Grandmothers are Key To Creative Cooking

I don’t bake much.  Other than the urge to bake something pumpkin-esque as the cooler weather rolls in, I’m rarely inspired to go through the effort required to mix flour, sugar, eggs, etc together for the sake of producing baked goods that are typically of equal taste to what I could buy at a local bakery.  Since I don’t do much baking, that means my kids don’t get to do much baking either – which is kind of sad because every kid likes to mix stuff together and then sample their product at the end.   For this – and so many other reasons – I am incredibly grateful to my mom for stepping in and picking up my slack.

My mom is one of those moms that finds all kinds of crazy cooking ideas from various magazines, cooking shows, friends, etc.  Her introduction to these new concoctions always starts out the same… “I found this great recipe for <XYZ> that would be so simple to make and would be great to bring to so-and-so’s house”.  In reality, these things are rarely simple but do make good whatevers to bring to so-and-so’s house. 

Her latest new idea came to life Sunday morning. Chocolate cupcakes, white frosting, plastic eyeball in the middle, red decorating gel across the tops.  Caroline and Zoe helped with the mixing, the frosting, and the eyeball placement – all the kids in the neighborhood (and perhaps an adult or two) helped with the eating.

Please Remind Me in February…

… or for that matter, anytime outside of the months of October or November… about pumpkin.   I love pumpkin – pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pie, pumpkin ravioli – it smells fabulous, tastes wonderful, and I like pretending that the baked good I’m eating is actually somewhat healthy.

For some reason, I seem to all but forget about pumpkin once Thanksgiving has come and gone.  Well, I’ve decided not to let that happen again – I’m stocking up on pumpkin puree this season, figuring that a dozen cans of pumpkin puree staring at me in the cabinet should help prevent my pumpkin amnesia of years past.

This picture was taken Sunday morning, while we had two batches of whole wheat pumpkin muffins in process – it’s our second batch of these things in the past month.  As you can see, Zoe did most of the measuring and mixing – Caroline is doing her part helping with the eating.

Apples and More Apples

We went to Baugher’s farm to go apple picking this weekend.  I love apple picking – as do the kids.  It just seems like something you are supposed to do in the fall.  Dan’s not a huge fan, but is willing to go along for the sake of a family outing.

Regardless of how many times I go to an apple orchard, I am always shocked at what a quick process apple picking is.  45 minutes to get to the farm, another 30 minutes to figure out how to get from the place where you park the car to the place where you actually pick the apples, and then about 3 minutes for the kids to fill up two big bags that inevitably get so heavy that they need to be carried by someone beyond the age of 10.

So here I am with more apples that I know what to do with… and it’s really a bit of a quandary.  There are hundreds of options for using apples in pies, cakes, and other such high sugar/not-so-great for you items.  I could make apple sauce, but that’s an awful lot of work to make something that you can buy perfectly good versions of at Wegmans.  I guess I’ll go with a few batches of whole wheat apple muffins… I imagine (hope) these will freeze well