Apple Bread

Once upon a time there was a girl who had grandiose plans to turn out recipe after delicious recipe from the bounty of hand picked apples she carried into the house. There would be pies, glorious pies! No two the same and why would there be? With all these delicious apples every recipe should be tested and tried until a masterpiece was created. There would be sauces and fruit butters to cook with and enjoy on morning toast. There would be baked apples and poached apples, caramel covered and rum soaked. Every form of apple goodness!

Once reality set in this girl quickly changed plans and decided to find some good basic recipes to use up these apples. After all, when you bring in 400+ pounds of apples you are looking at some serious time in the kitchen! This apple bread recipe was born during the time of baking, tasting and trying again until it was right. The combination of diced apples and apple sauce make for the best flavor and texture. Throw in a little cinnamon and nutmeg you can't go wrong!

I still love trying out a new recipe when our fruit is freshly picked and my kitchen isn't overwhelmed by basket after basket of fruit, it is always exciting to create something new and tasty. I also have a soft spot in my heart for basic staple recipes, which is what this has become in our house. After spending days cutting, coring, slicing and saucing apples it usually signifies the end of processing apples and the beginning of fall. I love to sit down to the first loaf fresh from the oven and do a little taste testing with my girls, after all the best part about a loaf of bread is sharing it with someone!

The Recipe

Makes 2 loaves

Ingredients

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon 

1/2 tsp nutmeg

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup oil

1/2 cup apple sauce

3 cups diced apples (about 3 med apples)

2 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp sugar

Directions

Preheat over to 325 degrees. Grease and flour 2 loaf pans and set aside. Combine flour, salt, baking soda, 2 tsp cinnamon and nutmeg. In a large bowl whisk together sugar, oil, vanilla, eggs and apple sauce. Add flour mixture and stir just until combined. Fold in diced apples and divide between loaf pans. Mix remaining cinnamon and sugar ans sprinkle over the top of each loaf. Bake for 65 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool in pan for 10 minutes then turn out of pans and allow to cool completely. 

We already have a loaf wrapped up and ready to take to grandma's house!

This recipe is shared at Homemade Mondays

Pear Butter with Mulberries

What do you do when you have more ripe pears than you can eat? Make pear butter of course!

I have made pear butter a few times now and it has become a favorite around here. I shared a basic recipe that is tried and true, but this time I mixed it up a little and threw in some juicy mulberries we tucked into the freezer this summer. Why mulberries? Well because mulberries are very good for you! (That and Marinn asked that I make it purple.) Fruit butters are one of my favorites to make because they are fairly simple recipes and when you let your fruits condense down into a thick, creamy butter you get so much flavor in every bite.

Once again I had some wonderful people share their fruit with me this year so I started with fresh, ripe pears that were locally grown. It doesn't get better than that!

Pumpkin Spice Syrup

I like a Pumpkin Spice Latte as much as the next girl, but I've never felt the urge to rush out and buy them the second they release them (Which happened to be in AUGUST?! Can't we finish one season before we start the next? Do we always have to be so rushed to "get on top of the next thing?" Do we really have to have Christmas items on the shelf in JULY?!? End rant.)  I also never felt the need to recreate the sweet treat at home. (I save those extra calories for special occasions like spending too much money at Target. See how that works- Excess with excess?) That was before I was growing my own pumpkins. I ended up with an early harvest of pumpkins this year that I baked up and pureed to use for baking later this year. The thing with baking pumpkins (you can read more about that here) is you have to let the puree drain for nothing short of an eternity to end up with the right consistency for baking. While I was waiting for my pumpkin to drain, sipping a cup of coffee, the idea hit me: why not use all that pumpkin-y goodness that I drain off to make my own syrup for my coffee? (or anything else I can think of to put it on for that matter.) So that is what I did. I took all that lovely, golden colored juice and I heated it in a pan with sugar to create a simple syrup and I added some pumpkin pie spice to make it especially tasty. Heaven in a cup I tell ya! But I only had two cups because it's not fall and I plan on savoring the last days of summer!  Oh but in a couple of weeks... there will be so much pumpkin! So. Much. Pumpkin.

We have eggs!

After four months and one week of feeding and caring for our flock we were rewarded with our first egg! Since there are so many of them it is hard to say who laid the first egg, but I'm giving credit to my lap chicken because she has been the biggest out of the chickens for some time. (And I may be biased towards her.)

Our First Egg

Pigeon Party! Second Birthday

I'm in the mood for a hot dog party!

Have you met the sassy pigeon from the pages of Mo Willems books? If you haven't, you are seriously missing out. Whether he is trying to drive the bus, stay up late or just eat HIS hot dog he never fails to entertain. But be warned: it may be hard not to give into the pigeon because, "What's five minutes in the grand scheme of things?"

When we began reading books to Amelia she quickly became attached to the pigeon and requested we read the books to her all the time. We too loved the pigeon and his antics so it was an easy pick as the theme for her second birthday.

I used my cutting and pasting skills to put together some handmade invitations to invite our friends and family.

Mulberry Crumb Cake

When I think of mulberries I think of the summer after fourth grade. We lived in a house with a mulberry tree in the back yard and my sisters and I assembled a 'mulberry factory' out of pieces of an old swing set. We climbed up into the tree and sent fat, ripe berries tumbling down a shoot and into a bowl resting at the bottom. We were so proud of our creation and our lovely harvest! No one seemed as excited about it as we were though. My mom was displeased with the berry stains and no one was certain if we should actually eat them. We did what any other school age child would do and smashed the berries into the driveway, spelling out our names.

Many years later I of course learned that you can in fact eat mulberries. After finding a mulberry tree at the back of our property I looked into it a little more and learned just how good those little berries are for you. High in many vitamins and minerals such as vitamin C, iron, potassium, and vitamin K, all of which hold great health benefits, it's a no-brainer adding these into our diets. (You can read more of the heath benefits I learned about here and here.)

We picked until our hands were purple and I even stuck my sister up on the ladder to relive our childhood. We picked about 10 cups of berries over the course of a week or so, picking only the ripe berries each time. It was the sweetest thing watching my girls work together to pick only the purple berries and try to fill their bowl! Most of the berries went into the freezer for later use but I couldn't resist whipping something up with a few of them!

Mulberry Crumb Cake

Our First Flock

On a cool April morning we woke early and I loaded the girls into our car with a promise of a surprise they would love. Little eyes lit up with excitement as they tried to guess where we could be going and what we could be doing. (I was surprised at how excited they got at the idea of going through the car wash!) We pulled up outside the post office and into the parking lot. Disappointment washed over Amelia's face as I put the car in park. "Are we running errands!?" she demanded. I smiled in response into the rear view mirror. Marinn was pleased as could be to march into the post office. We haven't done near as many trips to this magical place with her as we had Amelia so she was happy to tag along. I could see Amelia was disappointed with our destination but she didn't miss a beat, instructing little sister in appropriate post office behavior. As she began to explain to Marinn what you do at a post office she began to get excited, maybe we would be getting something mailed to us! We pushed through the double doors that lead to the lobby and Amelia exclaimed, "They're here!" Two steps into the lobby there was the unmistakable sound of chicks peeping. After weeks and weeks of waiting our chicks had finally arrived!

Chickens were high priority this year. Fresh eggs from chickens that we raise and care for is another way of being self sustaining and teaching our girls responsibility. What better way for little ones to be rewarded for hard work than large, brown eggs they retrieve themselves? These chickens will be a source of eggs and meat for us and a way for us to eat healthy, knowing how the animals were fed and cared for. This is our first experience of raising something with the intent of them being a food source. I feel that this first flock especially will be a great learning experience for us and in the end I think we will all have a much greater respect for where our food comes from.

The chicks were sent to us at one day old and from the moment we carried the little puff balls into our home the girls were smitten. They were by my side as we cared for them, feeding, watering, wiping tiny chicken butts (because that is part of chicken parenting), and cleaning their home. They learned to hold them gently and talk softly around them and to check the temperature to make sure they were comfortable. As the chickens began to get bigger they would help me carry them outside to get fresh air and they would dig for worms to feed them as a treat. Now that they have moved out into their coop they help fill the feeder and give them fresh water. There is lots of chasing of chickens and squeals of delight when one is caught. They won't be laying until the fall but I already am excited to see the look on the girls' faces when they collect the first egg!

Two Days Old

One Week Old

One Month Old

Six Weeks Old