Raw Wednesday: Honeycrisp Heaven

I’m just going to level with y’all right now. I didn’t truly participate in Raw Wednesday this week. I know, I know. I’m properly ashamed and all. It’s just that I was in minor panic mode all day long (more on that later) and didn’t really eat much, and when I did, I couldn’t be bothered to do anything more than reheat a leftover vegan enchilada my wonderful daddy made for dinner a couple of nights ago. That was lunch; I skipped breakfast (I know!) and had a vegan burger for dinner… the kind from a box. I know.

I did, however, go raw for dessert. By which I mean I ate an apple. So… that counts, right? Counts-ish? Maybe? Okay, maybe not. But honestly, I couldn’t be arsed to make a more complex dessert, and Honeycrisp apples were on sale at the grocery store today, and they just looked so inviting in the fruit bowl… and you know what? I don’t think I’ve ever had a Honeycrisp before tonight. But they’re listed on that Vegan’s 100 List which seems to make for an excellent lazy-day MoFo post (mine’s coming, don’t you worry), and people have been blogging left and right about their deliciousness… so I had to try one.

Ooer. I think they live up to all the hype. Honeycrisps are kind of my perfect apple, sweet but not too sweet, a little bit juicy, and, well, crisp. It was love at first bite.

On the topic of biting, fun fact – I can’t eat apples straight-up; I have to cut them into pieces because my gums are, um, slightly receding and biting into apples isn’t great for that. Oh, the joys of growing old (snerk). At least I’ll never fail to appreciate the joy of a simple raw treat, even if I do have to hack it up in order to enjoy it.

Apples in Autumn

Happy autumn, friends! It’s the first full day of fall and I’m about to be an unashamed SUB – a Seriously Unoriginal Blogger. Celebrating the advent of autumn by making something with apples is pretty much the epitome of food blogger cliche, but let’s face it – there’s not much else that screams AUTUMN! like a post about this particular fruit.

And honestly? I don’t mind, because going apple picking is one of the highlights of fall. I have many fond memories of heading to local orchards with my family when I was a kid, and since my wonderful college provided free transportation to a nearby orchard, I was able to go apple picking even while 1300 miles away from home. This year, I headed to Dame Farm and Orchards with my mom, aunt, and a friend. Oh, and by the way – all the pretty photos in this post were taken by my wonderful mommy since I didn’t bring my camera to the orchard with me.

The picking was fabulous, probably because it’s still early in the season. We’d never been to this orchard previously, and we appreciated the fact that it didn’t feel overly commercialized – we paid a man in a small wooden stall, and he didn’t take credit cards. They also had an impressive variety of apples, and the trees were laden with fruit.

The temptation to grab an apple and take a bite is nearly unconquerable when these luscious beauties are hanging tauntingly at eye level.

And everyone filches a couple apples for sustenance whilst harvesting fruit under the hot sun, right?

We also saw some gorgeous seasonal produce, like all these bright and colorful squash.

And of course there were pumpkins galore.

I love the odd one out on the bottom of that picture.

All in all, we had a lovely day and returned home with about 30 pounds of apples. Yeah, you heard that right. That’ll make a lot of Apple Pie Oat Bran! Last night, though, Mom and I put our apples to use by making a batch of homemade applesauce. Rather, I kept an eye on the huge pot of apples, water, and sugar for a few hours and made sure it wasn’t exploding or doing anything equally bad, and then Mom stole the fun part and got to use our applesauce maker/strainer thing to mash up the apples. Oh well. At least I can drown my sorrows in this huge bowl of applesauce and revel in the joys of autumn.

(The peanut butter jar (my breakfast; it’s full of oat bran & PB leftovers) is there for scale purposes, in case you were wondering. Oh, and this photo is mine… hehe.)

Breakfast, CCK Style

I love breakfast.

I know, who doesn’t, right? But all through high school and most of college, breakfast definitely didn’t get much love from me, except on the weekends when my dad might make a big batch of pancakes. I wasn’t much of a morning person, and in high school I was guilty of breaking my fast on whatever I could shove down my gob in the least amount of time, much to my disapproving mom’s chagrin. Actually, I usually brought my food to school and downed a bagel during my Academic Decathlon homeroom (nerd alert!) before classes started in earnest. In college, I rarely ate breakfast at all until last year, when I lived in a townhouse and had my own kitchen. Not having to get up, get dressed, and trek to the dining hall changed the way I approached breakfast, especially during the frigid Minnesota winter! I have grown to love and appreciate breakfast, and now I never skip it. From pancakes to potato-laden brekkie burritos, I love me my mornin’ eats.

I especially love all things oatmeal, and that’s one reason I’ve always had a soft spot for [Chocolate Covered] Katie and her blog, even back in the days when I was blogging over at Blogspot. Her oatmeal creations are inspired and inspirational! When you can have Brownie Batter for breakfast, who wouldn’t?! Especially when your breakfast creations look like this:

My unfortunate lack of an immersion blender means I can’t quite pull off her blended grains technique, but whatever, man – my Bob’s Red Mill oat bran tasted scrumptious enough without being blended! Plus, my Brownie Batter Oat Bran was super brain food for my daily GRE study session.

But I didn’t stop there. Oh no, my love for dessert-for-breakfast fueled me to greater heights of sweet breakfast euphoria when I made Snickerdoodle Oat Bran, a variation of Katie’sSnickerdoodle Hot Cereal!

Cinnamon, sugar, and vanilla gave this bowl a flavor totally reminiscent of the snickerdoodles I made a few days ago.

This morning, I ended my trifecta of CCK-inspired breakfasts by coming up with one of my own. I call it… Apple Pie Oat Bran! This “recipe” is super easy and involves one of my favorite ways of eating apples, even those banged-up, bruised, sad-looking ones that sit dolefully in your fruit bowl for days waiting to be used. I’m kind of guesstimating on the measurements here, because I really don’t measure much except my oat bran and milk.

Apple Pie Oat Bran
Ingredients:
1 apple + cinnamon and sugar to taste
1 cup water or your favorite nondairy milk (I mix half water with half soy or almond milk)
1/3 cup oat bran (I use Bob’s Red Mill)
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg

First, chop up your apple into small cubes and put ‘em in a small bowl. Liberally douse the suckers with sugar and cinnamon and let the apples sit and macerate for a while until they become nice and juicy. Then start making your oat bran. Start heating your liquid of choice along with the vanilla, and once it’s boiling add the oat bran. Keep a bonny eye on your oa tbran, stirring fairly often, for one minute. Add about 3/4 of your macerated apple mixture and keep on cookin’ for another minute. Then turn off the heat, add the cinnamon and nutmeg, and remove your pot from the heat. Unless you’re impatient like me, you probably want to let your oat bran cool a for a couple of minutes before pouring it into a bowl, but once you’ve done that, top the oat bran with the rest of your apple mixture, give it all another sprinkle of cinnamon, and you’re good to go! (Also, feel free to sub oat bran with your breakfast cereal of choice.)

Oh, helpful tip – I like to keep a premade cinnamon sugar mixture in a repurposed spice jar so I have it ready at all times; it’s quite convenient.

Now, while these breakfasts are completely worthy of a devotional post such as this one, I also have an ulterior motive in baring my love for dessert-like breakfasts to the world. Katie is
giving away a spiralizer, and she’s generously offering up six extra entries to anyone who blogs about one of her recipes. But even if you don’t have a blog, you can still enter by checking out her contest. Thanks, Katie!