Better than Country Fruit Stands... Curbside Free Fruit

This morning, as I was making my way down the street to pick Sole, my near-four year old, up from his 2 hours of kindergarten, a discarded wine juice bucket filled to the brim with green balls caught my attention.  I pulled over, did a double-take, recognized the house the bucket stood in front of (family friends of old), and then noted that the green balls were no less that about 50 tart, delicious, suited to apple pie perfection granny smith apples (Quest, my older son's favorite).   Disregarding the ants on it, the few bruises, and the few halved apples that had squirrel marks on them, I loaded them up and felt like the abundance of Fall had just laid itself before me.

And so, spontaneously I decided to test these apples with my young baker Sole at hand.  And if they proved successful, I would prepare a big batch of dough and use our impromptu recipe to cook with my preschool students at my drop-in cooking/art classes downtown tomorrow, in addition to juicing the apples for some yummy seasonal cider.  Since I usually work with a group of 4-8 children and I'm always mindful that each child be directly involved in each part of the cooking or baking process, I decided to try out a mini pie variation by using a muffin tin pan, with each cup lined in parchment paper.   Yes, it was fairly tedious rolling and moulding each pie, but the outcome was pretty delicious.   The buttery crust had a bit of cinnamon in it, and once the crust was folded over the filling and punctured with holes it was brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with brown sugar.

All the fillings had chops of granny smith apples, lemon juice, cinnamon, ginger, vanilla, white sugar, and ground slivered almonds in them to add texture.   For a special treat I added 2/3 tablespoon of nutella to three of the tarts, to add a bit of decadence.  If you try them yourself, let me know what you think (I'll eventually be meticulous enough to write down exact measurements, but I'm more the type of explore, experiment, and amend type of cook... uninhibited by measurements and precision).  I'm working on developing more of the latter, as that would make me more consistent as a cook, as I'd then be able to replicate my successful recipes more easily.

When you peruse the pic of the pail of apples, those of you living in more Mediterranean climates might be tickled to see the earth-toned fallen leaves already settling on the ground, officially only two days into Autumn.

There must be Sense Appeal...

After a long day's work (albeit pleasant work, cooking with preschool children who are just learning where their food comes from), I came home with very little appetite, to face my checkered tablecloth and some dishes that I only trusted would be delicious, from memory.   The first dish, the protein for the night, was unfortunately reminiscent of some random shortcomings that one can experience with men.  Of course, it truly isn't the size that counts.  Frankly, sometimes the larger the size the less euphoric sensation one feels short of pain- not something I engender to experience often when it comes to sexual encounters of the love kind. 

Anyhow, digression...   yes, laid out before me, in their pink pallor and severed heads, lay the most funny looking sausages I'd ever seen.   The cook for the night, my beloved mother who's helping me and my kids transition into a new life in our old country, shouted that these were Barese sausages  (Barese being from Bari, in the Southern Italian region of Puglia).   They were made of chicken.   With my accompanying glasses of Cote du Rhone, I engendered a taste, as I am a brave eater of the indeterminate kind.      I ate them alongside some steamed green beans sauteed in olive oil and raw garlic.  And this led me to my second culinary thought digression for the night...  I harkened back to the first love encounter I'd had since my divorce- a very short, yet intensely satisfying rendez-vous with a beautiful man from Napoli less than a year ago.   He was the first man I had dated directly from the old country, be it before or since my divorce.   Anyhow, on our first date, he had cooked an elaborate meal for me.  It began with homemade pasta and shrimp in a zucchini pesto, followed by roasted Sole, bruschetta, steamed crab, and steamed green beans.    Our first debate occured around the green beans.  He asked me if I marinated them in lemon juice or vinegar, and I said in resolute terms, absolutely in lemon juice.   He had been hoping I'd be the one ally that would align with his preference for vinegar, because apparently all the culinary friends he had asked also favored lemon juice. 

For anyone taking note, a fabulously cooked homemade meal is a sure way to afflict this woman's heart for a good while.    And on another note, tonight's green beans reinforced once again my preference for good ole cold pressed or extra virgin olive oil, slivered garlic, salt, and fresh lemon juice, to adorn perfectly steamed, seasonal green beans- I have to claim, one of my favorite vegetables/legumes of all time.

Heart and Hunger, There's no divide.

After more than a year of trying to lose the 10 pounds I had gained from having my thyroid removed (the gland the controls one's entire metabolic function), I have finally succeeded in the last month where I had failed over the course of the entire year.  Oftentimes when trying to lose weight, the hardest element to overcome is the continual sensation of hunger that gnaws at your insides.    Add love to the mix, however, then this gnawing sensation becomes something you can't fill- it's a perpetual space of wanting, nervousness, and oddly enough, consumption, that makes it easy, simply, to have a complete aversion to food.   Margaret Atwood once wrote a book about a woman's physical and emotional consumption wrought on by her protagonist's love for a man, and I thought it was such a Victorian perspective when I had read her novel years ago.   But now,  I understand....

If you are overcome by this gnawing sense inside your body (I know, it doesn't sound like a state that one would consciously want to be in), I suggest a lovely bottle of red wine to sate the appetite and placate the heart.  My recent encounter with a 2009 vintage of Cellier des Dauphins Cote du Rhone proved to be the perfect accompaniment to an anxious heart.