Fall Harvest Recipes

What do you do when you get back home from an afternoon of apple picking , open the doors to your apartment (or house) and realize that between the pounds of apples picked and sheer girth of the pumpkins you’ve purchased, you’ve got no counter space left in your kitchen?

Sure, you get a rush when you’re actually selecting and picking the apples in the beautifully vast orchard  blanketed with crystal blue skies. However, when you’ve got the filled bags sitting in your kitchen, it’s a little overwhelming.

Hoping to put a serious dent in my recent apple quantity, I immediately went searching for a recipe in the MyJudytheFoodie binder.  I wanted to find a recipe that’s quick and easy to make AND requires more than just a handful of apples – Mom’s Apple Crisp.

Feeling motivated, I also decided to make my other childhood favorite again: Apple Butter. The mixture of smells wafting from the oven as the fresh apple slices baked underneath the oat and brown sugar topping was mouth-watering. Combine those with the incense-like aroma from the slow cooking apples/sugar/cloves/cinnamon (yes folks that’s all apple butter contains) and you’ve got one heavenly smelling apartment/house.

Can you imagine my sheer pleasure as I programmed the cooker to slow cook for 10 more hours? There’s nothing more exciting than knowing that while you’re sleeping, something is still cooking, stewing, forming. I felt like a kid at Christmas time (or I imagined what it must feel like since I’m Jewish) when I entered the kitchen early morning to find the final apple butter product in the cooker. Within minutes my son was requesting some “butter” on his challah at breakfast.

I love that he felt so invested in this project. To think that he picked these apples with his bare hands from the trees just the day before must have been so cool for him. I must admit that spending over three hours peeling, cutting and coring apples has left me not wanting to look at another apple for a long time. Now, what to do with the entire bag full of apples still sitting on my kitchen floor?

Apple-slice eye masks anyone?

a chorus of apples awaiting its crisp
A sea of baked apple crisp

 

 

apple-butter-in-the-fridge

Have any favorite fall harvest activities?  What are your favorite apple-based dishes?

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