Baked Apples

Happy Thanksgiving! 

On this wonderful, joyous holiday that is mostly celebrated with large amounts of food, I felt it was my duty to post a new recipe. After our wild week last week with recipes every day, things have significantly toned down.  But don’t worry, we’re still here!  And for those of you Harry Potter haters... we got it out of our system.  You can read now.

A bit of sad news that is slightly Harry Potter related – I left my beloved camera, a graduation present I got in May, at the movie theater that night.  When I came back to the theater the next day to look for it, it was gone, and not in the theater’s lost and found.  I’m really really depressed about it.  I'm a very responsible person - I don't lose things, particularly not expensive things.  I really miss it.  I know it’s just a thing, but I loved that camera.  I used it all the time.  It’s my own fault, though, I suppose.  If I could physically give myself a roundhouse kick to the gut, I would.  It sort of feels like I already did.

So because of my camera loss, I had to use my webcam today, which is less than stellar quality.  In fact, it’s sort of like looking through a really blind person’s glasses.  The pictures are pretty blurry.  I’ll fix this camera situation soon, though, don’t worry.  This is just a temporary fix.  I hope.  (What I really hope is whoever took my camera will return it, but who am I kidding?)

Anywho, there have been a couple of granny smith apples sitting in my refrigerator for a while now, and yesterday my mom suggested baked apples.  I had never tried one, so, interested, I looked up a recipe.  It seemed easy enough.  And then as I looked at my notes for the blog, I realized that baked apples were actually mentioned in literature!  Here’s a quote from Jane Austen’s Emma.  For those of you familiar with the story and characters, this is the overly talkative Mrs. Bates speaking.

“About the middle of the day [Jane] gets hungry, and there is nothing she likes so well as these baked apples, and they are extremely wholesome... I have so often heard Mr. Woodhouse recommend a baked apple.  I believe it is the only way that Mr. Woodhouse thinks the fruit thoroughly wholesome.” (Austen 210)

Well if Miss Jane Fairfax likes nothing so well as a baked apple, we’d better try it.  I got my recipe, slightly adapted, from AllRecipes.com.  That site is so awesome.

Baked Apples

Servings: 1

1 granny smith apple

1 tbsp cubed butter

2 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp apple juice

water

Cinnamon and nutmeg to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).  (As my oven was preheating, it started to smoke heavily.  Word to the wise – make sure your oven is clean before you undertake a baking project.  Fortunately the smoke cleared by the time I was ready to pop my apple in the oven.)

2. Core the apple completely. Not the prettiest coring job, but it works.

3. Stuff each apple with 2 tablespoons brown sugar and 1 tablespoon cubed butter (pre-mixed together).  I also peeled a ring around the center of the apple to vent.

4. Add the apple juice to the baking dish, as well as just enough water to cover the bottom.  Place the apple in the baking dish.  Sprinkle with cinnamon and nutmeg.

5. Loosely cover apple with foil and bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes.  Uncover and bake an additional 10-15 minutes, until the apple is tender.

My apple took a while to get to the tenderness I wanted.  I was hoping for a super soft apple, like in apple pie, but it was a little firmer than that.  It was still delicious, though, and with the uber buttery sauce, it was a “wholesome” yet tasty fall treat.  If you want, you can even thicken the sauce by putting it in a pan and boiling it down into a sugary syrup, or just add a little corn starch.  Then you could have vanilla ice cream with your apple and drizzle your apple-cinnamony sauce over all of it.  Mmmm...

The beauty of this recipe is that you don’t have to worry when you make more than one.  It’s the same for each individual apple.    

Well, I’d better go.  It’s nearly 4:00 a.m. and I’ve got stuff to cook tomorrow.  Again, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

P.S. We have over 1,000 hits.  That is SO COOL!!

Back to Back Posts: English Food

So after I wrote the last post, I was talking to Mary about English food. Both of us have been lucky enough to go to England (not together, unfortunately). I had a great time there and I know Mary loved it there too. I wanted to make a picture post of food that I ate in England, to give you all an idea of what English food is like ...and I just miss England. Here we go! (Caution: you may see me in these pictures as a blonde...this might be weird for some of you)



I had this lovely meal in the Chester Cathedral in Chester, England. That is Dandellion and Burdock soda ( I still have the bottle!) and Tuna with Sweet Corn Sandwich. The soda tasted kind of like...rootbeer and dirt and greenery... But I liked it!


This is an Egg Custard. I was in the town where the Bronte sister's parsonage was and went around the corner from this pub to the little bakery. The lady laughed at me when I asked what it was.


This is Yorkshire pudding. I was totally not expecting it! (Oh the naive girl I was). This is Yorkshire pudding with bangers (sausages). It's pretty good but definitely greasy and salty, like a lot of English food.


Before I left for Europe, my dad was so excited for me to have a Ploughman's lunch. I was excited when I finally got it but it's basically just a sandwich platter. I liked the pearl onions a lot =)


I love this picture. I was at the tea room directly across the street from Jane Austen's house and my friend Annie and I had tea and crumpitts with jam and clotted cream. I'm not even kidding. It was the most picturesque thing of the day!


I love this picture too. I just saw it in a random English town one day...it made me happy =)


This is in London. I was going to have fish and chips when I was by the coast but I was so bus sick I couldn't eat anything. The guy got mad at me because my friend Annie had other food that she wanted to sit down and eat at his restaurant and I ordered fish and chips. When he told me we couldn't eat there, I told him to make it to go...and he was grumpy about it, hence the fork.


Yes, this is also London. Yes it's raining. Yes I'm sitting ON THE GROUND in the middle of one of the dirtiest cities in the world eating sushi. This was right before I was going to see Les Miserables (I was leaning against the theatre). I went to this sushi restaurant that you went through a line with a box and picked out individually wrapped sushi rolls. It was so cool!


This is English junk food! I bought this right before I got on the Chunnel for Paris. I love English chocolate. =)



Oh, so back to the Harry Potter theme...I got to go to Lacock Abbey, where they filmed parts of the first two Harry Potter movies.


This is inside Lacock Abbey...looks like Hogwarts, huh? That's because it is!!


And finally...platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station in London. This was an interesting day. I dragged a bunch of my friends to go to this landmark...many of them didn't find it a priority, but I definitely did. I begged the people who came with me to videotape me asking a person in the station "Excuse me, could you tell me where I might find Platform 9 3/4?" (complete with British accent)...but none of them wanted to do it...so I just asked a worker (no British accent) who smiled and told me where it was.

Wow, I miss England now. I wish I could go back as the person I am now. A year ago feels like forever, and I've grown up and learned a lot since then. I want to go back! Oh yeah, I also saw a guy outside the Museum of Modern Art in London that I thought was Daniel Radcliffe. I took a creepy picture of him so I could zoom in and confirm if it was indeed Daniel Radcliffe...it wasn't.