Fall Eating and Reading

Fall is a time for eating and reading.  Really any season is but fall seems to be more so than others.  Weeding is mostly done for the year - just some remnants in the veggie and flower gardens to clean up and compost, some leaves to rake and mulch.  Creating will happen soon too with a fall scrap booking retreat usually scheduled (called off this year but I'll post more about my plans for that weekend later), knitting projects to pick back up.  But right now, as a football game drones on in another part of the house, my thoughts turn to eating and reading.

Eating: Today we made our second trip to the orchard this year.  We typically go with friends and with so little on the calendar this fall, all of our schedules were clear 2 weeks ago.  We met them there and each picked a full bag (about 10 pounds) of SweeTango.  E and I also bought a 10 pound bag of pre-picked Paula Red seconds (not the prettiest bunch of apples but certainly good enough for sauce and a good deal at only a couple of dollars for the whole thing).  I made a batch of applesauce, then some applesauce muffins and also an apple crisp, all of the recipes I have posted before.  It smelled delicious at our house.  The SweeTango are a delicious variety for eating fresh.  It is an apple variety developed at the University of Minnesota (Ska-U-Mah!) and is a cross between the Honeycrisp and the Zestar (which are 2 other U of M "alum" apples).  Crisp, and the perfect mix of sweet and tangy, a SweeTango a day is keeping the doctor away at my house.

The drawback to going early in the picking season is that the apples I love most for baking, Haralson, was not yet ready.  Haralson is yet another U of M developed apple but from way back in 1913!  My friend's favorite apple is MacIntosh and they were not yet available two weeks ago. So she and I made a plan to meet at the orchard again when those apples were ready.  She wasn't available so we met her family at the orchard today and picked Haralson and Honeycrisp.  We had an early dinner/late lunch in the park and I brought dessert.  I had this idea for applesauce cupcakes with apple cider glaze.  It is a work in progress but I will post it here for you to try.  The cupcakes are the same recipe as my applesauce struesel muffin, but subtract off the topping, then add glaze/icing.  As I told E, the only difference between a muffin and a cupcake is frosting.  That happens to be the difference that allows muffins to be ok for breakfast but cupcakes not.

Applesauce Cupcakes with Apple Cider Glaze

Makes about 18 medium size muffins/cupcakes.  Line muffin pan with paper or silicon cups or spray very well with non-stick spray (they will probably still stick).  I love the reusable silicon cups I got many years ago and still use.  If you don't want/need 18 cupcakes, refrigerate the batter in a closed container for use in up to a couple of days, or make and freeze the cupcakes for later.

Preheat oven to 375.  

Combine: 1 1/2 C flour

1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

Mix together: 2 eggs

2/3 C brown sugar

Add eggs/sugar mixture to the dry ingredients.

Stir in: 6 Tbls butter, melted
1 1/2 C applesauce

Mix just until combined.

Divide batter into muffin cups.
Bake for 20 minutes. The top should spring back when touched.

Remove from pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

When cool, top with glaze.

Apple Cider Glaze

In medium bowl, measure about 2 C. powdered sugar

Whisk in small amounts of apple cider (start with 1 tablespoon) until spreadable.

The glaze is the part that needs some tweaking.  I started with a recipe I found on-line which called for 1/4 C cider and 1 C. powdered sugar.  It was waaaaay too runny and all it did was soak into the cupcake.  I added at least another cup of sugar and it was still very liquid.  I really want the cider flavor to pop, though, so next time I will try reducing the cider (cooking to reduce the amount of water) to enhance that flavor without having to use as much liquid.  And I will add the cider gradually (and only the minimum amount to make it spreadable) instead of dumping in the full amount of cider into the sugar like the other recipe said to do.

There it is.  Let me know what you think.

Reading: 

I have no less than 6 books started right now.  I have struggled with difficulty focusing for the past 6 months and keep starting new books to see if it is just the material or if it is my brain.  Mostly, it seems to be my brain.  I have managed to finish half of the goal I set for this year (36) which Goodreads tells me is 8 books behind plan.  Here are a couple of books that stand out so far.

The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments by Margaret Atwood - Back in February (which seems like at least a decade ago now), I re-read one of my all-time-favorite books by one of my top-five-favorite authors, The Handmaid's Tale.  I have blogged about this one before (2003) and yes, I know it is now a popular TV series, but I read it yet again because I wanted to refresh my brain on the story before I read the new sequel The Testaments.  Every bit as chilling as I remember it, the dystopian society in the not-so-distant future (and feeling more and more relevant every passing month lately), where women have no power over their own bodies or any say in what happens to them, where they are separated by purpose - the handmaids for their reproductive purposes, the Marthas for cooking and cleaning, UnWomen who have been banished to the colonies for not conforming to the new norms. Gilead is where the rights of women and our fights for silly things like equal pay, the right to work while pregnant, access to our own banking and credit accounts are fading memories.  The Testaments picks up after the Handmaid though does not continue the story of Offred.  It is set 15 years after the first book and is narrated by 3 very different characters: Aunt Lydia (Aunts "train" the Handmaids and this particular Aunt is a character in the first book), Agnes, a young woman who has grown up in Gilead, and Daisy, a young woman who is living in Canada.  The new novel was different than the classic Handmaid (and not the same as the continuation of the Hulu series, I have heard) but still a gripping and scary (as in a "I can see this happening" sort of way) book, with underlying currents of hope and the will to continue the fight against oppression.  Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

Currently I am reading Laurentian Divide, the second in a series by Sarah Stonich.  The first one was a novel in short stories called Vacationland which I loved.  Both books take place mainly in Hatchet Inlet, a small town in northern Minnesota, just across the border from Canada.  Both are filled with the quirky inhabitants of and visitors to this town and the summer resort area nearby.  Part of what I liked so much about the first book was the people - they are real and I felt like I already knew them.  Yet everyone has stories, pains and joys that they don't share and these are those stories.  Vacationland was not told in linear fashion and each chapter could stand on its own as a short story, with different characters in the forefront or narrating at turns, but showing up in others' stories as well. Stonich's full-bodied descriptions make the place, the land and the lake as much characters as the people are.  I am so excited to continue on with Laurentian Divide to see some of the friends that I made in Vacationland and get to know more about some of the others I only glimpsed before.

Until we read and eat again,

Hallie

Reading: I am still working on that pile of books, and I have now picked up The Handmaid's Tale to re-read. This, of course, is the book that I am flying through. It has probably been 8 years since I first read Handmaid's Tale. It freaked me out then and is doing so again on this reading. It is just so real and so many things, especially lately, seem to be similar to events in the book.

This weekend was so beautiful that I spent the whole weekend outside, planting, weeding, mulching, ripping up grass and putting in flowers. I love this time of year! My lilac bush, only a year old, is covered in buds and I noticed this morning that it is starting to bloom! Maybe I will change this blog to Reading and Eating and Gardening.

Eating: Summertime is a whole different eating experience than winter is. Last night, we grilled steaks and potatoes. We are still working out way through the quarter of beef that we got a while back and have about 5 packs of steaks left. We marinated the big T-bones overnight so they were extra juicy, tender and tasty. This is the marinade I use for many things: 1/4 C. soy sauce, 1/4 oil, 2 cloves of garlic pressed, fresh ground black pepper, 2 T. ketchup, 1T vinegar. The potatoes I peel and slice with my Apple Peeler/Corer/Slicer from Pampered Chef. Using a piece of foil for each serving of potatoes, I spray the foil with oil from the Kitchen Spritzer (also Pampered Chef). Salt, pepper, fresh pressed garlic, whatever seasonings I find (I have a salt-free dried herb mixture I bought at the Farmer's Market that is excellent for potatoes), a little onion, chopped carrot (if desired. This is the great part about these potatoes--everyone gets his own packet so they can be made to taste.). Seal up the foil and put on the grill a little after the steaks. They cook in the same time the steaks take and taste delicious.

Another great easy summertime "recipe" is pasta salad. In the time it takes to boil noodles, you can have a hearty summer meal! I used rotini pasta, chopped carrots, cubed ham from the deli, real bacon bits, shredded cheddar (I keep big bags of cheese in the freezer to use as needed. Handy and no worries of green cheese). Drain and cool the pasta under cold running water. Mix all together and add dressing. I used Ranch but I would think any kind would be good. I sprinkled sliced almonds on top (Dole now has seasoned sliced almonds--look for them in the produce dept. at your grocery store!). Yummy! We ate this as a meal.

Reading: Last night I went with some friends to hear/see a discussion with Margaret Atwood. It was part of the "Talking Volumes" bookclub sponsored by MPR, the Star Tribune and the Loft, and this month we, as a state, had read The Handmaid's Tale. Atwood is one of my favorite author's and this was one of my favorite of her novels. I had high expectations because I respect her so much as a writer and the discussion only improved my view of her. She is intelligent, witty, well-spoken and well-informed. This novel freaked me out when I first read it but I can really see the events happening. The novel has been made into an opera now and there was an interesting article by Atwood in the paper about how the opera came to be. Check out the article--it has much of the same material and points she made in the discussion last night.

Eating: We ate out last night before the "Talking Volumes" discussion. I don't know downtown St. Paul very well so had no opinion on where we ate. We ended up going to Christo's, a Greek restaurant in an old train station. Very cool restaurant and good food too. There is also a location on Nicollet Ave. in Minneapolis. I ordered the Greek Hash, just because it sounded a little different. It was Gyros, potatoes, peppers, onions, mushrooms and tomatoes with feta cheese on top. It was pretty good but it was HUGE! I ate quite a bit and still have leftovers enough for easily 3 more meals.