Sunday, November 7, 2010

Fall Harvest

It's finally feeling like Fall. I've been waiting all summer for this. Somehow apple desserts feel more appropriate in Fall than in the Summer, but I always want them in Summer. I guess it's the usual wanting what you can't have (or didn't used to be able to have before mass refrigerated warehouse storage).

In celebration of first inklings that the calendar isn't totally off, I decided it was safe to make an apple dessert this week. Apple pie takes too long for the time I have available these days, and applesauce cake requires applesauce, which I also didn't have, nor really the time to go out to buy some. I happened to have a very large bowl full of beautiful Fuji Apples that aren't getting eaten as fast as they used to since my older son is away in Indiana for school.

As usual, I doubled the recipe to accommodate our group of approximately 16 people. So I grabbed two apples, hoping they would be enough, but thinking I might need a 3rd for my double Apple Spice Cake. After washing, drying, quartering, coring and dicing the first apple, I found that not only is my apple bowl large, so are my apples! A single apple was large enough to create a double recipe of Apple Spice Cake. This recipe was SO easy. One bowl, no mixer, no eggs, no butter. Flour, buttermilk, oil, apples, spices, nuts, stir. That was just about it. Bake, cool, turn out of the pan, sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving. Done!

Of course now I'll be craving Strawberry Shortcake . . .

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Boooooonana Bread

Normally, in preparation for Halloween, my Sunday Dinner friends and I carve pumpkins and then have a very informal contest to choose our favorite.

The most memorable one from the past (maybe the first year that I was involved) was a pumpkin carved by our friend "Jim S.". "Jim" is a big fan of 'Mystery Science Theatre 3000' (well, was anyway, as I'm pretty sure it's no longer on the air). The premise of the show is that one astronaut of the team is banished because of his annoying personality. He must spend his banishment watching old films with his homemade robot friends. So most of the show is actually viewing the old films, just like you might do on TCM, but in the foreground is the silhouette of the some theater seat backs and the heads of the astronaut and his robots. Throughout the movie they make comments and jokes about what is going on on the screen, similar to the rude person you might find at a movie theatre.

So, "Jim" carved the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 silhouette, with the screen area cut out entirely. He then inserted a sheet of translucent plastic into the pumpkin to cover the screen area. On the back of the pumpkin he cut a round hole large enough to fit the lens of a movie projector. When he turned the projector ON we were able to watch the movie "Frankenstein" on the 'screen' of the jack o'lantern! It was incredible!

Well, I have no pumpkin carving stories to share from this year. Because Halloween was on a Sunday, the previous Sunday was too far away from Halloween to do the carving at Sunday Dinner. And also, since Halloween was on Sunday, we actually didn't have Sunday Dinner so that any children could 'trick or treat' and the rest of us would be free to man our bowls of candy at the door. So instead of baking for Sunday Dinner, I just baked for us. A couple of bananas needed a job, so on Halloween I baked some Boooooonana Bread (insert groan here).

I couldn't even hand out banana bread to Trick-or-Treaters since we have the perfect Halloween driveway. Dark and down a steep hill where no small child, and no sane parent, is willing to walk just for a small piece of candy and the knowledge that the steep hill must be climbed UP afterward.