Two friends recently had babies (both big healthy boys 9lb 9oz, and 10 lb 14 oz!) and I signed up to bring them dinners.  Wednesday was a marathon of baking – black bean and carrot stew with brown rice for both, beer bread and ginger chew cookies with plum jam filling for one family, and olive oil bread and apple crumble pie for the other (one family had an egg allergy, so i had to make no-egg bread and dessert for them) 

 I forgot to soak the beans overnight, so I did a quick soak at 8 am, and was cooking all day until i left to deliver dinners at 5:15pm!  Needless to say, the next night I made spaghetti, opened a jar of homemade sauce, and a jar of homemade applesauce, and that was dinner!

SouleMama,  Domesticali, Big and Little, Little Faces Looking Up, Rose Garden, Smitten Kitchen, PleasantViewSchoolhouse, and Red Dirt Mother have also been baking yummy things with apples recently. In case you’d like it, here’s my apple pie recipe (makes two 8-inch pies):

Larksong’s Apple Crumble Pie

2 crust pie dough, rolled out, and put in the pie tins, and returned to the fridge to chill. (I use 2 cups flour, 2/3 cups lard, 1tsp salt, and enough ice water to make a nice dough.  You could use butter or shortening to make it veggie or vegan, respectively, but lard makes the flakiest, best crust)

10 granny smith apples, peeled, cored, and sliced thinly

1/3 cup flour

1/2 cup sugar (if apples are less tart, you can reduce this amount)

for the crumble:

1 cup oats

1 cup brown sugar, packed

1 cup flour

2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg (I use Penzey’s East Indian, which is quite strong, so you may want more if you use another brand)

1/8 tsp cloves, ground

1 stick butter, cold, and cut into small cubes

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 F.  Toss the apples with the 1/3 cup flour, 1/2 cup sugar.  Set aside.  In a medium size bowl, combine the oatmeal, flour, brown sugar, spices and butter, using hands to cut the butter into the mixture until small pea sized pieces.

Divide the apples in half, putting half into each pie shell.  Next, divide the crumble mixture in half and packed into the top of each pie.  Bake in preheated oven until top is browned and apples are soft, about 40-50 minutes (you may need to cover the crumble with foil at the end to prevent over-browning.)