The laundry won.
Monthly Archives: November 2008
The Practically Perfect Cranberry Apple Pie
What you are about to witness is not a healthy pie recipe. You have been warned.
Peel and core six very large Granny Smith apples. Set aside (oxidation is not an issue).
Combine 3 cups of all purpose flour, 1 tsp of salt and 2 tsp of sugar. I used a food processor to mix these by pulsing the blades for 1 to 2 seconds at a time.
Cut 1 cup (2 sticks) of frozen butter into small pieces and add to the dry ingredients.
Turn the processor on and off with quick pulses just until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs.
Separate 1 egg. Set aside the whites.
To the egg yolk, add 1/4-1/2 cup of ice water and 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract. Beat until thoroughly mixed.
Add the liquid ingredients and turn the motor on and off with quick pulses just until the mixture begins to mass together. It should be crumbly, but not dry. If the mixture seems too crumbly, add more ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time.
Wrap the dough in wax paper and place in the fridge for about 10-15 minutes (this is especially important to do in the summer).
Slice the cored apples. Measure out approximately 4-6 cups of cranberries. Rinse thoroughly and pick out any withered berries.
In a large bowl, combine fruit and berries.
Squeeze the juice out of half a lemon. Drizzle the juice over the berries and fruit.
In a separate bowl, combine 2 cups of sugar, 1/8 tsp of nutmeg, 3/4 tsp of cinnamon, and 5 tablespoons of cornstarch.
Toss the fruit in the dry ingredients until well coated. Set aside.
Take the dough out of the fridge and divide in half. Roll the first half out until roughly between 1/4 - 1/8 of a inch thick.
Dust the top with flour. Fold in half and then in half again.
Place the center of the pie crust in the center of a 10-inch pie shell. Unfold and press in.
Trim the dough to about half an inch beyond the pie rim.
Heap the pie filling in the shell and dot with butter. Set aside.
Roll out the second half of dough. Using an empty pie plate, measure and cut about an inch around.
Cut the dough into eight wedges.
Using the egg whites, moisten the edge of the pie crust.
Begin laying the wedges over top the pie, moistening the edges with the egg whites.
When finished, the pie will look like a yurt.
To create a vent for steam to escape, pull the points of the wedges back.
Fold the edges of the crust together. Press down with a fork.
Brush the top of the pie with the remaining egg whites.
The pie is now ready to be baked. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes. Turn the oven down to 325 and bake for another 50 minutes. To prevent over browning, lay a sheet of tin foil over the pie after about 15-20 minutes.
Bon appetite!
Hymn for Thanksgiving
Now thank we all our God
With heart and hand and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom His world rejoices;
Who, from our mother’s arms,
Hath blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love,
And still is ours today.
Oh, may this bounteous God,
Through all our life, be near us,
Wtih ever joyful hearts
And blessed peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace,
And guide us when perplexed,
And free us from all ills
In this world and the next.
All praise and thanks to God
The Father now be given,
The son and Him who reigns
With them in highest heaven,
The one eternal God,
Whom earth and heaven adore;
For this it was, is now,
And shall be evermore.
Martin Rinkart, 1586-1649
Translated by Catherine Winkworth, 1827-1878
Unusual Cold Front
As of November 14, we had our first real cold cold front. (Note from Yankee Mother - You think this is cold? Oh my dear, you would’ve died if you had waited for the school bus in the cold like I did as a child. You need a cold reality check.) I’ve seen cold fronts and cold fronts, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one come in the way this one did. It was wierd. All day the wind was strong from the south, like it usually is before a big front, and the sky was dotted with pretty little cumulus towers. By mid afternoon, the sky was beginning to clear and the wind shifted northwest. Dad and I were going to a friend’s house to tune a piano (Dad was going to tune - I was going to visit) when we noticed strange clouds sweeping in from the north.
Like I said, weird. I’m not sure exactly what caused this. The clouds are alto stratus, but I can’t remember a time when I’ve seen alto stratus sliced into….I don’t know….fingers. Maybe it’s because most fronts and low pressure systems tend to split around Dallas when they hit it. Literally.
Candy Apples
Autumn is a particularly fun time in the Spangler household because most of our family traditions center around this time of year. One of those family traditions is the making of candied and caramel apples.
The apples are readied by inserting popsicle sticks into the stem depressions.
Pieces of caramel candy are melted in the first pot. It was extremely hard for me not to eat any, because caramel is one of my favorite sweets.
Here Mom explains to Emily how to coat an apple with caramel.
Letting the excess drip off…
Mmm… looks good enough to eat…
…as Abigail demonstrates!
Now for the candied apples. A candy apple is an apple coated with a hard sugar syrup sometimes flavored with cinnamon. We do a more cherry flavored coating.
It’s important to heat the syrup until it reaches the hard crack stage. Otherwise the syrup would flow right off the apple after it cooled.
The hard crack stage was reached at 312 degrees Farenheit, so caution was exercised as we began dipping the apples.
Annie decided to coat a green apple in red.
After dipping the apples, we poured the extra syrup into cold water to see what would happen. The syrup immediately hardened into strange, twisted shapes.
Here are the caramel apples. Even though I enjoy candied apples, I prefer these caramel ones, probably because caramel carries more than a hint of saltiness in it that I find irresistible.
My mother, however, likes the candied apples better. They certainly look good.
Bon appetite!
Autumn Hike
It’s been over a year since my whole family has gone out for a little R&R at some getaway or another. Time to break our working streak! Last weekend, Dad took us to the Eisenhower State Park on Lake Texoma for a “little” hiking. The location (the Texas side of the Red River) was stunning, and the weather prinstine. The sky was crystaline blue dotted here and there with bits of alto cumulus.
North Central Texas near the Red River is a beautiful place to be. For starters, the trees are much taller than the prairies around Dallas. Several I spotted in the lowlands looked to be somewhere between 50 to 70 feet.
The trail was flanked with hundreds of baby trees. These little cedars looked to me like minature Christmas trees. They were so cute, I wished I could’ve taken one home.
This handsome crow “serenaded” us on our hike. One thing interesting about cooler weather is that the air seems less heavy, and perhaps that is why sound seems to travel better. I heard this crow long before we actually came upon him.
Everything was tinged with vibrant oranges, reds and yellows, with the deep green of the cedars providing a rich contrast. I love autumn, the colors, the sweet scent of dried leaves on the forest floor, the sense of urgancy that envelops the atmosphere as the cold slowly blankets the prairies… and this hike was the perfect time for me to really enjoy it, especially since all the ragweed seemed to have died off…
Happy, happy colors…
Colors of carrots and peas…
Red the color of red balloons…
Green of grasses and trees…
Grey the color of winter skies…
Purple of tropical seas…
Blue the color of Concord grapes…
Yellow the stripes of bees…
Colors of autumn leaves…
The following are shoreline views of Lake Texoma. It’s fairly deep, as evidenced by the vibrant blue of its waters, and I’ve heard tell that it’s filled with striped bass. Maybe someday I can persuade my father to take us fishing there. This lake was formed by the damming of the Red River. Surrounding it are rocky bluffs and limestone cliffs.
Along the limestone cliffs were numerous shallow caves. If I hadn’t been so concerned with taking care of my ankle, I would’ve loved to have gotten closer and perhaps explored some.
Of particular interest to me were the many fossils of pre-Flood sealife that I found.
Here are Kimmy and Abby’s hands next to an ammonite fossil.
I have an obsession with trees, tree trunks to be precise. I love the twisty, windy shapes and forms they make. Happily for me, Texas is replete with all kinds of gnarled, rugged tree types.
This one is almost lyrical in the way the branches flow.
Ask someone what kind of tree this is, and they’ll never get it. Not unless they’ve done a lot of research on Native Texas plants and/or the Caddo Indians. I’ve never yet many anyone that could identify this one right off the bat. Anyone want to give it a whirl?
This was a 30 foot fully mature cedar tree, the like of which I haven’t seen too often, especially around my home. Most of the Eastern Red Cedars I am aquainted with are maybe 15 feet, and lack the impressive branching structure this one displays. However, I did know of a tree many years ago that was about this height and breadth. Located on a limestone bluff among trees of other kinds, it was my favorite to scale. From the top, I could see off the plateau my house is on over the valleys leading north to McKinney. Best of all were the days when the wind blew stiff from the northwest in autumn, for then the tree would dance back and forth, taking me with it. Cedar trees have very flexible limbs, so I wasn’t afriad to be standing on pencil thin twigs, even at the height of 25-30 feet. Sometimes the wind would bend the tree far over and I would catch fleeting glimpses of the ground through the smaller trees. Those are some of my best cherished childhood memories.
Sometimes the loveliest and most amazing things are that which are small, like this lichen…
This is a view of the dam…
From the top of the dam looking over the Red River. Notice that the cumulus clouds seem to be toppling over a bit. If I remember correctly, that’s due to something called wind sheer, though I cannot recollect what that implicates.
Looking towards the dam from Highway 75 (excuse the blurriness of this photo - the van was moving at a good clip).
I took this photo on the way home. Dad decided to take a country drive to let everyone rest before we arrived home. I, however, was unable to sleep. Why should I try when everywhere were beautiful things to be seen? As we drove past the farmland below, I found myself utterly overwelmed by the immensity of the vivid sky and prairie spread out before me. How can there be anything more wonderful in all the world?
