Applesauce Muffins

An update from my last post: I tried canning again. The next day I made another batch of applesauce--on the stove instead of the crockpot this time. I boiled my jars, lids, and rings right before my sauce was finished and left them in the hot water until it was time to use them. I put the sauce straight from the pot into the hot jars using a funnel (so nothing to wipe up afterward), left an inch of space at the top, and sealed them as tight as I could. Then I waited. Aaaand.... only 1 out of 4 pints sealed. I don't know why it's not working, but I give up for now. Maybe I'll try again next fall...

But for now I've got 7 pints--nearly a GALLON--of applesauce to use in the next 3 weeks or so before it goes bad. Yikes.

So what do you do when you have that much fresh applesauce to use up quickly? Go to Pinterest! I looked up a bunch of different applesauce recipes--cake, muffins, waffles, pancakes, etc... and decided that I would try one out today.

Today I made applesauce muffins and found the recipe from Spoonful.com on Pinterest (check it out here!). They were so simple to make, with simple ingredients that I already had on hand. The only thing I did different from this recipe is that my applesauce had been blended up, so it was smooth and not chunky. I don't really like chunks of fruit in my muffins anyway, so this wasn't a big deal to me.

I just tried out one of the muffins and they are yummmmmy! They are very moist from all the applesauce and have just enough cinnamon to get that flavor. The only thing I think I would change if I make them again--which there's a pretty good chance that I'm going to--is that I would make some streusel topping for them.

So there you have it. A short and sweet post today. Go try out these muffins!

Crockpot Applesauce

Last Sunday, Hubby and I and his parents went to an orchard and did some apple picking. It was a beautiful, crisp, sunny fall day and we had a lot of fun. We got there and took a hay ride out to the orchards, where we found SO many kinds of apples! Some of them, I had never even heard of, so that meant lots of taste-testing! In case you've never been apple-picking, taste-testing is acceptable, and you'll see that most people are walking around the orchard with an apple in hand that they're munching on. We chose our favorites--some really sweet, some pretty tart, some in between--and filled our bag (which was supposed to hold 10 lbs, so I weighed mine at home and it was 11.5 lbs... score!). 

 

Hubby, not wanting his picture taken. 

Hubby and myself

Hubby and his parents on the hayride.

The orchard--there was much more to it than this picture shows!

Now, what do I do with 11.5 pounds of fresh-picked apples? Make applesauce! I don't love applesauce--it's a texture thing, I'd rather just eat a fresh, crispy apple--but Hubby sure does! So I make it for him every now and then. Usually I use my 4 quart crockpot and it makes a good amount, but since it has to be eaten within 3 weeks of cooking, some of it usually gets thrown out. This year I had the thought that I would try my hand at canning and make enough applesauce to last us a while.

So this time, since I still happen to be living with my parents (we've had a setback with our house, but we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel... more on that another time), I decided to use my mom's--used to be my grandma's--6 quart crockpot and fill it up to the brim to make as much as I possibly could in one batch. 

Now, I have one of those fantastically awesome apple peeler/slicer/corer things, and I used it the last time I made applesauce. It makes the process go so much faster! The problem? It's currently buried in a box... and that box is in a sea of boxes... somewhere in my storage unit. So I decided that I was going to suck it up and peel and chop the apples by hand. 

I sat down at the table with my station all set up--crockpot stoneware in front of me to toss the apples into, trashcan beside me to toss the peels/cores into, and a cutting board in front of me--and began to peel. I got about 3/4 through peeling one apple when I decided that it was time to go out and buy a new peeler/slicer/corer. Seriously. I am HORRIBLE at peeling apples. I think it took me a few minutes just to not even peel 1 apple. So off to Kitchen Collection I went (they have them on sale for $13 right now if anybody out there needs one). Once I got home and started on the apples, I think I filled the crockpot in about 10-15 mintues. That magical little machine cut my time waaaaaaay down! And it slices the apples so thin that it cuts down your cooking time, too. 

If you're making anything where you need to peel/slice/core apples, do yourself a favor and buy one of these. Definitely worth the money. 

My crockpot stuffed as full as I could get it!

I was surprised that it only took a little over half my apples to fill up my crockpot. After it was filled to the brim, I added 3 small cinnamon sticks, the juice of 1 lemon, a slice of lemon peel, and 4 tbsp brown sugar and set it on high. Every 30 minutes or so I would go check on it and stir it up, but I don't think it's necessary to do that often. I just love the smell that punches you in the face when you take the lid off! After about 4 hours my apples had cooked down to mush with some big chunks. At this point I dug out the cinnamon sticks and the lemon peel. I used to just take a whisk to the apples at this point to get most of the chunks out, but that was before I got my handy-dandy immersion blender! I stuck that thing in there and it blended up beautifully! It was as smooth as what you would find in a store. Perfect-o! 

It's amazing that all of those apples cook down to that small amount!

At this point, I had my taste-tester (Hubby) come in to see if it needed more cinnamon or sugar. It was good on cinnamon, but needed a bit more sugar, so I think I added another tablespoon or two and mixed it in. 

Next is the fun part. Time to can my creation. 

I have never canned anything before, so I went to Pinterest and did some research on canning applesauce. Here's what I came up with: I washed my jars in hot, soapy water earlier in the day and let them dry on a kitchen towel. Then, right before the sauce was ready, I sterilized the jars, lids, and rings in boiling water and pulled them out right before I filled them. I used a funnel and a soup ladle and filled my pint-sized jars, leaving about 1 inch at the top. I had enough applesauce to fill 4 jars. I then put the lids and rings on and tightened them as much as I could. Literally right as I was about to put them in the boiling water bath, a family friend who happens to can things came over and told me that she doesn't do the water bath when she does applesauce and that my sauce was hot enough that they should seal on their own. If they didn't seal, I could do the water bath later. Sounded good to me! 

So I let my jars sit over night and.... they didn't seal. Boo. So I tried the boiling water bath that morning and.... they still didn't seal. Oh well. Now we have half a gallon of applesauce to eat in the next 3 weeks. It's like a new challenge for us. The lesson I learned? Next time I try canning, I'll do the boiling water bath as soon as the jars are filled, even if I think I don't need it. 

Fresh, homemade applesauce almost makes me want to eat it... almost...

Overall, it was a good experience, and maybe later on this winter I'll try canning again... maybe.

Cookie Dough Dip and Alfredo Sauce

It's been another busy week around here! After two weeks in the hospital, dad finally got to come home, so things are getting back to normal around the house. I managed to make a couple of tasty treats this past week, but unfortunately didn't snap any pictures as I was whipping them up.... but I didn't have anything else to write about, so just use your imagination and picture them. Better yet, try them out yourself!

Recipe #1 - Homemade Alfredo Sauce

This is one of my favorite dishes to make from scratch! It's so simple, yet soooo delicious! In the past couple of years, I've made alfredo sauce many times and tried probably 3 or 4 different recipes for it, so this time I decided to make it without one and hope for the best! (I mean, how can you go wrong with butter, half-n-half, and cheese?) So, here's my recipe:

Ingredients:
4 T butter/margarine
1 clove minced garlic/1/2 t garlic powder
2 T flour
16 oz half-n-half
1/2 t pepper
6 oz shredded parmesan cheese
salt to taste

Step 1: melt the butter in a sauce pan over medium/med-low heat. After it's melted, add the garlic and cook for about 30 seconds. (note: you can use more/less garlic. I don't like an overwhelming garlic flavor in my sauce, so I only use a little. If you love it, use more. If you hate garlic, just omit it all together.)

Step 2: add flour and mix until it forms a paste.

Step 3: add the half-n-half and pepper and mix until all is combined and it comes to a simmer. Reduce heat to low. Stir frequently until it starts to thicken.

Step 4: Add parmesan cheese and stir until the cheese has melted into the sauce. If it's too thick, add a little more half-n-half until it reaches your desired consistency. Add salt to taste. (note: freshly grated parmesan cheese is the way to go with this dish! It gives it a much better flavor. However, if you're like I was this week and looking for an easy dinner one night, it's still going to be delicious if you use pre-shredded cheese.) 

Step 5: Serve immediately over your favorite pasta (I like to use the tri-color veggie pasta... makes me feel good knowing I'm getting at least a little bit of extra veggies... sort of... ok, and it's pretty) and enjoy!

Once you taste homemade alfredo sauce, you're never going to want jarred sauce again! (but if you're like me, you'll still use it when you want something fast... it just doesn't taste as good any more.) And it's so simple! It just takes about 15 minutes of standing in front of the stove, but oh is it worth it!


Recipe #2 - My other treat I made this week was Cookie Dough Dip.

Personally, I don't think it tastes much like cookie dough... It's more like cookie dough meets cream cheese icing. But whatever the case, it is yummy! I actually found this recipe on Pinterest, so I'm just going to link over to it from here. I like giving credit where credit is due. Click here for cookie dough dip! The only thing I did differently than this recipe is that I used mini chocolate chips instead of regular ones, and I used half a cup of Heath pieces with chocolate instead of a full cup of just plain toffee pieces. My husband says there's too much chocolate in it... I say NEVER!

It's delicious and so simple to make. So here you have it. I've given you a great recipe for both dinner and dessert! Sorry for the lack of pictures and exciting things. I'm going to try to do better next time... Until then, enjoy! I'm going to go get my cookie dough dip out of the fridge right now and enjoy some myself...

My Own Episode of Grey's Anatomy (at least it felt that way)

This is not going to be a typical post, but it's a big enough event that it's worth writing about.

Let me start off by saying what a week it has been! 

As I mentioned in my last post, I am still living at my parents' house. So Tuesday morning I woke up and heard my mom talking out in the hallway. My first thought was that it was really early and I needed to go back to sleep (because she's usually up getting ready for work around 6:30 am). Then I realized that it was light in my room, so my next thought was that it was the weekend (I was still really groggy). Nooo... it was definitely Tuesday. So I look at my phone, and it's 8:30 am, so I go out into the hall to see what's up. Mom and dad are both up and it looks like they're getting ready to go out... now I'm really confused. I asked mom why she was home and she said that about 4:30 that morning they got a call from The Cleveland Clinic that they had a donor and my dad was getting his transplant! For those that don't know, he's had type 1 diabetes for 40 years, and about 3 years ago went into kidney failure, so he's been on the donor list for the past 2 years waiting for a kidney and pancreas.

So they tell me that surgery is tentatively scheduled for 4:00 pm, and they head up there around 9. Me, Hubby, and my brother all hang out at the house for a while--no point in us hanging out in the hospital while they do all the pre-op stuff--and then head up to Cleveland around 1, which got us to the hospital around 3, and gave us about an hour and a half to hang out with dad before they wheeled him off the the O.R. 

Surgery was going to take around 6 hours, so we (me, Matt, my brother, my mom, and the pastor of our church) headed to the surgical waiting room to spend the rest of the evening. When you check in, they give you a pager that will send you updates about your family member that's in surgery, so around 6:10 we got a message that surgery had JUST started. So we thought they would be done around 10:30, but now we're realizing it's going to be after midnight. Oh, and then he was going to be in the PACU for another 6 hours after surgery... 

Around 8 pm, Hubby decided to go home because he had to work a 12 hour shift the next day, so he couldn't stay until dad was out of surgery anyway, so he figured it would be best for him to head home and get some rest. This left my brother and I to spend the night at the hospital with my mom.

The surgery went on, and around 9 pm we got a message that the kidney was in and they were beginning to put in the pancreas. Then around 10 pm, we found out that the waiting room we were in was closing and we had to relocate to another one... which ended up being tiiiiiny. As in, it had 6 seats in it. Sometime after 11, one of the surgeons came out and said that the pancreas was in and both organs looked beautiful. The only issue they had was that dad wasn't able to stop taking Plavix soon enough (because who can predict when organs are going to be available?) so, in the words of the surgeon, "he was oozing" and that made it difficult to choose when they would close. They had given him blood and platelets and gotten to a point where the team felt comfortable closing and letting nature take it's course and hoping his blood would start clotting soon. So, for that big of a surgery, we were all so thankful that was the only issue they had! We all hung out in the tiny waiting room and waited for them to tell us when they were done closing and where they were moving dad to afterwards. I finally fell asleep for a little while and was awakened around 1:30 or 2 by someone telling us dad was being taken to the ICU and we could go up there to see him. We headed up there, got put in yet another waiting room while they settled him in, and then finally got to see him around 2:30, I think. He was pretty much out of it, but his nurse said that everything looked good and that they were still giving him blood and platelets. 

We went back to the waiting room, I made a bed on the hard floor, and finally went to sleep around 3 am. Let me just tell you that when you can only sleep on your sides (let's not forget that I'm 5 months pregnant), and the surface you're sleeping on is a hard floor, you will wake up in some pain. Man, did my hips and shoulders hurt that morning! But, it was worth it to be able to be there. 

Wednesday wasn't too exciting. After sleeping about 5 hours, I got up, got breakfast with my mom and brother, and hung out for a little while. I think we went to see dad around 10 am and he was awake, but still pretty out of it. We visited for a little while, then went back to hang out in the waiting room. This was pretty much how the rest of the day went. We would check in on dad every couple hours, but he was sleeping for most of the day, so we spent the majority of the day in the waiting room and wandering the halls of the Cleveland Clinic. We headed home that night so that we could all get a good night's sleep--and let me tell you, I slept better that night than I had in months! (Nobody tells you that sleep deprivation begins at pregnancy, not birth... but that's a post for another day.)

We stayed home Thursday--mom had to work, and Hubby had the day off so he and I headed out to do some shopping and spend some time together. Then mom, brother, and I went back up to Cleveland on Friday (yesterday) to spend the day with dad.

He had been moved out of the ICU and up to a room in the transplant unit Thursday evening. When we got there on Friday, he was looking much better and, though still slightly confused (they gave him the good pain meds), he was pretty much with it and knew what was going on. He was still in quite a bit of pain, but at least now they were allowing him to have clear liquids and get out of bed a time or two. Overall, things were looking good, and hopefully will continue to look good! 

We headed home that night, and then mom worked this morning and headed back up there to spend the next 3 days with him. I love my dad, but I just cannot handle sitting around all day in uncomfortable chairs. My poor pregnant body woke up so achy this morning, and I'm pretty sure it's just from all the stress, excitement, running around the hospital, and sitting in uncomfortable chairs that has happened this week, so I am hanging out on the couch today with my parents' dog and Netflix. Dad is supposed to be home either Monday or Tuesday, and mom's staying at the hospital with him until he comes home, so I'm taking this opportunity to enjoy a little quiet time around the house (ok, so there are still 3 of us here, but occasionally the boys are both gone and I get the whole house to myself, as is the case right now. It's rare, so I enjoy it while it lasts).

I had some new recipes lined up to try out on the family this week, buuuut clearly there was no time for that. Maybe my next post will be a new recipe... 

Oh, on a final note, if you aren't an organ donor, seriously consider changing that. You don't know how many lives you can change by donating! And anyway--what do you need them for after you're dead? Give them to someone who's still alive that needs them!