Fall is here: Apple Pie

I went and visited my mom a couple weekends ago and we saw this stand on the side of the road and decided to check it. We found these massive green apples and I brought some back. So what do you do with a lot of apples? make apple pie of course.

So I really wasn't kidding, these apples were massive. All the apple bits n the bowl came from one apple
We didn't really have a recipe...
We put in the juice and zest of a lemon (which made the pie very lemony but in a good way), brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Then for the topping we cut butter into flour, brown suagr, cinnamon, and a dash of salt.

The before shot:


And after:


Delicious

Fall has begun!

Meat and Potatoes

I'm not a big meat and potatoes kinda girl. Everyone gets excited about a good steak and mashed potatoes, not me. However this meat/starch combo I can totally do.
And technically this was last night...

So we roasted potatoes with olive oil, fresh rosemary, and salt in the oven and cooked some kielbasa on the stove. Nothing to it, but still a hardy meal (by my viewpoint at least).

Moe's Substitute

I think I always crave beans. Doesn't matter how they are cooked, but there really isn't anything else that I would be willing to eat multiple times a day (and I say this after I had tortillas and refried beans for lunch).

So last night I went to Andrea's house and we both wanted to order Moe's. Unfortunately, there was at least an hr wait for delivery and we were too lazy to go out into the cold.

Our solution was beans with nachos. We just toasted the chips and melted the cheese on a try in the oven. For the beans, we heated black beans with onions and tomatoes. Andrea added a bit of hot sauce, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Basic but so good and easy to make

Hump Day Treat

I've been craving chocolate all day and have been waiting to try a new cookie idea, so the two collided today to make some hump day treats.

A couple of weeks ago I came up with an idea to soak craisins in some wine and put them in a chocolate cookie. Well at the store, I saw dried cherries and thought that was even better. I soaked maybe 2/3 of a cup of dried cherries and then added them to half of the chocolate cookie dough (if my idea turned out to be a fail, I still needed to satisfy my chocolate cravings so I had backupcookies).

The cookies are amazing. Perfect chocolaty cookies. The cherries were not that amazing in the cookie but I think it was more of a texture thing. In a denser cookie maybe even an oatmeal cookie I think they would be stellar.

Heres where i got the cookie recipe:
http://www.lifesambrosia.com/2010/08/chocolate-cookies-with-peanut-butter-cream-cheese-frosting-recipe.html

Corn Fritters and Brown Sugar Butternut Squash

So I had two recipes I wanted to try. They didn't really go together, but really when has that stopped me.

I have never cooked butternut squash and realized a veg peeler would have been wonderful to have. Instead I had to grate the poor squash for a long time and finally got rid of all the peel (took a great deal of effort). I covered the squash in butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, pinch of salt, and orange juice then cooked it in the over. Tasty but needed some more spices (next time).

The corn fritters were really good, I would make them again. Its a mixture of cheese, onions, flour, an egg, paprika, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. Unfortunately they broke apart a little but still yummy especially with tomatoes on top :)

It was an odd combination in the end but a good dinner in the end.

Mexican Cous Cous

So its been a while since I've posted. Basically I was lazy and Kelley was uber busy so there weren't very many legit meals being made. I actually made this a couple nights ago but was too lazy to post it, but im trying to get back into the blog!

I did try to make Indian food again a while ago, unfortunately it failed miserably. Kelley ate it but with good reason we decided to toss the leftovers. I've decided to spare you all and not post/take a pic.

Anyways... this is my Mexican cous cous. We had practically no food in the apt so I just dumped stuff in the pot. I wanted to make Mexican rice, but we had no rice so cou cous came to the rescue. In the end it was black beans, corn, onions, tomatoes, cous cous, bit of lime, and some cheese. I liked it, simple to make but fulfilling, but I'll then again anything with black beans is good to me.