Happy Halloween!

Our neighborhood trick or treated on Saturday night. It was a great decision as tonight is going to be freezing cold, wet, and windy (Thanks, Sandy!!). B's brother, sister-in-law, and their daughter were in town for the weekend, so the kids got to trick or treat together and then the babysitter came over so the adults could all go out to dinner together.

 

B with his boys

Family pic- Spencer's cheeseball smile

 

My big pumpkin!!

SYT, PUT, and LGT playing in the leaves after trick or treating

Look, mom, I can grab a lot of them!

Family pic

Buried in leaves

Peter's smiling!!

Love this baby pumpkin!

 

The boys have a Halloween parade at school today with their costumes. Unfortunately neither B nor I can be there to take pictures. I have late clinic patients and B has a ton of meetings. Hopefully the classroom teachers will get a few cute ones.

 

Hope you all have a wonderful Halloween and hopefully your kids' Halloween buckets are filled with at least one candy you like and they'll share with you :)

Falling for fall.....

What a gorgeous season.  Just looking out into my backyard as soon as I get home from work is a small slice of heaven for me.  It's been an amazing indian summer week here- temps in the high 60s/low 70s and as sunny as can be.  I have been soaking up every last second of this gorgeous season and hope you are too!

A few things I'd like to accomplish in the next month to continue to take advantage of fall include:

Taking some gorgeous fall pictures

Spend a weekend up north watching the leaves turn and enjoying the view across the lake (check!)

Eating Honey Crisp apples (this is already happening daily!)

Making batches of homemade applesauce (first batch was done this weekend)

Make some glitter pumpkins for our dining room table

Planting tulip bulbs for next spring

Transplanting flowers that are in very random spots in our yard

Fertilizing the lawn

Sewing grass seed

Putting our garden to bed for the winter

Making delish pumpkin bread (plain and with chocolate chips)

Make another batch of these cookies (you won't be disappointed if you join me)

Find an excuse to make this cake (even though I can't eat it, I really, really want to make it and see what others think about it)

Take SYT to the pumpkin patch for pictures

Get our first family pumpkin to carve and set on the stoop for Halloween night

Take a long walk with SYT, B and Junie before the weather gets too cold to do so

Buy Halloween candy to pass out to all the neighborhood kids

Dress SYT up for his first Halloween (you guys will love the costume!!)

Make some caramel corn or cookies to take to work and to pass out to the adult neighbors trick or treating with their little ones

Enjoy a fire, a glass of wine, and a game of scrabble with B on our first chilly weekend night

Celebrate my 33rd birthday

 (think they make a dairy free Boston Cream Pie?)

So, tell me, which of the above sounds best to you?  And what are you dying to do in the next month to celebrate fall?

Homemade apple sauce

photo found on flickr- forgot to take my own!

I made bbq ribs the other night in our stovetop smoker (AMAZING registry gift!), and I decided that a homemade applesauce would be a perfect accompaniament to the ribs.  Little did I know that we should all be making homemade applesauce all the time.  Ladies, it's so frickin easy, and so much better than the canned variety in the store.  The hardest part is peeling the apples.  I did just read on a website that many people leave some of the skin on because it allows the sauce to have even more flavor and color, so that'll save me time this week when I make this again.

I used Jonathan apples for my sauce, and they were delish.  They are a sweeter apple so it required using much less sugar than some of the recipes on the web called for.  According to www.pickyourown.org/apples, the varieties they recommend for sauce include

Gala

McIntosh

Jonathan

Golden Delicious

Jonagold

Jonalicious

Melrose

Winesap

Fuji

I wouldn't use my beloved Honeycrisp for this purpose as I've used them in other baking projects, and I thought they ended up mushy, watery, and just not good.  I'm going to combine a few different apples this week to see how that changes the flavor.

I peeled 6 smaller sized apples, cut them into wedges and put them into a sauce pan with 1/4 c water, 1/4 c sugar, 1 1/2 tbsps butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves (to taste).  Many recipes I saw called for at least 1/2 c sugar, but this would have made the sauce way too sweet, in my opinion.  I would definitely start out on the lower end of the sugar spectrum and add more if you need it.  One of the reasons to pick the apples above is that they are all sweeter apples and the flavor is brought out even more when reduced. 

Place the heat on medium and reduce the ingredients for 15- 30 minutes or until soft.  I used a potato masher to mash mine, but you could just as easily use a food processor.  You'll want to leave some texture to the sauce, so don't purree it too finely.  If you do leave the skins on, make sure any of the larger pieces of skin are processed or discarded before serving as a huge piece of apple skin isn't the most appealing on a plate.  When I make it again this week, I'll be using a much larger bunch of apples, as our sauce didn't even make it to leftovers!   

If you do make a big batch, there are many, many uses for leftovers:  on top of oatmeal for breakfast, as a sauce for pancakes or waffles, over vanilla ice cream for dessert,  as baby food, for lunch the next day, as a topping for Greek yogurt, as an accompniament to pork tenderloin, as a filling for apple turnovers (yum!) etc.  I'm sure you guys can fill me in on any other ways you think it sounds good! 

Let me know if you make some!  I'd love to know which apples you used and if you liked it or not.  Also for those of you out there who love using the slow cooker, I found a few recipes out there when I was searching.  They sounded good, and if you have a fall party of some sort, this would be a great way to get at least one thing off the stovetop!

October!

Photo from www.staffords.com

Oops!  I missed October's beginning yesterday!  I just adore this month.  It's a glorious time of year.
My favorite things about the month are:
1.  My birthday (the 26th!)
2.  Pumpkin and apple flavored anything
3.  Getting out my sweaters and my riding boots
4.  Annual trip to Petoskey to see my family and for B to play golf (such good deals and gorgeous color along the lake)
5.  My new fall haircolor- I went darker (just slightly) and I really like it
6.  Being chilly when it's bedtime and having a cozy bed to snuggle into
7.  The changing of the leaves
8.  Raking!!!!  It's definitely my favorite fall "chore".  The air is crisp, the leaves make great noises, it's great exercise, and it feels so productive.
9.  Seeing people decorate their houses for fall and Halloween.  I love seeing pumpkins out lining walkways, mums in planters, spooky cobwebs in windows.  It doesn't thrill me as much as Christmas lights, but it's a close second!
10.  My birthday (did I mention that already??)!!  Apparently B has my gift already purchased, so I won't be going through a "things I would like to receive post".  It must be good if he got it 2 months early!!

What do you LOVE about October?