on apples.

Two weekends ago I finally crossed an item off my "Seattle Bucket List," and drove three hours east to visit my college roommate, who is living and completing a PA program in Yakima. It was a whirlwind 48 hour stay that included beer, playoff baseball viewing, ordering sweet potato fries AND pizza much to the snotty surprise of the little blonde waitress, apple picking, pumpkin picking, wine tasting, more beer and playoff baseball, shuffleboard, darts, sweet potato tots, and black bean queso. (Did wonders for my waistline.) Anyways, try to look past the bar food and note that "apple picking" portion. I ended up with several pounds of hand-picked Red Delicious gems, just itching to be baked into something Fall-y and perfect.

 

And then there was the dilemma of what that would be. Thanks a lot, Pinterest, for making it impossible to pin one down! But after days of perusing I finally bit the bullet and went for this Apple Fritter Bread from "Rumbly in my Tumbly."

Now, disclaimer. I am AWFUL at following recipes. My initial instinct is to "healthify" whatever I'm baking, for the obvious reason is that the healthier it is, the more I can eat. (I go for quantity.) So replacing eggs with flax seed meal, oil with applesauce, and all-purpose with whole-wheat are no-brainer baking steps for this girl. Unfortunately such swaps often require subsequent adjustments such as bake time or amounts of complimentary ingredients. So my adjusted recipes aren't always total winners the first time around.

So THIS time, since I was baking for an audience (girl's night at my place), I decided I would follow the recipe. Exactly. I wanted it to be awesome. But.... then I thought ehhhhh, I could swap 2 tablespoons of butter for greek yogurt! I could replace just half the flour with whole-wheat! So I did. But that was it. The rest of the recipe I followed to a T, and this bread rocked.

Photo from original blog recipe

Photo of mine. Nailed it!

Apple Fritter Bread

Ingredients:
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon
2/3 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1 apple, peeled and chopped (any kind is fine), mixed with 1 T granulated sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon
Glaze:
1 cup of powdered sugar + 1-3 tablespoons of milk or cream, mixed together to a drizzling consistency)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9×5-inch loaf pan. (I greased and then lined with parchment paper for easy removal)Mix brown sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl.Beat white sugar and butter together in a bowl using an electric mixer until smooth and creamy. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time, until incorporated; add vanilla extract.Combine flour and baking powder together in a bowl; stir into creamed butter mixture. Mix milk into batter until smooth. Pour half the batter into the prepared loaf pan; add half the apples and half the brown sugar mixture. Lightly pat apple mixture into batter. Pour the remaining batter over apple layer; top with remaining apples and brown sugar mixture. Lightly pat apples into batter; swirl brown sugar mixture through apples using a finger or spoon.Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean, 30 to 40 minutes.Let cool for about 15 minutes before drizzling with glaze. Then, enjoy!

I made the loaf twice more in the next two days. The second time was for a friend's birthday, and I replaced half the butter with Greek yogurt and all of the flour with whole wheat. She was thrilled with it, so I figured I'd test the waters with even more adjustments. Finally, I made the loaf for myself. I made the following ingredient changes:

Ingredients:

1/3 cup brown sugar 1/4 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2/3 cup white sugar 1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened 2 T butter + 6 T nonfat plain Greek yogurt
2 eggs 1 egg + 2 egg whites
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
1 apple, 2 apples, peeled and chopped (any kind is fine), mixed with 1 T granulated sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup walnuts

It was still pretty delicious. If I hadn't had the buttery, white flour-ed version to compare it to, I'd rave about this version. It was a little bit drier, and probably didn't need to bake as long as it did. Overall though it was still pretty killer. Plus, I didn't even feel that bad about having two slices.


The second adventure I had was re-creating a - drumroll - Bacon Lattice-Topped Apple Pie. What?! OK first of all, I don't even really like bacon. I'm mostly impartial, but if given a choice, 9 times out of 10 I'll skip it. But this was epic. And I wanted to bake it for an audience, more specifically a male audience who I sort of wanted to impress with my baking skills. Who really enjoys bacon. And how epic is that pie??! It was on.

I got the idea on Pinterest, from this photo:

Which, devastatingly, led to a dead link. But I was proactive and simply Googled "bacon apple pie," and the good old Loveless Cafe in Nashville (which I have been to and own an apron from!) pulled through with this recipe. 

Bacon Apple Pie

Ingredients:

9-inch pie shell, unbaked

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

6 cups 1/2-inch-thick sliced peeled apples (1 1/2 to 2 pounds)

8-12 slices uncooked Loveless Cafe Country Smoked Bacon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place the pie shell on a sturdy baking sheet and set aside.

In a large bowl, rub the brown sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom and cloves together with your fingertips until blended. Add the apples and toss to coat. Dump the spiced apple slices into the pie shell, including any sugar and juices that have accumulated in the bowl.

Weave the uncooked bacon on top of the pie filling, starting from the center and working your way out to the edges. For a lattice topping you should have an over-under pattern with 5 pieces going vertically and five pieces going horizontally. Trim the edges and pinch into the crust to seal. Cover pie with foil and bake in the middle of the oven for 1 hour. Remove cover. Continue baking for 15 minutes until golden brown and bacon is crisp.

Let pie cool for 1 hour before cutting.

I followed the recipe pretty exactly, except that I was out of brown sugar so used 2 tsp molasses mixed with 3/4 cup white sugar. You could definitely taste the molasses, but in a good way. The bake time was weird, potentially because I used thick-cut bacon. I baked for an hour covered and probably 30 minutes uncovered, checking every 5 minutes or so until the bacon on top was turning brown.

Oh. And, I cheated with a store-bought crust.

Apple peeling like a pro

Before

After

This pie fed said male audience, his brother, best friend, and best friend's girlfriend. With rave reviews! It was a perfect sweet/salty and that molasses taste definitely kicked it up a notch. Minus the inevitable heart attack it has every power of instigating, this pie wins.

Basically, I'm an apple connoisseur. And I love it. Thanks, Yakima!

on food shaming.

I am a wannabe foodie. I read cookbooks to fall asleep. I am never not excited about grocery shopping, I spend hours waffling (waffles? what?) over what appetizer to bring to a casual barbecue or girls' night. I went alone to a cookbook release party this week. Pinterest has learned that I only ever look at recipes, and filters out the inspirational quotes and DIY wedding ideas from my homepage accordingly.

…Normal?

Seattle, appropriately, also loves food. And I've recently realized this appreciation is in fact a very cleverly disguised excuse for judgment.

People love to judge. And once they've had their fill of judging appearance - fashion sense, job status, how pretty/not pretty other people's babies are - what's next? Choices. More specifically, food choices.

You're eating a burger. (First of all, WHAT?! FATFACE!) Is that beef hormone free? You know ketchup has high fructose corn syrup, right? And if those onions came from anywhere further than Yakima then you're for sure going to develop an autoimmune disorder… You didn't sleep last night? Your hair won't curl right today? You were overcharged on your last T-Mobile bill? You know why? GLUTEN.

Etc, etc.

And it's not just the soccer mom checking for pesticides in the produce aisle holding your eating against you. Them inter-web folks are doing it too! I was recently devastated to see an article on Facebook entitled, dramatically, "10 Foods You Should NEVER Buy." The cover image? A big delicious pile of candy corn. Talk about devastation! Just cancel Halloween already. What's next, pumpkin spice lattes? Carmel apples? Better axe Fall in general. And I'm afraid to think what they'll say about Christmas. Grinches.

And then there are the anti-trenders. Those who scoff at chia seeds and kombucha. Who exclusively purchase conventional and processed foods as if to say, "Hey I saved $4 on this chicken because it's not free-range, and look! I'm still here to tell about it." Those who turn up their noses to organic-buyers for being pretentious and snotty. So, in rebelling against the granola-y organic Whole Foods judgers, these food-hipsters are judging. NO ONE IS SAFE.

What's the answer? You can shop during weird hours so people don't notice you buying Honey Bunches of Oats instead of locally produced muesli. You can cough up your entire paycheck (or lack thereof) trying to keep up with the cool kids, strutting through the Whole Foods hot bar at lunch. Or just do what you want and stick it to the haters. It's a lose-lose these days... but thank goodness for candy corn to perk you right back up after that loss.

ravel on.

No, this is not a knitting blog.

I mean, someday it might be, for a post or two. In fact I’d like it to be. Add it to the list: I could learn to make chunky scarves and hipster beanies. Or at least attempt to, and blog about the hilarity of the failure. But for most relevant purposes, ravel is a platform to figuratively "knit and unknit" the jumble of, well, life.

In the spirit of the go-to college paper intro format, I oh-so-originally pulled out the good old Mirriam-Webster (via Google, of course, I’m not literate enough to own a real dictionary) for some annotation action. Some of the definition highlights:

ravel
transitive verb : to undo the intricacies of : disentangle
intransitive verb, obsolete : to become entangled or confused

I like that transitive verb in personal application. ravel is about “undoing the intricacies” of things that make me think. Things I want to try. Things I want to act upon, learn more about, reflect on, or simply rant about. Experimental crafts and recipes and day trips. Quotes or stories, new/old/favorite jams, bookmarked Youtubes. The rundowns of public transportation encounters or failed Tinder dates. Rarely, social or political stances that I’ll attempt to understand. Whatever jumps to the forefront at a time I happen to be in the mood to write, all woven through - “knitted” through, if you will - with requisite wit, whim, and sarcasm.

The intransitive verb to “become entangled or confused” is less than flattering, but an accurate comprehensive self-description. Hopefully a little for you, too. I’ve only recently realized that no one really has it all together. And if anyone wants to counter that, I’ll be the first to call shenanigans. Relationally, vocationally, spiritually, financially, mentally, physically… everyone’s got their something. So my newish approach is to try to roll with it. To embrace the confusion. To ride the ups and downs. To be knit, and unknit.

Why am I creating a blog about all this nonsense? Good question. I like to write. And sometimes I have things I want to share that are more than 140 characters, or too ranty to jam up Facebook feeds. There might be a recipe I've mastered that deserves more than a mere 15 minutes of fame on Instagram. And maybe, someday, someone will identify with something I have to say. 

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. For now, I'll be content conforming to the word on the street that blogs are the new diaries. Because in the end, aren’t we all just trying to keep up with literary trends?

Though I will miss having a tiny key to my tiny diary padlock to wear on fishing line around my neck...