Apple-Cheddar Prize-winning Pie!

There was a category for most unique pie, a "Pie like no other!" in the pie contest at my work's fall social event. I figured I had a good shot at winning that one, since I know everyone else might be headed for "Best in Show". I found a food network recipe for an apple pie that included a modification to add cheddar cheese. Several thoughts went through my mind..."Cheese makes everything better"...and..." I love to eat apple slices with cheese". This recipe, although new, had the potential to be great! Turns out at least 10 people voted for it today in a blind-taste-test at work! Great success. Recipe below!

Apple-Cheddar Pie 

(modified from here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/articles/50-pie-recipes.page-1.html)

MAKES: one 9-inch pie
3 pounds mixed apples (Half Granny Smith, Half Gala)
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoon all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt (omit if using salted butter)

2/3 C. Sharp Cheddar cheese, diced
1 recipe for Pie Crust from Stacy’s Mom*
1 large egg, beaten
Coarse sugar, for sprinkling

Peel and core the apples; slice 1/4 inch thick. Toss with the granulated sugar and lemon juice. Heat 4 tablespoons butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the apples and cook, stirring, until tender, about 10 minutes. (If using thinner sliced apples, like from an apple peeler/slicer/corer, cook for less time). Stir in the flour, cinnamon and salt; cook until thickened, 1 more minute. Let cool.

Roll out ½ of dough into a 12-inch round on a floured surface; ease into a 9-inch pie plate. Add the cheddar to the cooled filling, then place in pie plate, mounding them slightly in the center, and dot with the remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Roll out the remaining dough into a 12-inch round. Lay it over the filling; press the edges of the crusts together, then fold the overhang under itself and crimp to seal. Brush with the beaten egg and sprinkle with coarse sugar. Cut a few slits in the top crust. Chill 1 hour.

Place a baking sheet on the lowest oven rack and preheat to 425 degrees F for 30 minutes. Place the pie on the hot baking sheet; lower the temperature to 375 degrees F. Bake until golden, 1 hour to 1 hour, 10 minutes. (Cover the edges with foil if they brown too quickly.) Cool on a rack.

 

*Pie crust from Stacy’s Mom:

2 C. Flour, sifted

1 t. salt

¾-1 C. shortening (using 1 C. makes it easier to roll out)

¼ C. flour
6 ½ T. COLD Water

 

Sift flour and salt together in large mixing bowl. Cut in shortening until flour comes together to look like peas.

In a small bowl, mix together ¼ c flour and cold water. Add to flour/shortening mixture until it comes together as dough (don’t over-mix!)

Mound into a ball, wrap in wax paper and chill for at least 1 hour before rolling out.

Sunday Breakfast Skillet

Some of the best stuff I cook (according to my husband) is when I fry a bunch of stuff together in a skillet on the stovetop. 

I love to cook breakfast on the weekends. After 5 days of microwave oatmeal and toaster waffles, it's fun to put some actual time and care into a meal.

So last Sunday, courtesy of CK farms and my weekly installment of local produce and farm-fresh eggs, I put together a breakfast skillet.

I started by frying up some chicken sausage with diced onion and green pepper. I made sure to season with salt and pepper, but also added (few shakes each) of some garlic salt, thyme and sage.

 I also put some red potatoes in a pan with olive oil, garlic salt and lots of pepper. When the potatoes were almost cooked through, I added fresh chopped garlic for a few minutes. (Adding it too soon can burn the garlic and cook out all the flavor).

I used to add the scrambled eggs straight to the pan with the sausage and veggies, but my husband Ted taught me to scramble the eggs separate and then add the sausage mix at the end. The eggs don't get too broken up or watery that way. 

I topped with a bit of shredded cheddar and served with fruit and toasted Dave's Killer bread. It was a hit with my family!

Old-fashioned Spiced Apple Pie

When we moved into our house a few years ago, the previous original owners (from 1960) left this cookbook behind:

I love to look through it and see Alice's notes. She would date the recipe she tried, then add little phrases like "not bad..." She was the quintessential homemaker and home cook.

Now that I am on maternity leave with our second kid and home with lots of time to be domestic, I am channeling Alice and trying out new recipes.

I'm lucky to be home during the fall again. I think the fall harvest is my favorite: Hearty root vegetables and tree fruits. There have been lots of apples in my fall CSA box from CK Farms (just outside Eugene in Creswell) these last few weeks, so how better to use them than to cover them in sugar and bake in flour and butter. :)

I decided on the Taste of Oregon's old-fashioned spiced apple pie. It seemed different than an average apple pie, but not so different that I had to buy extra ingredients. Here is the recipe:

Save yourself some time and buy (many thrift stores or garage sales have them) or borrow a Pampered Chef apple peeler and corer. So much fun to use!!

The spices in this pie really transform the apples. It has a strong, bold taste that goes really well with light whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. 

I made sure to add the date and "really good" next to the recipe in the book.

Mexican Turkey Meatloaf

One of my favorite meatloaf recipes has an Italian twist and was made by Giada De Laurentiis. She uses sun-dried tomatoes and feta cheese to make it super flavorful, and unlike many other turkey meatloaves, this one is really moist!
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/turkey-meatloaf-with-feta-and-sun-dried-tomatoes-recipe/index.html


I make this meatloaf AT LEAST once a month- probably more. I have a tendency to play out things I love very quickly by doing them over and over (I can't listen to Regina Spector anymore), so I thought I would try a spin on Giada's recipe and do a Mexican theme.


We are huge fans of Mexican flavors. My half-Mexican stepdad made my sisters and I burritos pretty much every other day when I was growing up, and my husband Ted taught Spanish in Puerto Vallarta for a year, so we joke that we are part-Mexican based on how much we love the food.


This Mexican Turkey Meatloaf turned out soooo good!! Definitely has a kick, but is not too spicy. The lack of pictures in this post is because we dug right in as soon as it came out of the oven. Hope you like it! 

Mexican Turkey Meatloaf


Ingredients:
1 6 oz can diced jalepenos, (we used the "hot", but you can use medium or mild to tone it down)
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 C jarred roasted red peppers, diced
1/2 C chopped fresh cilantro
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/2 C plain bread crumbs
1/2 C part-skim ricotta cheese
1 t. cumin
1 t. chili powder
1 t. salt
1 t. pepper
1 lb. ground turkey (white or dark meat works fine)


Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix everything but the ground turkey together first. Then add the turkey last and combine well. Place into a oiled deep dish pie plate and bake for 45 min at 375 or until it reads 165 degrees with a thermometer. Serve with sour cream and salsa and chopped fresh cilantro.

Cauliflower-crust Pizza with Butternut Squash and Chipotle-Chicken Sausage

Pizzinterest: Pinterest-inspired Pizza! I have come across some wonderful pizza recipes on Pinterest lately, including one with a cauliflower crust from the blog Eat.Drink.Smile (http://www.eat-drink-smile.com/2011/04/cauliflower-crust-pizza.html) and one made with thin-sliced butternut squash on a garlic-olive-oil base, (http://www.alexandracooks.com/2011/10/21/butternut-squash-and-crispy-sage-pizza-five-minutes-a-day-style/).


I decided to combine the two into an super-veggie-full, low-carb dinner. I also found a few more ways to make it weight-watchers friendly, so one-quarter of the pizza turns out to be about 5 points+, or 4 points+ without the chicken sausage if you want it to be all-vegetarian. Despite the low points, this has a rich flavor that is so satisfying.


To roast the Butternut Squash:

Cut off the skin, and use a mandolin to slice the squash very thin. Place in a single layer on a oiled (I used Pam spray) baking sheet, spray with more oil, and season with sea salt and crushed red pepper. Bake on 400 for about 15-20 minutes, until the edges are crispy. (These make delicious chips to eat as a snack too!)

 To make the crust:

Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees. Take one whole head of cauliflower, leaves removed, and cut into small florets. Working in batches, pulse on high in a food processor for about a minute until it has a mealy texture. Place in a micro-wave safe bowl, cover with plastic wrap and cook for 8 minutes.You'll end up with about 3-4 C. Take 1 C. cauliflower, 1 C of shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese and 2 egg whites and mix together in a bowl. Add 1 t. dried oregano, 1/2 t. of garlic salt and 1 t. minced garlic. Place on an oiled pizza pan and spread out to a 10 inch diameter circle. Bake for 15 minutes in the 450 oven.

After the crust is cooled a bit, I added a t. of olive oil and spread it around the crust. Then I mixed together 2 cloves of minced garlic with 1/4 C. part-skim ricotta cheese, then spread it evenly on the crust. 


Next, I added my toppings: the roasted butternut squash, some diced roasted red peppers from a jar, and some thinly sliced pieces of a chipotle-chicken sausage dogs I found at the store and couldn't resist. I topped with about 1/4 C. part-skim mozz and baked together for about 5-7 minutes.

This meal was so tasty!! I think the best part was the garlic-infused ricotta- it was so delicious with the strong garlic balanced by the mild ricotta. You also have to eat it with a fork, since the crust isn't sturdy enough to pick up, but the dish still gave us the deep satisfaction that you'd get from traditional pizza. I still have a few cups of cauliflower ready to make a few more crusts later this week. So glad I tried this!!! Ted was pretty happy about it too. :)

Homemade Liquid Hand Soap

One of my new favorite ways to pass the time (mostly when I am stuck on the couch nursing!) is to cruise Pinterest. All of the DIY crafts, home design and recipe ideas are so compelling, I want to try them all! One idea that seemed pretty approachable was homemade liquid hand soap (over one gallon made from a single bar of soap!) Here is a link to the original blog post: http://familyoffarmers.blogspot.com/p/diy.html. 


I chose to try it out with a bar of Green Tea scented French-milled soap with Shea Butter. It is more expensive than Dove or whatever, but I thought it was okay to splurge when you can turn it into a gallon of hand soap! 

This turned into a wonderful hand-soap:
it has a nice light scent that even my
husband loves, and leaves hands super soft.

The recipe was pretty straightforward. Grated up the soap just fine with the cheese grater, although it took forever to wash the chunks of soap caught in the grates. I found the glycerin from a natural health food store in town called Capella Market (I couldn't find the liquid glycerin in any regular grocery or drug store that I went to). The soap dissolved into the glycerin and water fairly quickly over the medium-high heat, so I turned it off to let it sit and start to cloud up. 

My batch didn't take long at all (just a few hours) to cool and harden into a stiff gelatin consistency. Working in batches, I added more water and used a hand mixer to get the soap into a consistency that I liked.

I bought a pretty glass container with a pump for our bathroom (cost about $5), and then reused an old handsoap container for the kitchen. The liquid glycerin cost about $7 for a medium-sized bottle, but the recipe only calls for 2 T. to one gallon of water. The soap cost about $6. Overall, about a $20 investment for a never ending supply of hand soap! 

Breakfast Mini-Quiches with Sausage & Spinach

Today is Monday, and on Thursday I go back to work after a 3-month maternity leave! Been thinking of some last minute things I can make ahead to relieve the stress of feeding myself and our family during what I expect to be a slightly hectic transition.

I came across this great recipe for mini-quiches made in a muffin tin on another blog called "Eat. Drink.Smile". Her recipes are pretty great! 

I pretty much followed her recipe found here: Breakfast of Champions, but I did my own variation of ingredients and spices. This individual size servings are great for portion control, and for freezing and storing then popping into the microwave for a quick and super nutritious breakfast.

These guys are easy to make up 
on a Monday and eat all week!

Substitutions:

Instead of 16 eggs, I used 8 eggs and 2 C. of Egg Beaters.

To the egg/onion/green pepper mixture, I added one package of frozen spinach that had been thawed and drained really well. 

I used about 1/2 pound of my homemade pork sausage instead of a full pound.

For the seasoning, I used 1 t salt, 1 t black pepper, 1/2 t red pepper flakes, 1 t. dried thyme and 1/4 t. nutmeg and 1 t. of minced garlic.

I also used 1 C. of 2% reduced fat shredded Mexican four cheese blend instead of regular cheese.


Note: I have made a batch of these before and sauteed the vegetables first. They turned out pretty juicy and deflated a lot when they cooled. Putting the veggies in raw is my preferred method, since they still get cooked in the oven, and the muffins have a better texture.

These pop out really easily if you 
remember to use a liberal coat 
of cooking spray!

These little guys ended up only being 3 Pt.+ each in the Weight Watchers program, which I just signed up for this week! Looking to skip the holiday pounds this year, and work on getting back in shape after having my baby girl.