Apple Oven Pancake

By request.  :-)  This is the recipe from Williams-Sonoma's Essentials of Baking.  (Hopefully that's not a violation of copyright or anything.)  I left out the weight measurements for the ingredients and some other parenthetical remarks (e.g. metric measurements), because I'm not that fancy of a baker. 

4 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 cups diced peeled tart apples, such as Granny Smith (3 medium)
2 tablespoons firmly packed golden brown sugar
Juice of 1/2 lemon, strained
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup whole milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
Confectioners' sugar for dusting

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven, and preheat to 425F.  

In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter.  Add the apples and saute, turning as needed, just until tender, 5-7 minutes.  Sprinkle with the brown sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon and stir to combine.  Remove from the heat.

Place a baking dish 12 inches in diameter or 9 by 13 inches in the oven to heat for 5 minutes.  Remove the baking dish from the oven, add the remaining 2 tablespoons butter to it, and tilt the dish to coat the bottom and sides with the butter.  Spoon the sauteed apples over the bottom of the dish to make an even layer.  

by hand:  In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, flour, vanilla and salt, just until blended
by food processor:  Combine the eggs, milk, flour, vanilla and salt.  Pulse 2 or 3 times, just until blended.

Carefully pour the batter over the hot fruit.  Bake until puffed and golden brown, 20-25 minutes.  Remove from the oven and, using a fine-mesh sieve, dust the top with confectioners' sugar.  Serve immediately.   

There you go.  :-)  My comments:  I never bake anything at 425 . . . maybe I should, but 375 worked just fine, too.  I'm pretty sure my mother never used lemon juice, and I didn't have any on hand the other day, either.  She used to do the sauteeing and baking all in her lovely large cast-iron pan, but I used a frying pan and baking dish like the recipe called for since I don't own the cast-iron.  The apples get all syrupy in the butter and brown sugar, and then the egg-mixture puffs up beautifully high . . . ahh.  Since our pancake is long-gone (2 breakfasts and 1 lunch for me, though it says it serves 6!), I don't have a picture of my own, so I'll share a picture of the pumpkin I bought the other day.

It's a Cinderella pumpkin from Trader Joe's, and isn't it beautiful?  :-)  There should be many pumpkin pies when I decide it's finished decorating the kitchen!

Welcome, Autumn

Now that it's starting to get cool here, it actually feels like autumn, which is wonderful.  I love when the seasons change. 

This morning, I made an oven apple pancake for my breakfast.  John had waffles from yesterday's leftover batter, because he's my waffle-man.  And, as I suspected, he eyed the apple pancake with strong suspicion bordering on contempt.  ;-)  My family grew up with giant/oven/German/Dutch apple pancake being a big treat.  Sometimes Mom even made it for dinner!  So, the question is . . . am I the only one?  Or does anyone else share my love of the stuff? 

Baby Steps

 After my whirl of energy a few weeks ago, I was starting to feel discouraged on baby's room because it seemed like I wasn't getting much done.  But now that the base color is painted, it's starting to show some progress!  To make myself feel a little bit better, I'm making a list of the baby steps we've taken to transform this room from office to nursery!

- Desk and computer moved to guest room
- Baby clothes and diapers washed and stored
- Futon moved to sunroom
- Curtains picked out online
- Curtain rods found in "attic"
- Holes/dents in walls filled with putty
- Paint color chosen and purchased
- Edges taped
- Room painted!!

Though the dresser and bookshelf will stay, we still have some end tables and lamps to move out, hopefully to other people's houses, by way of Good Will or not.  :-)

30 Weeks!

 

...and starting to feel tired again.

A New Inspiring Blog to Read

I don't know if anyone else looks at my blog roll; it's for me, really, because it helps me keep track of who has new entries for me to read! 

Most of the blogs I read are by my actual personal friends or family members, with exceptions being Young Ladies' Christian Fellowship (which I've followed since college!), and recently Young House Love.  Young House Love was about to get cut; they have some good ideas, but I decorate in a different style and don't really want to be falling in love with a house I'm only supposed to be a pilgrim in.  (I've been reading Randy Alcorn's Heaven lately . . . can you tell?)  Anywho, they just recently featured a really helpful baby post, so I'm hooked for a little longer.  :-) 

I've just added a blog to my list!  It's "the path less traveled market".  I don't know the author personally, but I've popped into her personal and family blogs randomly over the past, oh, while.  She's a Christian, she's always encouraging to read, and I love everything about her taste!!  My recent first visit to her "market" blog is what convinced me to add to my list.  A visit to her "ideas file" was completely inspiring!  And she sells some neat things on etsy, so I'm sure she won't mind the recommendation I can offer to my little circle of readers. 

On Knitting Smarter

With a little one on the way, I realized that if I'd like to plan at all on making some of our Christmas presents, this is the year to do it.  And since she's due at the beginning of December, this, now, is the time to do it!  As a result, I've been knitting a lot more than usual in the past month, and getting more and more addicted.  (Addicted --> increasing love and frequency!)

One of the neat things about my mother-in-law is her love for learning.  She's been an outstanding craftswoman since John was little, if not before, but never stops taking classes, reading books and watching videos on youtube to help better herself.  I've found myself inspired by her and other friends like Amy not to get stuck in a rut myself.  And I've learned a lot about knitting in a smarter way than before!

All my recent projects, including my current one in the picture above, have been "in the round" patterns.  Happily, they've all also required size 7 needles, so the same two pairs of circulars have been doing marvelously lately!  I love knitting in the round, and I love doing it with two pairs of circulars instead of with double-points.  Here are some of the reasons why.  

• Knitting in the round is faster and cleaner.  There are minimal (if any) seams to sew up at the end, and fewer yarn tails to hide away.
• Seamless projects also come out beautifully, with no bumpy seams!
• The two-pairs-of-circulars method is flexible enough to work for very large circles or very small ones, like thumbs!
• I find that I lose stitches more readily with double-points.  There are more points and places for stitches to fall off, and with circulars the stitches all push handily onto the middle parts of the needles for storage.  
• There are also fewer needle-changes with two pairs of circulars than with double-points, making it faster still. 

Yay for knitting, and yay for natural fibers like wool and organic cotton!

29 Weeks

I'm starting to wonder how it's possible that I haven't blogged in nearly a week.  There's lots I feel I need to do, and my second-trimester energy is starting to wane.  I'm getting very excited to meet our little girl, but I'm also a little wistful to think that she must have already changed so much from the ultrasound pictures we have from ten weeks ago!  Is it way too early to say "They grow up so fast . . . "?

I remember, at that ultrasound, when they first told us that she is a girl, smiling at John and saying, "You're going to have a wedding to pay for!"  But as some of you may have noticed on facebook a few weeks ago (I forget exactly when), apart from my hopes and prayers for our little girl's salvation, one of my other most basic hopes as a mother is that she may turn out "normal."  John's response was, "Chances of that are slim to none.  You're slim and I'm none!"  And he made me laugh.  [My husband has a wonderful penchant for easing tensions by making others laugh with his apple-of-gold-like words.]  But whether our daughter is hopelessly nerdy because of her parents wasn't really what was on my mind.

On one of our recent Saturday bike-rides to the pizza place at the end of the bike trail, I noticed a family in the restaurant with a baby in a helmet.  She was big enough to be in a high chair, but the helmet didn't look like it was there because they wanted it to be there.  It looked like it was there for medical reasons. After seeing that baby, my mind ran to friends whose only son has spina bifida, and to other friends who lost their youngest to cancer at the age of 30.   I hope that we'll have a wedding to pay for someday, and that our daughter will lead a full and joyful life.  Mostly I hope that she won't suffer because of choices I've made or chances I've taken.  But we are guaranteed nothing, and every day is a gift.

One Classy Wedding

 Leah and I met eight years ago when she, Erika and I were assigned to room together freshman year at Grove City College.  We felt very, very different from each other, and I'm sure we all bugged each other at times, but we got along without any major hitches and all chose different roommates the next year. 

As time went on, however, friendship between Leah and me matured as we matured.  We had lots of heart-deep conversations about God and boys, and I love her lots!  We found even after graduating and going our separate ways that we could always pick right up where we left off.  On my wedding day last summer, it was Leah who calmed my nerves and fixed my hair when I came back from the hair-dresser in tears.  And last weekend it was her turn to be the bride for her beloved Nathaniel.

Among the many loves they share, these two share a love for dancing and are both very skilled!  I meant to post a video here, but it was upside down.  :-/ It was a beautiful weekend all around.  I finally got to show John around campus and kiss him on Rainbow Bridge.  We spent a couple of hours catching up with some of my former students who are now freshmen at my Alma Mater!  And we got to meet the fiance of another dear former roommate.  Next summer, Lord willing, it will be Sarah and Logan's turn!

28 Weeks!

Already?!  

Blogging has been low on the to-do list for several reasons lately.  Partly, we've been away (more on Leah's wedding tomorrow, perhaps!), and partly electronic things around here have changed lately.  After doing some research, John decided to sell his Tivo, give away his old DVD player and buy a different one off e-bay which can connect to the internet.  We canceled the cable and have subscribed to Hulu Plus (as well as a month-long trial of Netflix).  Added to that, we canceled Road Runner and have subscribed to Clear Wire.  

With the hardware shifting alone, I think we've come out on top financially, but our monthly internet and TV bills will now also be mere fractions of what they were before.  Mere small fractions.  

As a girl who didn't even know what a Tivo was until I started dating John, this is all great with me.  We haven't watched much TV lately, anyway.  And the new internet system seems to be working just fine for John.  Somehow, though, the upstairs internet is still sporadically insanely slow, as in, it can take me half an hour or more to load a page.  I'm sure we'll get it worked out eventually.  Until then, I'm spending a bit less time on it and doing more reading from my iphone . . . yet another thing I'd never heard of before I started dating John.  :-)