a simple recipe for your weekend : baked apples with walnuts and brown sugar

I wrote a little about our apple picking days last week, but I will never be able to completely explain the depth and heart behind such a simple tradition. Sometimes, no matter how you try, words cannot completely encapsulate all that you want to say. It's hard to explain how much it means to me. I will never be able to totally describe the feeling of walking to the backyard on frosty, crackly grass, paper bags in hand and oftentimes mittens on fingers, to pull apple after apples off the trees. Or how when we mash them, the smell is thick in the air like cider and leaves the scent on your fingers, in your hair, pressed into the folds of your clothes. Slicing apples until your fingers are prunes, the taste of the first dried apple, tart and sweet and crackly while still soft, adding a dash of extra cinnamon to a bowl of applesauce before settling down, still sticky, to eat it. The comfort and wonder and wholesome taste of food that you've made with your own hands, picked from your own land.

It's a wonderful thing.

Today, I'm sharing a simple recipe. Sometimes people say things are simple, when they are really marvelously complex and stating their simplicity just sounds good. When I say this recipe is simple, I truly mean it. It's humble and easily adaptable and hearty -- simple fare, comfort food. Food tastes so much better when it's homemade and from the heart, no matter how cliche that sounds. This is one of those recipes. It's easy to make and goes wonderfully paired with a steaming cup of chai or freshly brewed coffee. There's a comfort in baking it, slicing and coring the apples, stuffing with brown sugar and walnuts, and finally, scooping up bites of the steaming, crackly, sweet, and all around wonderful, fall-ish food. We went through a whole bag of apples we picked one Saturday making dozens of these baked apples and I hope you enjoy them as much as we did. :)

Happy Friday, sweet friends!

Baked Apples

Ingredients
Apples
Walnuts
Brown Sugar
Butter
Cinnamon

Directions
Wash and core the apples, making sure to hollow out the top so that it's wider. Mix brown sugar with a little cinnamon and stuff the apples generously. Top with walnuts, stuff in more brown sugar, and slather with a little butter. Put in the oven at 350 for about an hour, take out, and enjoy with a cup of tea and a windy day. Feel free to have seconds.

a simple summer breakfast

One of my favorite things about summer is the laziness that ensues every morning. Breakfast is pushed back to ten in the afternoon and can include anything from a bowl of cereal to a dutch baby pancake to feta and tomato omelets. We cluster in the kitchen, some of us still wearing pajamas and sleep in our eyes, and gather around the table, smacking strawberries, sipping milk (vanilla coconut is my favorite), or eating bacon, whatever the day calls for. The table is scattered with books and decks of cards and half-empty cups full of orange juice or water or milk.


Yesterday, Chloe made breakfast for our family and it was delicious. I'm sharing the simple recipe with you all today, simply because it was a joy to eat. Sort of like another last summer hurrah, and we ate it up, literally. It was difficult to not lick my plate. I decided to be civilized and drank it up with my spoon. Oops.

Eggs with Béarnaise Sauce

(a Béarnaise Sauce is basically hollandaise with herbs. Also, this is not the most precise recipe because most of it is added to taste based on your preferences, so keep that in mind. :) )
Ingredients
1 1/2 lemons to taste
3 egg yolks
1 stick of butter
tarragon to taste








Recipe
Separate the egg yolks and put in pan with chunks of butter. Heat to medium and whisk vigorously until the butter is melted, then immediately take off the heat so the eggs don't break. If they do break, put an ice cube in the pan and whisk it in until melted. Add the lemon and herbs and whisk together gently. Pour over your eggs (we preferred them fried, but you can scramble them as well) and enjoy.






Today's agenda? We are clinging to the summer before starting school up again tomorrow. We're already consuming copious amounts of chai in order to usher in fall, yet lemonade is in order, if only to celebrate the end of summer. As I write this, I can hear the girls playing card games with my mom, and I'm off to shut my computer and join in the next round.

Happy Labor Day.

h