Food Fun

I don't know what's gotten into me. I seem to be blogging about food a great deal. It's kind of fun sharing ideas, though, so I'm not going to stop anytime soon.



My wonderful in-laws came to visit a few weeks ago and they brought me four boxes of apples. I was delighted to put it mildly, but since we recently realized that our food storage needed rotating, we're trying to use up a lot of home-canned fruit before doing any more. Therefore, I cannot can anything this year. We got the boxes just to eat. It has been wonderful being able to send an apple in my kids' lunches everyday without breaking the bank. We've been able to share with our friends, and we still have a lot left. Two of the boxes were Granny's. My kids love the tart apples. One box was Fujis, and the other was Golden Delicious. Of course the Grannys and the Fujis will store for awhile, but the Golds were starting to get too ripe, so I decided I needed to freeze some pie filling and bake with the rest. I made baked apples with dinner the other night-- just like Grandma Savage made for us one time we went to visit her. They are great with vanilla ice cream, and they are SO easy. You just hallow out the core from the top. (I used a melon baller.) Add about half a teaspoon of butter to each then a mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon. (Sorry, but I didn't measure any of this.) Bake them at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes. They taste like apple pie without the hassle of making a pie crust.





Then, I volunteered to take treats for Ethan's Halloween party. I scoured the Internet looking for a fun recipe, but I didn't find anything that really got me excited. I tend to veer toward things that include ingredients already sitting on my shelves. Finally, I decided to bunk the Internet and come up with something on my own. My mother-in-law brought me two 10-pound bricks of dipping chocolate when she came (getting me ready for the holiday season). We used some of that to make spiders. If I would have done them myself, they would look more like actual spiders, but I let the boys help. Here's one with four eyes.

We had some gooey marshmallows, so we just rolled together a few of them for the bodies, dipped them in chocolate and put chow mein noodle legs on them. The eyes we hand picked out of some sprinkles.


So, there are my kitchen adventures this week. Tomorrow I have to make eyeballs on crackers (just cream cheese and olives) because I feel obligated to take something that isn't straight sugar to the school.