Happy Apple Season!

I love the autumn season because it means an abundance of delicious apples fresh from the orchard, which means lots of cooking and baking with apples. Below are a few of the apple recipes I've used recently with suggestions on ways to improve or just enjoy!

Simple Stuff
Grilled Cheese with apples: I use fresh sourdough bread from the bakery, slices of monterey jack cheese, and slice up any sweet apples I have on hand to make a delicious grilled sandwich for a quick dinner.

Apple Spinach salad: Another easy one for lunch or to accompany dinner, just mix spinach, chopped walnuts, slices of your favorite apple, and poppy seed dressing.

Entertaining
Cheddar and Hard Cider fondue: I make this when I have large get togethers with friends (I usually double the recipe and use two fondue pots). We prefer to use Strongbow or Woodchuck hard cider, Jim Beam, and instead of the gruyere cheese (which can be expensive) we use a mix of swiss, fontina, and/or emmentaler. For dipping: apple sausage, apple slices, and potatoes.

Dinner
Braised Pork and Apple Stew: Very simple, the only thing I change is cutting up the vegetables a little smaller so it's easier to eat when served. Perfect for a chilly autumn day.

Chicken with Apple, Onion, and Cider Sauce: I increased the amount of chicken breasts to 6 (because I had more people to serve), but kept the amounts used for the sauce because it made an adequate amount for six people. I also sprinkled my chicken with fresh rosemary before baking. One thing I would be sure to check is that your apples aren't getting too done; mine ended up a bit mushy because I left them on the stove too long while the chicken was finishing in the oven.

Apple Ginger Pork Chops: I like this better than the chicken recipe above because it's got a little more flavor. I used Haralson apples instead of Granny Smith because I had Haralsons on hand, and I also used boneless pork chops and skipped the raisins. For even more apple flavor, I would use a light apple wine to deglaze the pan.

Desserts
Apple Coffee Cake with Crumble Topping and Brown Sugar Glaze: Soooo goooood! I added more apples than the recipe calls for (per user comments on the website) and also boiled the glaze mixture for a few minutes to dissolve the sugar granules (also per user comments). Fantastic warm, but also good the next day with vanilla ice cream.

The Apple Lady's Apple Cake: aka Gateau aux Pommes de la Reine des Pommes. I first made this for French class food day in high school. While it was good, it is definitely better warm right out of the oven. The reason I bought a spring form pan.

Drink
Hot Apple Cider with Rum: A delicious way to warm up in the evening. I don't typically garnish with cinnamon sticks, but it is delicious either way. Put all the ingredients (minus the orange, I don't like the texture it adds to the drink) in a crock pot and let it warm during dinner so you have a warm after-dinner drink ready to go. 

Finally, I have to give a shout out to Pine Tree Apple Orchard. Without them I wouldn't have dozens of apples to cook and bake with, nor would I have their scrumptous apple turnovers stocked for the months of September, October, and November. If you live in Minnesota, you have to check them out.

Happy Apple Season!

Try something new

Like most college-aged people, I never cooked while I was in school. Between barely having time to sleep at night and sharing a very small kitchen with the other 60 people on my dormitory floor, cooking was nearly impossible unless it was in a microwave. I should admit that I sort of just assumed I would be bad at cooking. All throughout my childhood and high school years, my mom always cooked. Even during the vacations and summers home from college, I never tried cooking cause I assumed the worst.

I'm proud to say this is no longer the case. One positive thing that came out of graduating into a recession was the time I had to learn new things, like cooking. I'm by no means a master chef, but I can follow a recipe and even put together some of my own creations. Thank you to Food Network for inspiring even the most kitchen illiterate to pick up a spatula!

Some great resources for aspiring cooks (and herb gardeners):

• The Food Network - both on TV and online - I like watching the shows cause I can see how things are actually supposed to be done, but the website has millions of recipes and some video, too. The website also has great suggestions for side dishes and desserts right along side main dish recipes.
  
• yumsugar - A really great blog with everything cooking-related you could ever imagine. I set up an RSS feed to my Google Reader so I get updates all the time on new posts, which include recipes for in-season foods, party planning menus, kitchenware, etc.
• Your Backyard Herb Garden - I just got this book at the beginning of last summer and have used it extensively since. I decided to plant my own herb garden with basil, oregano, thyme, and rosemary, and this book takes you through everything from when to plant, how to use the herbs, and how and when to dry herbs and get them ready for hibernation over the winter. Truly a must if you are going to grow herbs.

So while I'm not ready to enter a Food Network Challenge or compete with Iron Chefs, I have become a good enough cook to serve food to friends and family (much to their delight I hope) and to share some of that knowledge here. All it really took was some inspiration (you can only watch so much good food being prepared before you have to have it on the plate in front of you) and a few simple guiding tools. In fact, I'd venture to suggest that anything can be done with a few simple guiding tools (maybe not brain surgery, think more of the everyday kinds of activities) and I hope I can share with you some more things I never thought I do in the near future.

For now, I leave you with an excellent recipe for the cold days ahead: Baked Potato Soup. This one's from yumsugar and I found it especially helpful to have step by step photographs along with the recipe. I made this soup yesterday and it was delicious! Also good as leftovers today. One thing to note: I added fresh basil from my garden both chopped up in the soup itself and as garnish on top. Yummy!