The Funky Kitchen

When you’re graciously given a gift of apples (fresh produce! hurray!) it is a blessing. Three boxes of them is a lot to deal with, though, when you know that they aren’t necessarily going to be long lasting on the counter. Recieving so many was my fault, though, she said she had lots, and I said “Sounds good!”

I certainly did enjoy them out of hand while I could, but one can only consume so many apples before wanting to expand their diet to further horizons. And so there was an apple crisp and four (FOUR!) batches of applesauce. It feels like we’ve been swimming in apples around these parts.

So then there was pie. One pie cooked, and enough apples prepared and frozen for three more throughout the winter.  This lovely pie came along to a lovely dinner with some friends. Home made lasagna followed by home made pie? What a great dinner! (Thanks Krista and Mark.)

Are you inundated with apples? Make some pie! A gorgeous pie with a crisp crust, slices of apple baked up golden, redolent with cinnamon, covered in a crumbly streusel topping. This was a pie perfectly suited to the blustery autumn days that have coincided with the coming of the apples.

Apple Pie with Streusel Topping

Pie crust for a 9-inch single crust pie

1/2 Cup butter

3 Tbsp flour

1/4 Cup water

1/4 Cup sugar

1/2 Cup brown sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

8 apples, peeled, cored and sliced

Streusel Topping, recipe to follow

• Crank the oven up to 400 ° F, and while it is preheating melt the butter in a pot.
• Add the flour to create a roux. This is a white roux, don’t move to the next step until the flour is cooked, but don’t let it start getting brown.
• Add the water, sugars and cinnamon, and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for a few minutes.
• While simmering, get your pie crust rolled out and into the pan.
• Remove the sauce from heat and combine with the apples, stirring to coat.
• Pour everything into the pie crust.
• Top with crumbly streusel topping.
• Bake the pie for 15 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 350 ° F, continuing to bake for an additional 40 minutes, or until the juices are thick, apples are soft and the streusel is golden.

Apple pie is always best served warm, and had we had some, I’m sure it would have been great with ice cream. A la mode anyone?

Streusel Topping

1/2 Cup flour

4 Tbsp butter, melted

4 Tbsp sugar

1 1/2tsp cinnamon

• Place everything in a bowl and combine (I like to use my fingers, and if you do too , make sure to wash your hands well!) until crumbly.
• Use to top pies, apple crisps, muffins, or whatever else your heart desires.

What do you do when you’ve got a group of friends over for the evening, and everybody is yearning for a snack?

You make kettle corn of course!

I’d worked under the assumption for quite a while that you couldn’t make kettle corn at home, there must have been some special equipment or tool or technique that made it too obscure or difficult to do in your own kitchen. I know, pretty silly, because not only can you make it at home in a matter of minutes, you don’t really need any fancy tools!

Silly me, thinking kettle corn was a magical thing to buy from the man at the farmer’s market.

Kettle Corn

(adapted from Instructables’ How to Make Kettle Corn)

1-2 Tbsp vegetable oil

1/4 Cup popcorn kernels

3 Tbsp sugar

salt for sprinkling

• Find a pot and it’s matching lid (sometimes a feat in itself!).
• Place the pot over medium-high heat and add the vegetable oil, giving the pot a jiggle to have the oil evenly coat the bottom.
• When the oil is hot, add the popcorn kernels, they should make a single layer at the bottom of the pot.
• Continuously shake the pot so that that kernels are not sitting still, this way they won’t burn.
• When the kernels just begin to pop, sprinkle the sugar over top of them. Place the lid on the pot, and continue shake shake shaking, burnt popcorn is no good.
• When the popping of the corn slows, and there are a few seconds between the pops, take a peek under the lid. If most of the kernels are popped, pour everything out into a large bowl.
• Sprinkle the popcorn liberally with salt, and give it a minute or two to cool before offering it to your guests, the sugar is molten at first and can burn your fingers.

I made two batches to feed my hungry friends. Don’t double the recipe and try to do it all at once, or else there won’t be room in the pot for all of the kernels to pop.

The boys look pretty ravenous, maybe I should have made three batches…

There is something to be said for spending time in the kitchen. There is hub bub and moments of frantic rushing, a substitutions and people sneaking tastes when they shouldn’t be (I’m looking at you Mister!).

At the same time though, there are the days when the kitchen offers refuge.  You can spend some time, no matter how brief, clearing your mind and smoothing the frizz of stress out of your day and allowing a glimpse at the serene that life can be. Cutting up apples for applesauce provided some brief sanctuary from textbook stacks and still ‘in process’ houses. Simple repetitive actions become meditative: clean, quarter, core. Finding some calm saved my day.

That, and the applesauce you get is just too undeniably good.

Pure and Simple Applesauce

A few pounds of apples (I got a box of them from my mom’s tree. Mmm… Norland apples)

Water

Lemon juice

• Thoroughly wash your apples.
• Fill a pot about half way with water, and add a squeeze of lemon juice. When you cut your apples up, you put them into the pot and the lemon juice will prevent them from getting oxidized and brown.
• Cut away any imperfections, like bruises, and then quarter and core the apples. Add them to the pot.
• When all of the apples are in the pot, drain off the water until there is about an inch remaining. Add another small squeeze of lemon juice (you could probably leave the extra lemon juice out, but I was just paranoid about oxidized apple sauce).
• Place the pot over medium-high heat and cover with a lid. Let the apples bubble away until they are very soft or start falling apart. Stir occasionally.
• Let the apples cool a little, so that you won’t burn yourself putting them through the colander and pestle.
• Press everything through the colander with the pestle and discard the skins.

• If you made lots you can preserve your applesauce by freezing it in batches, or canning it. Or you could just eat a lot of applesauce!

And with the stir, press and squish of the colander and pestle, let applesauce making massage the tension out of your day. I’ve got to thank my Mum for the apples, maybe I’ll give her a jar of applesauce.