Recipes

Apple Butter:

I based this recipe on one I found online at a crockpotting blog. I've never really eaten much apple butter, but my Dad loves it, so I figured if anyone would know if this was good or not it would be him. He loved it, so I'll share it.

3 pounds of whatever apples you love (I imagine you could do as many apples as you'd like, but I had a 3 pound bag on hand)
1 bag of those cubed melty caramels
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
2 tsp of cinnamon
a few dashes of cloves
1/2 cup of white sugar

Core and slice 3 pounds of apples, add vanilla, place in crockpot on low and cook overnight. (8 hours)

Wake up to a wonderful apple smell.

Smash the cooked apples with a fork. Or some fancy masher if you are so inclined. We aren't that upscale around these parts.

Add cinnamon, cloves (I only used a dash because I hate when cloves overpower anything, but if you love feel free to add more), sugar and an entire bag of those caramels. (I only used 16 caramels thinking it might be too many. HA, go for the WHOLE BAG, trust me...it can handle it.)

Turn on high and cook for a couple of hours with the lid OFF.

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Pumpkin Roll

• 1/4 cup powdered sugar (to sprinkle on towel)
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2/3 cup pumpkin
  

Filling:

1 pkg. (8 oz.) cream cheese, at room temperature

1 cup powdered sugar, sifted

6 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Powdered sugar (optional for decoration)

FOR CAKE:
PREHEAT oven to 375° F. Grease 15 x 10-inch jelly-roll pan; line with wax paper. Grease and flour paper. Sprinkle a thin, cotton kitchen towel with powdered sugar.

COMBINE flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt in small bowl. Beat eggs and granulated sugar in large mixer bowl until thick. Beat in pumpkin. Stir in flour mixture. Spread evenly into prepared pan.

BAKE for 13 to 15 minutes or until top of cake springs back when touched. (If using a dark-colored pan, begin checking for doneness at 11 minutes.) Immediately loosen and turn cake onto prepared towel. Carefully peel off paper. Roll up cake and towel together, starting with narrow end. Cool on wire rack.

FOR FILLING:
beat cream cheese, 1 cup powdered sugar, butter and vanilla extract in small mixer bowl until smooth. Carefully unroll cake. Spread cream cheese mixture over cake. Reroll cake. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving, if desired.

I used Libbys Pumpkin Pie Filling for the pumpkin in this. If you are unfamiliar, it's pumpkin with the necessary spices already in it. So I just did 2/3 of it, and didn't have to add the spices. But, do whatever works best for you.

And for those who think I'm cheating by using canned pumpkin: MARTHA uses canned pumpkin. That makes it okay. ;)

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I also made a chocolate cheesecake, but now I can't find the recipe. Oops.

I've decided the ONLY good thing about cooler weather is the baking. But the baking is bad for my heart and my thighs. So logically this proves my theory that moving to South Florida will prolong my lifespan.

What are you people baking? Have any good recipes or blogs to point me to? I have a long weekend ahead of me and my neighbors are starting to expect goodies.

On the Road Again, Like a Band of Gypsies...

In less than 30 days I will be on the road. Possibly somewhere in North or South Carolina at this point. That is my favorite part of taking a trip: being on the road. There is something to be said about traveling by car in this country. The silly things you find on the side of the roads, the somewhat frightening podunk kind of towns you run across as you fill up gas. And when traveling in the South, the varying degrees of accents you run across at each station.

I simply adore rolling into parking lots in the middle of the night, with the lights illuminating the view. How around 3 am you have to crank up the air conditioning to force yourself awake as you drink shitty cappucinos and prompt the rest of the car into one more rousing session of "sing it if you know it". Or that feeling of hitting the florida state line at 5 am, where the wind immediately shifts and everything begins to feel stickier.

This year the exact nature of the road trip is up in the air. I could not say for certainty that we will even be stopping to spend the night somewhere. However I have been promised a roll into Savannah. For that, I am at least grateful. This much I do know, at some ungodly hour on Friday the 13th (cue the scary music) my family will pile into my mother's new ride with 2 yapping dogs and 1 sleepy kid. We'll bid adeiu to the house. Water the plants one last time and Dad will begin the trip behind the wheel.

It will all seem very "Leave it to Beaver".

25 minutes down the road something calamity will occur. Like that one year the windows began leaking, it downpoured and by Lebanon Junction we were all soaked to the bone. This year I predict something will begin to beep in my mother's ultra sensitive van and we won't know how to make it stop.

Approximately 1 hour into the trip my Dad will begin to bob his head. Mom will ask him if he'd like her to take over now, and he'll agree. He'll say "just for a little while" and he will really mean, "at least until we hit the Florida state line".

At this point I'll assume position in the front seat with my mother as the boys and dogs doze in the backseat. During this time we will get lost, argue over directions, listen to way too much bad music and quiz each other on useless trivia we think of as we pass various cities.

If there is anything for Lucy and Ethel to get into, this is when it will happen.

And I can't wait.

But mostly I can't wait for a very laid back vacation. I've warned everyone I'm traveling with that all I want to do is lay on the beach and take tons of pictures all week. I don't need to run all over Timbuktu, I don't need to see everything in the world, I just need relaxation and a break.

I think I have a tendency to run on full throttle when on vacation. I guess it has to do with how alive I feel when doing something I love, like traveling. I always want to see, touch, feel and do as much as possible. And in the process I can lose focus of what a vacation is really about. It's the simple moments I always remember most, not the ones I freak out over and try to create.

Like the very first time I walked onto the beach with Jonathan. Or eating key lime pie last year with my toes in the sand which was so simple and unexpected. And the night I sat on a pier for four hours with a pigeon staring me down the entire time. The last one I bitched and complained about the entire time it was occuring and yet it has become one of my favorite travel memories. Because it was quirky and unusual.

Remind me to take more pleasure in quirky and unusual, okay?

So that's what I'm doing here, I'm vowing to myself that I will chill out and promise to not run on maximum pressure for 9 days. I'll just sit back and enjoy the ride. Even if Jon sticks his stinky feet in my face the entire time.

Photo of the Day: Deer Lake Edition

Before Editing:

After Editing:

I had my new Paintshop software humming last night. And Picnik! I have to say, Paintshop is definitely more complex and a bit trickier to figure out, but Picnik is completely comparable in basic photo editing abilities. This is, of course, from the I don't know what in the hell I'm doing most of the time perspective. I'll be the first to say I've never in my life given much thought to photo editing. And I'm usually very happy with my normal picture quality. However, I can't deny that a little editing really makes a picture pop.

Which is why I've spent my spare time, when I could have been watching really bad television, to instead keep on tinkering away with old pictures.

This photo was taken at Deer Lake State Park in Seagrove Beach, Florida. We were down there when all of those wildfires were smoldering. Which unfortunately gave a smoky look to a lot of my pictures from that trip. I'm liking the cleaned up version.