Category Archives: food

by Ramona

Adventures with Applesauce

Applesauce is so easy to make. And amazingly delicious.

Core an apple. Peel (I use a potato peeler). Slice, cut slices into pieces. Not too much water – not even covering the pieces. Boil till mushy enough (to taste). Drain. Mash. Done!

So versatile, too.

My absolute favorite so far is to steam butternut squash, and then mash it with apples in a 3:2 ratio (more squash). Really good just like that, but spectacular if you add spectacularly unhealthy amounts of butter, some cinnamon, and a bit of brown sugar.

This was surprisingly good – boil the apples with prune juice, and then add a bit more prune juice when mashing. Really good for managing constipation (fiber + prune magic). And it just tastes like mulled apples.

Plain with a kick – boil with a stick of cinnamon and a few cloves. The standard method if I just want to eat it. Oh, and eat it warm. MMMMMMM And it makes the house smell delicious.

I haven’t tried it with cranberries yet, but that is coming soon.

Other suggestions?

by chris

Firing up the grill – Ribs!

We recently lucked out and got a bag of charcoal that contained huge pieces that are well suited for long cooking sessions, so we had to do something that requires a long cooktime.  So this past weekend we decided to try something new on the smoker: Ribs!

Here’s the ribs with a rub applied, resting before we put them out:IMG_2720

And nearly at the end of the 5 hour cook, we decided to toss on some sausage for extra meat goodness. We also wanted an excuse to grab a picture of the ribs on the gril.  For the record, I lifted the grill just long enough to toss the sausage in.  Christina was waiting with the camera and snapped two shots.  So we didn’t just stand there with the grill open for the photo-op.

IMG_2733

Lastly, though this isn’t a great shot of the ribs, we took them up to where Christina knits for consumption.  The two people sitting are the owners (who, incidently, are the people we got our new-to-us dining table and hutch from) and the lady in the distance is a certified Master Knitter who does classes at the shop.

IMG_2735

We are probably going to do this again this weekend when a friend comes down, though we haven’t decided if we want to do ribs or something else.  Perhaps if we have time we’ll do ribs and something else.  That’d be tasty.