there will be a harvest next year.

So my plans for the week are pretty well decided. Applesauce, apple butter, apple pie filling, then lather rinse, repeat.

Apple crisp anyone?