apple picking = good chow

As you might imagine, there is not a whole lot of extravagant, gourmet cooking going on in my house. Working 9-5, running around to sporting events and the insertion of full hiking days all to myself in an already crazy week results in dinner usually being nothing more than pizza, pasta or whatever meat can be thrown in the oven (plain) and land on a plate with some microwaved peas or broccoli. But, every so often the mood strikes me and one fun activity that prompts the old domestic engineer to re-appear is apple picking. Reagan and I went to Saratoga Apple with some friends on Monday and immediately planned to bake a big batch of apple crisp when we got home.

I had to stop at the grocery store to pick up some of the ingredients. I use the Betty Crocker recipe. My daughter impressed me by asking if we had the nutmeg at home. This led me to think about my worn out recipe page as I considered how neat it was that she knew one of the less obvious ingredients. Going off on a weird thought pattern, my tattered recipe page made me think of the user account I signed up for on the Chow website when a friend of mine posted his macaroni and cheese recipe. When you sign up for a user name in order to comment on someone's recipe, the people at Chow want to know what is your most tattered cookbook. I wrote "Betty Crocker, the apple crisp page". Hmm....mac and cheese? I decided to make that too since I would already be spending the evening in the kitchen making a mess! I can't tell you how happy my husband was to get home from hunting and find both of these dishes waiting for him. He told me I ought to cook like this more often because I'm good at it....is that a compliment?