Granny’s Apple Pie

I saw this photo and it made me totally crack up! Haaa!!! I will have to do one like this sometime!

photo credit: L. Marie

I made apple pie late last night on this crazy whim. It was a cold evening, and I was desperate to bake something. I enjoyed it so much I almost broke out the led christmas lights and started playing carols! Well, about the pie: this is all that is left.

I have posted my recipe for “industrial-sized” apple pie, but I have never posted my really easy recipe for “regular” apple pie. It’s a little different than the standard pie, because I reduce the sugar and add molasses. This gives it a heartier, less sweet flavor. It’s very good, especially with vanilla ice cream. I use store-bought pie crusts for the pie. I don’t bother making dough, rolling it, etc. Too much work. The pre-made crusts are always flaky, and they cut the pie-making time down to 1/3 of what it would be, making it all from scratch. I also have bags of pre-sliced apple in the freezer. Whenever we want to make a pie, we thaw out the apples, throw the ingredients together, and lay out the pre-made crusts. SO EASY! It takes me about 15 minutes to get a pie in the oven, from start to finish.

Granny’s Apple Pie

6-7 cups peeled, diced apples
1 Tablespoon cinnamon
1 Tablespoon tapioca
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses
Pinch of salt

Mix the ingredients quickly in a large bowl. Dump into the pie pan lined with a crust. Lay another crust over the pan. Pinch the two crusts together firmly, to keep juices from bursting the seams. Make a few slits on the top (or carve out a fancy Macintosh apple as in the photo above) to allow steam to escape.

Place in a preheated oven set to 375 degrees. Bake for about an hour. Allow to cool slightly. Serve warm with ice cream!

Homemade Peanut Butter

Oh, I saw this recipe for Homemade Peanut Butter at Family.com in their recipes section. It looks so good! Store-bought peanut butter has become so expensive and is filled with so many salts and preservatives, yuk! Plus, I haven’t forgotten the PB recall a while back because a factory had contaminated PB with listeria. I am moving away from factory-made foods and going back to basics. We are consciously eating much healthier that ever before.

Anyway, this recipe is nice. It makes just one pint of PB, though. Peanuts and honey tend to be expensive foods (I have considered growing my own peanuts sometime), don’t expect to save loads of dough with this recipe so that you can buy that sterling silver jewelry you’ve had your eye on. This is probably more of a snack food than a staple.

Here’s the recipe. SO EASY!

Ingredients
16 ounces of peanuts (I love the honey-roasted kind but plain or salted would be fine too)
3 tablespoons of canola oil
1 tablespoon of honey

Directions

1. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade, whiz the peanuts until finely ground and beginning to get pasty. This may take a couple of minutes.
2. Add oil and honey and pulse about 10 more times until completely incorporated.
3. Taste for salt or sweetness and add salt or honey to taste.
4. Put in a 1/2 pint mason jar or similarly sized container and store in the refrigerator.

See more recipes at the website. They have lots of very nice, simple recipes. Whenever I am out of ideas, I always check out the site.

A Little Visual Cooking Incentive

I found this website called TasteSpotting. WOW. The stuff looks so good. It’s a “pictorial” kind of cookbook. There are almost 3,000 pages filled with photos. You can click a photo card to view the recipe, and print it out from your Acer Aspire or whatever. Yum! I saw a lot of Asian recipes, and LOADS based on fish and vegetables. I’m always looking for more vegetable dishes ideas, so this is perfect.

But look out. There are plenty of luscious recipes, too– some complex, and some terribly easy. I saw this one:

Isn’t it pretty? It’s simply white chocolate chips in raspberries! Oooooo lllaaaa laaa!

Yummy Chobani Yogurt

In my continuing quest to eat healthier more frequently (she says as she wipes pizza crumbs from her mouth), I found this very unusual yummy and healthy yogurt recently. Well, actually, the Hubs discovered it. It’s very pricey, and am usually blind to any yogurts over 50 cents a pop.

It’s Greek yogurt. It has NO corn syrup!! This strawberry yogurt does have some sugar, but I ate the honey yogurt and that had no added sugar!! And the protein amount is higher than many other yogurts. It’s also loaded with all that happy bacteria that is good for the digestive system. Yum. While eating Chobani may not qualify you for lower term life insurance quotes, you will feel better after eating it.

Like I said, the yogurt is pricey– it’s $1 for a small container at my local Hannaford’s. The nice thing is that the yogurt is firmer and a lot less sweet than other yogurts, so the kids dislike Chobani. Which leaves all the more for me.

Super-Easy Hummus Salad Wrap

My daughter, a fanatic about hummus (good girl!), created this terrific little lunch wrap. She made one for me the other day, and it is so good that I just have to blog about it! We don’t have a name for it… maybe Super-Easy Hummus Salad Wrap?

I love the colors, too. It looks like a plate full of toys or something. Pretty!

All you do is spread some hummus (we used Roasted Red Pepper hummus onto some flat bread. Layer it with salad greens and a few diced red peppers. YUMMMM. It’s surprisingly filling and it’s so healthy!

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