I realize Soli’s stitched up finger isn’t pretty, so let’s get rid of that as the first post. Here’s a quick post on our apple-picking day. Apple-picking used to be the cheap way to get apples, but really, we could’ve gotten our apples for cheaper at the grocery store. But whatever – it’s fall, we live in Quebec, and apples are everywhere, so the experience is worth it.

Our usual orchard seemed to be closed down, so we went to new one down the road in St-Antoine-Abbe that featured a big pirate ship and karaoke, as well as a shop with my much-desired white honey and Soli’s loved apple doughnuts. I enjoyed this one – it was small enough, but had a wide variety of apples. Its small size was a bit problematic, as there were only one or two rows of trees of a certain variety of apples. Our favourite, the honeycrisp, was all picked out because there was only one row of trees, so I had to use my height to get to all the apples at the top of the trees, the ones no one else seemed to be able to reach.

I loved some varieties, and wasn’t at all interested in others. Honeycrisp, Empire and Lobos were fantastic. We left the Macintosh and Spartans unpicked. I guess that’s the reason you go apple-picking – not to save money, but to sample the apples, choose only the ones you love, and come away with a fresh mix.

And you also get to spend a day in the sun, out in the country. A great way to say goodbye to summer.

Of course, I now have to find a way to use all these apples. Apple-cinnamon buns, anyone?

It seems like just yesterday I was saying how hot it was, and now I’m bundling up in sweaters and scarves to go out in the evenings. Fall is definitely here, and I can’t say I’m that pleased about it. However, even though the weather is just going to get colder and colder, all the fall produce that is becoming available cheers me up a little. And what says fall better than the apple?

It seems I’ve become allergic to apples (as well as cherries, almonds, peaches and plums), so that when I eat them in their raw form, my mouth and throat get intolerably itchy. When I cook these foods though, the allergen seems to get cooked off. So rather than suffer through an apple-less fall, I decided to turn a big bag full of apples (fresh off a neighbour’s tree, and a little questionable in their quality- -scaly bits on the peel, lots of bruises, etc) into apple butter. Though it took some time and work, spending my chilly Labour Day over a stove simmering apples with cinnamon, nutmeg and raisins for hours was just perfect.

I love the final product! It took a whole lot of apples to get just one pint of apple butter, but what else would these apples had been good for? I don’t have a foodmill, so the apple butter has a just few chunks of apple in it, along with juicy, plump raisins. The butter is thick and rich – sweet, but not overpoweringly so, so the apple is still the number one player. I added a nice dose of cinnamon and nutmeg, which I loved. I was going to add some rum while it was reducing, but after tasting it, I decided it was too delicious to add alcohol to. Imagine! Am I saying that?

This stuff is great on toast, or my favourite, with a good, salty cheese. A grilled cheese sandwich with this and sharp cheddar would be heaven. Soli wants to use it with pork, and I’ve enjoyed it with pate. If I can stop eating it straight out of the jar and have enough left, I would love to make some cinnamon rolls with it. But whatever we do, I’m sure it’ll be just fantastic.

Cinnamon Apple Butter with Raisins
adapted from Chickens in the Road

APPLE PULP

Measurements are a bit tricky for this, because it’s hard to tell how much apple pulp all your apples will yield. I would just go with however many apples you want, and figure out the measurements for your apple butter once know how many cups of apple pulp you have

4 pounds apples, cored and cut into chunks (I had about 20 smallish apples, but because I had to cut away a lot of the apple to throw away on account of holes, I ended up with a lot less apple pulp, only about 4 cups)
1 cup apple cider vinegar
Water

1. Fill pot halfway with water (make sure it’s a big enough pot that all your apples chunks cook evenly). Add cup of apple cider vinegar and apples.

2. Boil until apples turn soft (but make sure they don’t turn to liquid!)

3. Remove apples and put through a foodmill (or, if you don’t have a foodmill, push the apples through a fine sieve. A lot of the peel will just fall off, though it did take me a long time to pick the apple peel out of the sieve…next time, I would peel those apples!)

APPLE BUTTER

I ended up with about 4 cups of apple pulp, so these are the measurements I used. All of it can easily be increased.

4 cups apple pulp
1 ½ cups sugar (this depends on taste, of course)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ cup raisins

1. Combine apple pulp, sugar, spices and raisins in a heavy-bottomed large pot. Simmer slowly until mixture thickens and rounds up on a spoon. (May take a couple of hours.) Stir frequently.

2. You can choose to can this, if you wish. Just follow your regular canning procedure. Since I didn’t have much butter, it wasn’t worth canning it, so I just filled my jar and stuck it in the fridge. Next time, I’ll definitely make more and can some for later use.

The Eating Project posted a list of the 100 Chinese foods one should eat in one’s lifetime. I think I did okay, all things considered, but 50 out of 100? That’s a fail, and a long way off from the eating project’s list! Looks like I have some (really fun and delicious) work to do.

100 Chinese Foods to Try Before You Die

If you want to play along, copy & paste this list to your site. Put in bold the items you’ve already eaten and cross off the ones you would never try. Let me know your score by leaving a comment!

1. Almond milk
2. Ants Climbing a Tree (poetic, not literal, name)
3. Asian pear
4. Baby bok choy
5. Baijiu (chinese white liquor)
6. Beef brisket
7. Beggar’s Chicken
8. Bingtang hulu
9. Bitter melon
10. Bubble tea
11. Buddha’s Delight
12. Cantonese roast duck
13. Century egg, or thousand-year egg
14. Cha siu (cantonese roast pork)
15. Char kway teow
16. Chicken feet
17. Chinese sausage
18. Chow mein
19. Chrysanthemum tea
20. Claypot rice
21. Congee
22. Conpoy (dried scallops)
23. Crab rangoon
24. Dan Dan noodles
25. Dragonfruit
26. Dragon’s Beard candy
27. Dried cuttlefish
28. Drunken chicken
29. Dry-fried green beans
30. Egg drop soup
31. Egg rolls
32. Egg tart
33. Fresh bamboo shoots
34. Fortune cookies
35. Fried milk
36. Fried rice
37. Gai lan (Chinese broccoli)
38. General Tso’s Chicken
39. Gobi Manchurian
40. Goji berries (Chinese wolfberries)
41. Grass jelly
42. Hainan chicken rice
43. Hand-pulled noodles
44. Har gau
45. Haw flakes
46. Hibiscus tea
47. Hong Kong-style Milk Tea
48. Hot and sour soup
49. Hot Coca-Cola with Ginger
50. Hot Pot
51. Iron Goddess tea (Tieguanyin)
52. Jellyfish
53. Kosher Chinese food
54. Kung Pao Chicken
55. Lamb skewers (yangrou chua’r)
56. Lion’s Head meatballs
57. Lomo Saltado
58. Longan fruit
59. Lychee
60. Macaroni in soup with Spam
61. Malatang
62. Mantou, especially if fried and dipped in sweetened condensed milk
63. Mapo Tofu
64. Mock meat
65. Mooncake (bonus points for the snow-skin variety)
66. Nor mai gai (chicken and sticky rice in lotus leaf)
67. Pan-fried jiaozi
68. Peking duck
69. Pineapple bun
70. Prawn crackers
71. Pu’er tea
72. Rambutan
73. Red bean in dessert form
74. Red bayberry
75. Red cooked pork
76. Roast pigeon
77. Rose tea
78. Roujiamo
79. Scallion pancake
80. Shaved ice dessert
81. Sesame chicken
82. Sichuan pepper in any dish
83. Sichuan preserved vegetable (zhacai)
84. Silken tofu
85. Soy milk, freshly made
86. Steamed egg custard
87. Stinky tofu
88. Sugar cane juice
89. Sweet and sour pork, chicken, or shrimp
90. Taro
91. Tea eggs (actually made these myself!)
92. Tea-smoked duck
93. Turnip cake (law bok gau)
94. Twice-cooked pork
95. Water chestnut cake (mati gau)
96. Wonton noodle soup
97. Wood ear
98. Xiaolongbao (soup dumplings)
99. Yuanyang (half coffee, half tea, Hong Kong style)
100. Yunnan goat cheese

You know those muffins you get at the bakery? The ones with the nice, raised tops that have a sugary crunch to them? The ones that are just the right light and fluffy texture inside? The ones that are packed with fat blueberries? Well, these will give those muffins some stiff competition.

There’s not much to say about these muffins other than that they are the best blueberry muffins I’ve made, and any time I have some fresh blueberries (or raspberries or blackberries), they are going into this muffin. I love the slight lemon taste, the sweet crunch along the tops, and the juicy blueberries. Everything about these muffins screams perfection.

This recipe makes a pretty big batch (I got about 16 muffins out of it), but they freeze really well. The crunchy sugary top loses a bit of its crunch as the days go by, but the taste is still there!

Better-than-the-Bakery Blueberry Muffins
adapted from Simply Recipes
Printable Recipe

3 cups of all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
10 Tbsp unsalted butter (1 1/4 stick), softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
2 cups blueberries
1 Tbsp flour (if using defrosted frozen berries)
Granulated sugar for sprinkling

1. Adjust the oven rack to the middle-lower part of the oven. Preheat oven to 375°F.

2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside.

3. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar together, beating until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating until incorporated after each one. Beat in the grated lemon peel.

4. Beat in one half of the dry ingredients until just incorporated. Beat in one third of the yogurt. Beat in half of the remaining dry ingredients. Beat in a second third of the yogurt. Beat in the remaining dry ingredients and then the remaining yogurt. Again be careful to beat until just incorporated. Do not over beat. Fold in the berries. If you are using frozen berries, defrost them first, drain the excess liquid, and then coat them in a light dusting of flour.

5. Use standard 12-muffin muffin tins. Line each muffin cup with a paper liner, or coat each muffin cup lightly with olive oil or grapeseed oil using a pastry brush, or with a little butter. Distribute the muffin dough equally among the cups. Sprinkle tops with granulated sugar.

6. Bake until muffins are golden brown, about 25 to 30 minutes. Test with a long toothpick to make sure the centers of the muffins are done. Set on wire rack to cool for 5 minutes. Remove muffins from the tin and serve slightly warm.

It seems we’re having a short but intense heatwave this week. For the next two days, the temperature should reach about 40 degrees C, with the humidity! I can’t think of a better recipe to post during all this sticky, unpleasant heat than this wonderful, perfect roasted banana and rum raisin ice cream.

It’s basically David Lebovitz’s roasted banana ice cream, but for the boozers among us, I threw in a healthy dose of rum, as well as some heavily rum-soaked raisins. Because you roasted the bananas with brown sugar and butter, the banana flavour comes out very strongly in the ice cream. The touch of lemon is apparent, but adds a nice tartness to what might be otherwise too sweet of an ice cream. I loved the plump, rummy raisins that were scattered throughout, as well the rum in the ice cream as well. I wouldn’t want to imagine this ice cream without all that rum, as bananas and rum pair so brilliantly. Next time, I think I would even add a bit of cinnamon for an extra boost of flavour.

Another great thing about this ice cream, besides the taste, is that you don’t have to make a custard or use any eggs. It makes this ice cream so easy and quick to prepare, which is ideal when you’re in the middle of a heatwave!

Roasted Banana and Rum Raisin Ice Cream
adapted from David Lebovitz

3 medium-sized ripe bananas, peeled
1/3 Cup packed light brown sugar
1 Tbsp butter, salted or unsalted, cut into small pieces
1 1/2 Cups whole milk
2 Tbsp granulated sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 tsp salt
¼ cup raisins
4 tablespoons rum, divided

1. Put 2 tablespoons rum into a microwave-safe dish. Add the raisins and microwave for 1 minute. Put aside and let raisins soak up any additional rum.

2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Slice the bananas into 1/2 inch pieces and toss them with the brown sugar and butter in a 2 qt baking dish. Bake for 40 minutes, stirring just once during baking.

3. Scrape the bananas and the thick syrup in the baking dish into a blender or food processor. Add the milk, granulated sugar, vanilla, lemon juice, and salt, and puree until smooth.

4. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. If the chilled mixture is too thick to pour into your machine, whisking will thin it out.