Tragic Sandwich

Tag: apple

  • Fall Cooking: Apple Bread

    One year, when I lived in New Jersey, my alumni club went apple-picking. It was the first time I’d gone, and I went a bit overboard in terms of variety and quantity. In an attempt to put them to use, I began baking. And since I lived alone, I took what I baked to the office. After a couple of days, one of my co-workers sent me an email that said, “This is a lot of baking. Is everything okay?”

    I answered, “Yes. I just have a lot of apples.” And she said, “Well, then, keep baking.”

    Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I found a couple of recipes that I liked, including an apple walnut coffee cake–I should make that again someday–and apple bread. And it turned out that I wasn’t the only one who liked it. I sent a loaf to my brother at his office (the most reliable destination for packages at that point). And when I called him to ask about something else, the department assistant said, “Are you the one who sent him that apple bread? Every time I walk by his office, it smells so good.”

    I said, “Tell him I said to give you some of it,” and she said, “You know, I think I will.”

    She did, and it turned out that my brother liked it so much that it’s become a fall staple. If we’re together for Thanksgiving–unfortunately, we weren’t this year–I make a loaf and take it with me. I’ve been known to send it to him and my sister-in-law, although this year we’ve had so much going on with Baguette that I didn’t manage to get that done.

    However, it turns out that the mother of one of Baguette’s friends is having Baby #2 a little ahead of schedule–but with enough time to share some freezer food with her. So today, I’m making apple bread.

    Apple Bread

    Ingredients
    1-1/2 cups flour
    1/2 tsp. salt
    1/2 tsp. baking soda
    1/4 tsp. baking powder
    cinnamon and nutmeg to taste (I use a lot)
    1/2 cup vegetable oil
    3/4 cup sugar
    2 eggs
    1/2 tsp. vanilla
    1 cup peeled and chopped apple

    Instructions
    1. Grease and flour a loaf pan and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
    2. Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
    3. In a bowl, mix oil and sugar. Add egg and vanilla.
    4. Combine dry and liquid ingredients.
    5. Stir in apples. Pour into prepared pan.
    6. Bake 50–60 minutes.

    Cool completely on wire rack before removing from pan.

  • Fruit-Full

    I feel bad about throwing away food. I want to eat more vegetables. Guess which one was happening? So we switched to the fruit-only box.

    box of organic fruit from local farms

    This week’s CSA box:

    • grapes
    • peaches
    • pluot
    • nectarines
    • apples

    And while the jury’s still out on grapes, we already know that Baguette loves stone fruits and apples. But I have to admit, I do miss the waxed cardboard box that we used to get.

  • Creative Cooking

    One of the things I love about the CSA boxes we’ve been getting is that they’re a mix of the known and unknown. That means that I can easily eat an apple or come up with a use for fresh basil–but I’m also forced to cook with ingredients that I wouldn’t necessarily pick up on my own. That means finding new recipes, which is sometimes frustrating but mostly fun.

    locally farmed fruits and vegetables

    So, what am I going to do with those beets?

  • Fresh Week, Fresh Start

    Well, last week was a bear, wasn’t it?

    Over the weekend, Baguette and Mr. Sandwich went to swim class and our regular playdate with Bestie, while I went to my alumni club’s annual lunch, which raises money for scholarships. I haven’t been able to go for the past several years–it’s been too long a time to leave Baguette–but this year we made it work.

    On Sunday, I took Baguette over to see Mr. Sandwich’s parents, who had been out of town, and he went for a bike ride–something he hasn’t been able to do in a couple of months. So it was a weekend full of doing things we would like to do more often, which is pretty cool.

    Yesterday, our second CSA box arrived, full of fresh fruits and vegetables. What was in this week’s box from Good Life Organics?

    fresh fruits and vegetables
    Strawberries, potatoes, zucchini, oranges, apples, rosemary, an avocado, and chard

    So last night, Baguette and I started out by snacking on some strawberries. Mr. Sandwich spiced up some chicken thighs and put them in the toaster/convection oven, and I cut up and boiled some potatoes. While the potatoes (and some garlic) cooked, I sliced up a zucchini and salted it. Then I sauteed it in coconut oil with more garlic (we love our garlic), adding lemon zest and lemon juice right at the end. I mashed the potatoes with the skins on and sprinkled the zucchini with parmesan. Presto, a fresh spring dinner!

    Today, Baguette and I are taking more of the strawberries to eat during our respective days–me with my yogurt and granola for breakfast, and her with her macaroni and cheese (by the way, we’re trying some other brands in the hope of reducing food dyes) for lunch.

    I’m trying to decide how to use the remaining zucchini–should I make a soup with my remaining meatballs and tortellini? Or should I slice it up for zucchini chips?

    And if anyone has a great, easy recipe for chard, I’m all ears!

  • The Farmer in the Dell

    Baguette’s day care has become a delivery point for a CSA program. For those of you not familiar with CSA programs, they’re basically a way to get food from local farmers without all that aggravating hassle of going to the farmers’ market.

    (We actually live quite close to a very nice farmers’ market. I used to go every week. Then Baguette started eating produce in the grocery store, and I can’t inflict that on farmers.)

    This farm delivers every other week and offers a few different options. I opted to get 1/2 of a “Family Box”, because it seemed like a good way to test the waters . . . er . . . produce. After all, I don’t want to find yet another way to pay for food that we don’t eat. There’s too much of that going around already.

    This week was our first delivery. What did we get?

    • carrots
    • zucchini
    • kale
    • peas
    • lemon
    • oranges
    • tangerines
    • apples
    • avocados

    All well and good, but what does that look like?

    CSA box #1

    I started off by eating an apple, because that’s easy. It takes no creativity or skill to eat an apple.

    Then I upped my game a bit to have a kale smoothie. Kale, apple juice, fresh lemon juice, and honey, with a few ice cubes.

    It was pretty tasty, but I don’t think my blender is optimized for kale. I’d drink (well, really, guzzle, because I’m able to eat dinner at exactly the point in the evening when Baguette insists on me holding her) some of it and then after a moment realize that I now had a mouthful of minced kale. Which needed to be chewed.

    Mr. Sandwich checked out the box o’ food and said, “Let’s have carrots and peas tomorrow night. I’ll make fish, if that’s okay.”

    I think that’ll be just fine.

  • Too Many Apples

    Apples in Hardanger

    So Honest Mom wrote about 12 Signs It’s Fall in Suburbia, and #1 just got me.

    Have you ever been apple-picking? You know, where you drive somewhere far away and pay to pick apples off the tree?

    When I lived in New Jersey, my alumni club organized a trip to a (reasonably local) apple orchard. I drove three women I’d never met before to a vaguely rural section of New York, where we and several other cars full of people paid good money to pick apples.

    As I discovered when I got home, a lot of apples.

    It was clear that I would have to come up with a use for these apples. And so I began to search the Internet. I found a few recipes and whipped up a batch of apple bread, which I took to the office the next day.

    There were still apples.

    So a day or so later, I baked an apple coffee cake and took that to the office.

    At this point, one of my co-workers IM’d me, asking, “This is a lot of baking. Is everything okay?”

    I assured her that everything was fine, I’d just been apple picking.

    Then I made more apple bread and shipped it to my brother in Texas. When I called to let him know to expect it, the receptionist asked, “Are you the one who sent him that apple bread? His office smells so good!” Now my brother makes me bake him apple bread every year.

    You can pick apples here in Southern California, but it’s quite a drive from us, and I think we’ll wait until Baguette is a little older. Plus every time I’ve gone, I’ve missed the actual picking part and have just bought a bag of apples. It’s a long way to go to not pick apples.

    So, with no further ado, here’s something to do with your too many apples:

    Apple Bread

    Ingredients
    1-1/2 cups flour
    1/2 tsp. salt
    1/2 tsp. baking soda
    1/4 tsp. baking powder
    cinnamon and nutmeg to taste
    1/2 cup vegetable oil
    3/4 cup sugar
    2 eggs
    1/2 tsp. vanilla
    1 cup peeled and chopped apple

    Instructions
    1. Grease and flour a loaf pan and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
    2. Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
    3. In a bowl, mix oil and sugar. Add egg and vanilla.
    4. Combine dry and liquid ingredients.
    5. Stir in apples. Pour into prepared pan.
    6. Bake 50–60 minutes.

    Photo by Tecfan, via Flickr.