Apple Salad With Cinnamon Yogurt Sauce

ACK!  It's almost fall!  Mostly I'm sad about that; I'm a spring/summer person.   But there are a few perks to fall: 1) jeans.  I really hate wearing capris.  I've missed my jeans!  2) My skin usually improves.  No idea why.  3) Comfort food!  I feel guilty eating comfort food in the summer.  Like I'm a sinner if I don't eat salad twice a day.  But once the weather turns cold, bring on the rolls and the gravy!  4) Apples.  I love how apple prices get super low in the fall and I can make apple cake or apple pie dirt cheap!  Here is one of my favorite fall apple recipes.  I invented it myself.  It's kind of a variation on Waldorf salad, only way yummier.  Think Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory's "apple pie" caramel apple.   In fact, it can barely be called a salad--it's good enough to be a dessert.  (Just the way a salad should be!)

Apple Salad With Cinnamon Vanilla Yogurt Sauce and Candied Pecans

7-8 crisp apples, washed.*  I like half red and half yellow ones.  (Not Granny Smith!)
2 single-serving containers vanilla yogurt
1 bunch red grapes (about enough to fill a measuring cup)
1/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 cup pecan pieces
1/3 cup sugar

* It took me years to figure out how to get a nice, crisp, non-mealy apple.  There are two keys:  1) The kind of apple.  My favorites are Braeburns, with Galas and Johnathans as runners up, and Golden Delicious if you like a sweeter apple. Don't buy red delicious- they are always mealy.  I don't like Fujis for that reason either--too inconsistent.   2) Squeeze the apple.  You shouldn't be able to feel any give, no matter how hard you press your fingertips into the apple.  If you feel the apple give under your fingers, forget it.  It's a mealy apple.  A rock hard apple will be crisp and delicious!

Here are your ingredients:

 

 

 

First you will make your pecans.  This is the most time intensive part of the recipe, and it takes all of 5 minutes.  You want to prep your landing zone first.  So lay out a square piece of aluminum foil and spray it with Pam.   Also spray your stirring spoon with Pam--caramelized sugar is hard to get off, even in the dishwasher!  Then, in a small saucepan (also sprayed with Pam) on medium heat, dump your pecans and sugar.  Stir occasionally (every 20-30 seconds) until you start to notice the sugar crystals melting on the bottom of the pan.  At this point, lower the heat a little and start stirring pretty continuously (about every 5 seconds).  Your sugar will first melt (clear) and then begin to caramelize (golden, like caramel!).

 

This process will simultaneously brown your nuts and crisp them up.  But you don't want them to burn--which can happen pretty fast once the sugar melts-- so as soon as you see the sugar pretty liquefied (either clear or golden) and sticking to the nuts, remove the nuts from the heat and pour them onto the foil.  Spread them out with your stirring spoon so that they are pretty flat, not in mounds.  Let them cool while you make the rest of the salad.

 

 

For the salad, cut the grapes in half and throw them in a big mixing bowl. Don't use the bowl you'll serve them in because it's going to get pretty messy.  Next cut the apples. If you don't have one of these handy gadgets, go get one!  They're brilliant.  They slice and core the apple at the same time. 


You want the pieces to be bite size, so cut the slices into chunks and throw them in with the grapes.  (I don't peel my apples--they brown too quickly if you do.  Plus, the color of the salad is much better with the skins on.)





Next pour in both containers of vanilla yogurt.  Add the cinnamon.  Stir it all up really nicely.  Cover and refrigerate until you're ready to serve.

 

Just before serving, break up the pecans.  I like to cover them with a little wax paper and smash them gently with a meat hammer.  But you could put them in a baggie and hit them with a heavy book or something a few times if you don't have a meat hammer.  It doesn't matter.  Just make sure they're broken into small pieces because they will have cooled into a giant hard sheet of nuts.  Then transfer your salad into a pretty bowl, and sprinkle with the candied pecans.

Voila!  The prettiest, yummiest thing healthy enough to get away with being called a salad!

A Tomato By Any Other Name Would Still Taste As Gross

...or would it?


I hate tomatoes.  Have always hated tomatoes, for as far back as I can remember tomatoes have made me want to barf, copiously.  So slimy!  So bitter.  So reminiscent of putrid dirt coated in mucus.  So utterly, absolutely disgusting!

Growing up, our mom let us choose 2 foods we never had to eat.  I had three foods I detested, so I had to do some fancy footwork any time something I didn't like was served, trying to assure my mom that tonight's food was one of my two foods.  Squash and bananas rotated through.  But tomatoes?  They were always on my list of "won't eats."  I let liver stay on my list more often than tomatoes!  (And, yes, my mother actually served us LIVER!  And you thought YOUR parents were mean.)

Anyway, I hated tomatoes so much it took me all the way to high school before I ever tried salsa for the first time.  And even then, I would only dip the chips in the watery stuff around the tomatoes and then shake the chip off.  Tomato soup was out.  Tomatoes on sandwiches were a deal breaker.  Even soups and stews and chili with obvious tomatoes were given the heave ho. 

And then, about a year ago, I went to a wonderful restaurant with a girlfriend where they serve primarily home-grown, local, organic, and scratch-made food.  We decided to share a salad for an appetizer that I thought was a green salad with tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and basil on it.  It was listed as a SALAD, you know.  But when it was served it was just tomatoes with mozzarella and basil on top!  That's not a salad, that's a travesty!  That travesty is called a caprese, which everyone on earth who eats tomatoes would probably have immediately recognized from the description.  But being a tomato hater, I was clueless.  And now I didn't know what I was going to do. So as I sat there contemplating just how rude it would be on a scale of 1-10 to eat all the cheese myself and leave my friend with the nasty tomatoes, she took a bite of one...and proceeded to assure me how delicious it was.  (YA RIGHT.  I've heard these tomato tricks before.  My dad has been pulling them on me since I was born.)  But since, ultimately, eating all the cheese would have scored me at least an 8 1/2 on the dirtbag scale, I decided to suck it up and eat a tiny sliver of tomato with my cheese.  (I'm SUCH a good friend.)  And can you imagine what happened next?   I did NOT puke!  In fact, I was stunned to discover that this tomato was honestly not disgusting!  Actually edible. Borderline...good??  Well, I won't go that far, but very very NOT AWFUL! 

How could this be???  I have two words for you:

HEIRLOOM TOMATO

Don't ask me why God created a whole class of tomatoes that are not revolting and then hid them away for 30 odd years while tricking us all into eating the revolting kind, but He did.  Heirloom tomatoes are not gross!  Really!  Take it from a true tomato despiser. 

Of course, I thought it might be a fluke. So a full year later I raised the courage to try them again.  I bought some baby heirloom tomatoes at the organic store this week, bought a basil plant, made a balsamic vinegar reduction, and cut up some fresh mozzarella balls.  I put it all on top of toasted baguette (because I figured drowning tomatoes out with strong bread is never a bad idea...just in case they revert to being revolting) and drizzled the whole thing with olive oil, salt, and pepper.  And, miraculously, once again, I actually ate tomatoes that didn't make me want to barf!  Now, I won't say I want to marry an heirloom tomato or anything.  But I just wanted to share this little piece of information:  if you're ever backed into a corner where you are forced to take hot needles in the eye or eat tomatoes, ask for an heirloom!  Your eyes will thank me. 

New House Finds

As I was saying, when we first got married, we had a lot of random, ugly, hand-me-down, thrift store furniture.  We slowly replaced those as time went by.   But our tastes have developed since then. And the colors we like have changed.  And we can finally buy things that haven't been in 20 households before ours.  So I've really enjoyed having carte blanche to spruce up our decor with my garage sale money.   

First stop: Etsy. To comission new throw pillows for the living room/family room (we're now back down to one common room from three, unless you count the spot in the unfinished basement where we've stowed the big TV and the old sectional. I don't.) We've had the same living room decor since we got married.  A black/grey/beige theme. Stripes. Very masculine.  Not ugly.  But very very...neutral.  And our dining room was shades of gold and red.  Jewel tones.  Very rich.  I'm over it.  Here, this new house is very modern.  Clean lines.  Grey linen tiles.  White trim.  Chrome.  Black leather furniture.  I love it.  But it is also quite neutral.  So here's what I got to liven things up and give the room some punch:

Also to correspond with those, curtains.   My old kitchen was aqua with red accents.  I LOVE red and aqua together.  But this house has pale grey walls.  A lovely shade.  And I'm not about to paint over them and then paint them back in a year, so grey they will stay.  In order to bring in more of the aqau (more of a robin's egg blue, really) I've gotten curtains in that shade.

And there are the red and aqua accents in the media cabinet.  Some really fun ones.

 

 

              


 Lastly, I have these great apothecary jars that I like to fill with seasonal things when the fall and spring holidays come around.  But I realized recently that I don't have anything to fill them with inbetween holidays.  So I comissioned these fantastic felt swirls.   Thank you again, Etsy!

 

 

I also filled one with red and aqua ribbons. 

The third jar I haven't decided on, but I think I'll try to find some aqua glass pebbles or something.  Anyone have any other cute ideas for filling apothecary jars with either bright red or robin's egg blue items? 




So those are a few of my favorite new decor items.  Hooray for new things!  And garage sales to pay for them!

Cry Baby

 

Ok, I'll get back to my house posting soon .  I haven't forgotten (and I know SO MANY of you are waiting to find out what cute accessories I've bought for my house. Right.)

But right now I need to wax sentimental.  Because my baby boy is a big boy.  My sweet, chubby, lovey dovey, cuddley, singing, dancing, sweatheart of a mama's boy somehow grew up, despite my repeated demands that he return to age 3.  Nope.  He's a Kindergartener now.  Triator!

We just moved, if you didn't know.  Everything in our lives is new--new house, new friends, new church, new school.  And Beck could not wait for his new school, to go to REAL school with the big kids.  To get homework like the big kids.  To go every single day like the big kids.  I tried to tell him that being big is overrated.  He wasn't buying it. 

I didn't think him going to school would hit me so hard, because as I walked him out to the bus stop on his first day, I wasn't emotional at all.  We sat and waited for about 20 minutes because the bus was SUPER late (and because I couldn't keep him in the house another minute when he knew it was 10 minutes until the bus.) So we skipped rocks from the neighbor's landscaping in to a mud puddle by the road.  We climbed the tree across the street.  We reviewed instructions for exiting the bus at school and finding the right classroom (because Beck is REALLY into instructions and rules, and going over them is one of his favorite things to do. No, I'm not joking.  He loves it!)  We watched three different (wrong) buses go by and jumped excitedly each time.  Finally THE bus came.  Beck ran to the door and I could only barely stop him in the doorway in time to snap this shot by screaming WAAAAIT!

We had a Forest Gump moment when the skinny, tan, bleach-haired old lady driving the bus introduced herself (Tawna) and asked Beck's name and told him she'd be his driver to Kindergarten.  And then they drove away.  I couldn't see where Beck sat down.  But I waved like crazy anyway in case he was looking.  And then I stood there while the cars that had waited behind the bus began to move forward.  And all three cars smiled at me and either waved or gave me the thumbs up.  All women.  All, undoubtedly, moms.  I had just completed a rite of passage.  And that's when I started to bawl.  Right there on the pavement next to the bus stop, I cried like a baby that my baby boy was a big boy.

2012 House

As my most avid readers know, our story began in a house built in 1895.  A charming, Victorian, pink brink house.  We spent the first 8 years of our marriage there, restoring it and beginning our family.  When we outgrew it, reluctantly we moved.  Our new house was large and spacious!  And we'd moved forward a whole century, to 1999.  But it was almost entirely lacking in interest and character.  Well, we recently moved again.  This time we're in a smaller house than our last, bigger than the first, newer than the last and almost as charming as the first.  We like it a lot.  It suits us.  It's comfortable and fun and light and NEW.   But it's temporary.  We're going to build our dreamhouse soon.  This is just a jumping off point to OUR house. 

Moving sucks.  Packing takes FOREVER.  Trying to pack while taking care of three kids is maddening.  And then there's all the lifting and carrying and sneezing from the dust and trying to sort through stuff and decide if you really really need it or not and then giving up and just throwing it all in a box so you can ponder over it again as you UNpack it.  It takes over your life. 

Most definitely the best part about moving, though, is unpacking.  I totally LOVE unpacking.  Getting into a new house and deciding where everything will go, making order out of chaos, getting a fresh start with your drawers and cupboards...it's very very appealing to me.  I actually might, hypothetically, let someone help me pack, although the control freak in me would have a very hard time with it.  But I would be downright FURIOUS if someone tried to unpack my house for me.  It's just one of my favorite things.

The other best part about moving is re-decorating.  I didn't do much redecorating on our last move.  We did buy some new furniture since we went from one common area (a living room) to three (living room, family room, media room).  This time, Big Daddy told me I could keep the money we made from our garage sale for redecorating.  We didn't sell 1/10 of what we had.  I was very disappointed at how much stuff we ended up giving to good will or taking with us.  But I still got $420 out of it, and I have had a BLAST spending it! 

Back when we first got married, we were too poor to afford anything nice.  All our furniture was hand-me-downs and thrift sore finds.  Slowly we replaced all that junk, a thing at a time.  But the things we did buy didn't always speak to me.  I don't know if I was trying to please my husband by picking things I thought he would like or if I just didn't know what I liked.  But we ended up with a lot of grey and black and beige.  And I don't know if I was ever crazy about it, but I know I'm not now. Looking at my living room decor is just depressing. So moving offered me the chance at a fresh start.  The chance to find something I really really liked.  And I have!  I la-la-la-LOVE my new living room!

Tune in soon to see what I've found!

Maybe A Come-back, Oh, And Thoughts on A Daughter.

Three miracles happened today. Miracle One: I blogged. Am blogging. That in itself is miraculous. Considering that I have a 1 year old who not only walks but runs now, climbs, is very adventurous, not at all shy of people or new places, it is a miracle that I have blogged. But also considering that I've just moved only two weeks ago and am already finding time to blog...well, no one can doubt the existence of miracles NOW, right? And I have this really ambitious intention to begin blogging again. Regularly. Readers or no. Because I like it.

Miracle Two: We bought Daphne school shoes. On the FIRST try! If you don't know Daphne, then you don't know that she is quite...strong-willed. She has a definite mind about what she wants and it seldom if ever includes input from anyone else, especially her parents. She also has a sensory disorder where everything must be soft, flexible, comfortable, lacking in seams, buttons, snaps, rivets, or anything else that "feels weird," which most everything does when you have a sensory processing disorder. Last summer, the ONLY shoes she would wear were a pair of Crocs. This summer I bought her the exact same Crocs, but they "felt weird" and she would not wear them. I have literally 8 pairs of completely pristine, unworn shoes I've bought her over the last year that she has rejected on one ground or another. They're too small, they're too big, they're too shiny, they pinch, they fall off when I run...the list goes on. So imagine my extreme surprise when we took her to Target today and the first pair of shoes we picked out and tried on her she accepted! I don't chalk it up to the shoes. I chalk it up to her new meds. Whatever it was, I was overjoyed.

Miracle Three: Daphne slept in her covers. Regular sheet and blanket covers. I think the last time this happened was two or maybe three years ago. For some reason (related to her sensory disorder as well as her majorly active imagination), she decided a while back that she had to have her soft blankie (a fleece blanket she's had since about age 3) tucked into the bed between the sheet and her. She liked the feel of it, I suppose. She put it between herself and the sheet so often that it became ratty. I really REALLY wanted to 
throw it awayaccidentally misplace it in the wash. But then, in a miracle of its own, for Christmas a year ago, she got a new soft, fleece blanket from her teacher at church that she liked BETTER. The old one was replaced. But the new one only lasted a couple of months until she fell asleep with silly putty on it one night. We bought her a new fleece blanket and that lasted a couple of months until, one night, she had a dream about spiders in the bed. And from that day forth, she wouldnt' sleep in the covers at all. Only on top with her fleece blankie. She always kicked it off in her sleep and woke up cold, but nothing we said would convince her to get back in the covers. It's been at least 9 months that since that change. And then, for her birthday 2 months ago, she got an owl towel from her Auntie Sara. Little did I suspect this would become her new favorite bed cover. But it did. A big brown towel with one corner made into a hood the shape of an owl's head. And that's ALL she would sleep with. No sheet, no comforter, no fleece blanket. Nothing but this owl towl wrapped part way around her. Until tonight. Bizarrely, when I went to tuck her in (i.e. put her owl towl on her head), and told her it was in the wash, she said, "It's OK, Mom. I'm going to sleep in the covers tonight." That's it. No owl towel, no fleece blanket. Just IN the covers--sheet, comforter, girl. Period.

But still two pillows, a box of tissues, two lights on, and 25 stuffed animals.

Sometimes the small miracles are the best ones of all.

Stained Glass, Exibit...Uh, I lost count

Yowza.  It's been like 4 weeks since I posted.  That's got to be my longest stretch of dead air.  Whoopsie.  Well anyway, I'm sure you were all DYING with anticipation over the last month to see my final product from my stained glass making class.   I can barely even remember what I did the whole last class, but fortunately, I took pictures to remind me.  Yay for virtual memory!

Here it goes:

First you have to hammer nails all around your window, against each piece of glass, to hold the whole thing in place while you solder.  You don't want it shifting.

Next you apply the flux.  Yes flux, as in the flux capacitor.  As in space travel, Michael J Fox, disrupting the space-time-contiuum, etc.  Only this is just a clear gel that helps the solder to stick.  Not quite as cool.  But way safer. 

You start by fluxing and soldering just the joints--wherever two or three pieces of glass meet at an angle.   You hold the spool of solder right next to the joint, then you press the soldering iron up against it and quick as a wink it melts into a shiny puddle of metal that fuses the joint together.  It's really fun to do. 

Every so often, you clean the gunk off your soldering iron by rubbing it against this sort of white stone.  It smells delicious.  Kind of a cross between burning hair and steaming hot garbage bins. 

Next you flux all the rest of your copper foil edges and solder them.  Then you flip the whole window over and repeat.  You'll probably go back over most of the joints and some of the straight edges to smooth down the solder.  This is where experience comes into play (which I have none of):  because you don't want those joints to be lumpy.  You want them smooth and fluid. This requires reapplying solder, removing solder where it's too thick, and smoothing it down with the hot solder iron to get rid of bumps.  One of my favorite parts of this step was shaking excess solder off my soldering iron onto the floor.  You'd sort of collect it on your soldering iron, aim your soldering iron down, and shake it.  As the droplets would hit the floor, they'd instantly cool, making this awesome metalic dripping sound.  It sounded like "Pthp!"

The next step I didn't photograph for whatever reason, but this is where you add the lead edging.  It makes the frame around the whole window, keeping it together.  It has to be soldered to the existing solder, but the lead edging is much thicker and melts slower, so you have to hold the soldering iron in each spot longer.

After the entire window has been soldered and you've spent agonizing hours smoothing and resmoothing it and then given up and accepted that it'll never be perfect, you clean it and remove all markings.  Now you can add petina.  Petina choices are copper, silver, or black.  I went with copper.  So you rub all the metal with the petina and it changes colors!  (You can see below how it is copper below/right and still silvery to the left of my hand.) 

Finally, you want to be able to hang your window up, so you solder in some nice rings to wrap the wire around. 

And you're done!

Ta da!!!!!