Apples!

My house has smelled awesome all day, if I do say so myself. Apparently I'm back to cooking with a vengeance. I whipped up a batch of chili for lunches this week and roasted a chicken for Sunday dinner. But the best part of marathon day in the kitchen is the apples! It was such a beautiful fall day that I just had to go to the orchard and came home loaded down with a bushel of apples, cider and doughnuts (of course).

I'm not much of a baker because I am not good at following recipes. I get too distracted, or bored. But crisps are something I can make without (usually) ruining or rushing. I can experiment and try different things that I'm not usually comfortable with in other types of baking. Although I toyed with throwing some blueberries into my crisp, I decided to stick with straight apple. Thanks to Penzey's, my apples were well spice. I tried a new crisp topping - oat based with chopped toasted hazelnuts. It came out good, and my only regret is I forgot to have Western One pick up vanilla ice cream when he was at the store.

Between two trays of crisp and a big ole' pot of sauce, I think I'm done with peeling apples for a while!