Apple Mania!

Simon and I went apple picking last Sunday and had wonderful success despite going somewhat late in the season.

 Here is our stash:

We bought a peck worth of apples; the farm gave us a choice of that or a bushel...which ignited my unrelenting signing of the classic Guys and Dolls song. 

 We also bought an apple corer, aka the most amazing fall kitchen gadget that ever existed. It's easy, fun, and virtually injury-proof.

It also works extremely well:

The first of many brand new recipes I attempted was apple chips. I'm used to buying these at the supermarket in a big plastic bucket or bag and they are always too chewy, too moist, and feel as though they've been soaking in sugar. I used this recipe (at the very bottom of the page). All you have to do is wash and core the apples, slice thinly (she recommends a mandoline slicer - but these are NOT injury proof tools and I've yet to invest in one - so I just used a knife), and arrange on a tray.  

Before baking at 200 degrees for 2 hours, I sprinkled the slices with cinnamon sugar as the recipe suggests. That's it. Literally. Core, slice, sprinkle, bake.  Sooooo easy!

This is what a successful apple chip looks like. They were delicious and made the apartment smell wonderful while baking. I made one mistake in that I didn't spray the pan with nonstick spray thinking the nonstick pan would be enough; unfortunately, the sugars in the apple sealed many of them directly to the tray and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get them off. I'm going to return to this recipe with however many apples I have left over because the chips we did eat were wonderful. The apples were crisp since we baked them at a low temperature for a long period of time; and they weren't overly sweet.

I definitely recommend trying this out.

Ch-Ch-Churros

Simon may have given me a ring for our 5 year anniversary, but I gave him a churro maker.

That's right, I brought his favorite part of Spain in to our home to make delicious delicious fried goodness (it's really just a giant play-doh pump).

So a few weeks ago, Lauren came over and we tried our hands at churros by using the translated directions which came with the gadget. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough of the main ingredient - flour. Instead, we bought the only flour available in the area: gluten-free wheat flour from City Feed. I'm all about people eating healthy, natural food...but this did not make for good churros. We faced the challenge head on and went ahead with the churros.

 

Simon is doing it wrong. 

This is more like it. mix the flour with water and salt, put in the pump, and squeeze out into hot oil. 

 So far, so good.

Some glitches to fix for next time:
1) use white flour: the dough would be softer, lighter, less dense
2) don't wait for them to get brown in the oil. The churros will continue to darken after taken out of the pot; ours became a little too dark

Some wine always helps

We ended with some melted Spanish chocolate for dipping and put out a plate of sugar for rolling. Our conclusions were that the kitchen gadget works well and that we should definitely try again with white flour.

Offbeat Derivations

While scavenging the wedding blogosphere, I came across a wonderful post on Offbeat Bride. A contributor had gathered love quotes - which didn't induce eye-rolling - for her wedding and she chose her favorite 52 to put on the site. Her juxtaposition of time-honored literary sources, cult classic films, and popular media struck a cord with me.

Here are a few of my favorites:

"True love is the greatest thing, in the world-except for a nice MLT — mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe." -The Princess Bride

"As You Wish." -The Princess Bride

 "'cause I know there is strength
in the differences between us
and I know there is comfort
where we overlap"
-Ani Difranco's Overlap

"Who, being loved, is poor?" -Oscar Wilde

"I love you. You annoy me more than I ever thought possible, but… I want to spend every irritating minute with you." -Scrubs

"We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.'" -Shall We Dance?

"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." -When Harry Met Sally

"I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone." -Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, and Fran Walsh in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring

"All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love." -Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace

"We loved with a love that was more than love." -Edgar Allan Poe's Annabell Lee

"He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began." -Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

"You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." -Dr. Seuss

"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." -Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

"Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold." -Zelda Fitzgerald

"Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love." -Albert Einstein

ok...so maybe some of them make you want to roll your eyes... : )

Paper Flowers: la segunda parte

I haven't been terribly crafty recently. I keep falling victim to the TV or to reading the incredibly long, and incredibly addictive, George R. R. Martin Game of Thrones series. I have managed to make some more paper flower prototypes...and this time...they're yellow!

 

Not too long ago, my newly appointed maid-of-honor, the lovely Lauren C., came over to our place to help us experiment with making churros (post to come later this week). While she was here, the three of us brainstormed the best way to color book pages: paint? spraypaint? if so, how? before shaping the flowers? after construction?

Lauren then came up with the obvious answer: use the RIT dye I bought to dye buttons! I already have the leftover dye and I know that I like the shade of yellow it produces. <- this is why she's my MOH.

Total success. It almost became a disaster when I forgot about the fact that PAPER flowers dunked in to LIQUID dye must DISSOLVE. In my blissful ignorance I attempted to get a stronger yellow color by submerging the flowers for far too long - resulting in some frantic separating, reshaping, and flattening of the petals. I think a quick dunk would have done the trick. Or maybe numerous dunks over a longer time period with the flowers drying between treatments. 

  

 

The color difference is phenomenal. I did have to use a more white book page for the yellow dye to take; but I'm super happy with the results.  

 

Paper Flowers

While searching the blogs I've come across a number of beautiful paper flowers, particularly ones made out of book pages. Using these tutorials, I've made some prototypes with various kinds of glue (Elmer's and hot glue) to see what holds best. I think hot glue is winning...also, hot glue is super fun to play with; and don't we want to have fun while crafting?


I won't say what these will eventually be used for, but I'm pretty sure people can guess which future event they'll be used for.


They are really simply to make. The rose is merely cutting a spiral and rolling it up. At first it looks totally wrong but if you plop it down on a table and let it settle into itself, it really becomes a beautiful bloom.


These ones are more time consuming. Each petal is an individual sheet out paper which are ultimately glued together. I really think the final product is beautiful and worth the effort.