how do you like them apples?

Posted by marne on October 14, 2008 in cook | 11 comments

Growing up you could get red apples and green apples at the grocery store. We always had red delicious apples, oranges or bananas in our lunches and in the fruit bowl. I was never really a fan of that fruit trifecta. I’ve long thought of myself as a vegetable person, but with my determination to eat healthier this year, I decided to eat more fruit. You can probably guess what happened. I now love fruit, and regularly get cravings for it. Now that there are more varieties of apples to choose from, I find myself eating them more and more often. I think the apple love really started when I began thinly slicing apple quarters to feed Sally and the chickens (and the dogs, who think they should get everything the chickens get), and would eat a slice or two while handing them out to the poultry frenzy. Fujis are my absolute favorite, and they seem to be tasting even better now that apple season is in full swing.

I’ve also never been a huge pie fan. When it comes to desserts I’m more of an ice cream and cookies kind of girl. Cake is good too, but pie is a little more risky, what with the crust, which can be too doughy or too burnt, or too soggy. And then the filling-too sweet, too runny, too sour. There are just a lot of variables that all have to work together, and if one falls short, the whole thing is ruined. Of course I can never say never, I mean Thanksgiving would just be off without pumpkin pie, but that’s just once a year. And then I also just saw this. Sour Cream Apple Pie, it’s just too tempting, isn’t it? Well, it was too much for me, so I made it yesterday.

Making a pie is a lot of work, but this was worth every bit of it.

I think you should go make one now, because this one is almost gone.

I made a very small bit of progress on pincushions and chicks, but I spent most of the weekend cleaning junk out of  my workshop/guesthouse/studio/sewing room. I need to decide what to call it and stick to one name for it. Anyway, I’m trying to do the Fall Apartment Therapy Cure on my room, so I’ll have a functional, useful space. I can work out there now, but it does require frequent moving of piles and leaning at precarious angles to reach things. Also, the previous owners got creative with paint, and the walls are a patchwork of really bad colors, so I’m also planning to finally, finally paint over all of it. If you’re interested in following my progress, I have a set of pictures on flickr. Of course there are just before pictures so far, and they are actually quite old, but you’ll get the idea. They’re so ugly I don’t want to post them on my blog. I made a style tray with a few ideas for the finished space:

I’m planning on painting it all white, and then adding bits of bright color. I think it will be a nice place to work.

My legs are killing me from all the bending and crouching, specifically the muscles up the backs of my thighs. I need to find out what exercises to do for those muscles. The last five weeks at work our department has done a stair challange-no riding the elevator at all! I may have gotten a little competitive at the end, when I did 100 flights of stairs on the last day. So I thought my legs were pretty strong, but apparently stair-climbing does not work the back of the thigh.  I guess stretching exercises should be done before any extreme cleaning.