I Love Fall, and Especially Apple Picking

There is something magical to me about Fall.  It's my all time favorite time of the year, the crisp air, the beautiful colors of the leaves changing, pumpkin spice latte, boot season, and let's be honest, much better hair weather than the Summer time! 

A few weeks ago the Gimpster and I went apple picking with a small group of friends.  The sad thing was - it ended up being 80 degrees and it was the second weekend of October!  Needless to say, I could not wear any of my cute boots, but we did get to go on a hayride.

The next weekend we were headed to Virginia for Gimpy's homecoming, so I had to figure out something to do with all of my apples aside from the required apple crisp that I made that afternoon.  I wanted to be able to use a lot of apples - I had 28 or so to cut up and cook - so I made two batches of apple cumble coffee cake.   



Apple Crumble Coffee Cake

For the cake:

1 stick unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup sour cream

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups peeled, cored, and chopped apples

For the crumble:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup flour

1 tsp cinnamon

4 tbsp unsalted butter, softened

Preheat the oven to 350. 

In your mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time until fully mixed in.  In another bowl, combine the dry ingredients.  Add to the wet ingredients a little at a time, alternating with the sour cream and vanilla until all are blended together.  Fold in the apples and pour into a buttered 13x9 baking dish. 

To make the topping, mix the dry ingredients in a new bowl and cut in the butter with a pastry cutter, or if you're like me and don't have one, two knives.  Pour the crumble over the cake and bake for 35-40 minutes. 

Once I made the coffee cake, I realized I still had a TON of apples left, and I didn't know what I could do with them all.  I don't have the freezer space right now to freeze whole pies or anything!  Luckily a co-worker told me that you can easily freeze apples.  I set off right away peeling, coring, and slicing the rest of my apples so that I now have about 6 baggies in my freezer each filled with 2-3 apples ready to be thawed and used in baked goods all winter long!

Happy 95th Birthday Grandma

My paternal grandmother is one of the strongest, most amazing women I've ever met.  She married a man she loved and very importantly respected, raised six strong sons, traveled the world, and continues to teach everyone around her on a daily basis.  This weekend, she turned 95, and we had a big family birthday party to celebrate. 

I was in charge of flowers, so I went out to Whole Foods and looked around to see what would be appropriate for five centerpieces on a beautiful Fall day.  I am a big believe that the mark-up florists charge is astronomical, and I know their overhead is huge, and flowers are fragile so they need to have their prices to make a decent living and profit, but I also think with a little imagination you can create something beautiful for considerably less money. 

Gimpy and I went after church to check out the flower selection.  They always have beautiful blooms, and have much more of a selection than other grocery stores, and better prices than a florist.  I picked out some Harvest Bloom roses, which have an interesting meaning - friendship that's falling in love.  I got some beautiful mustardish colored daisies, some hypericum berries, and some greenery.   I think they came out beautifully.

Negligence

I have been a total slacker this summer.  I stopped working out, went to far too many happy hours, and spent all of August taking care of The Gimpster after yet another ACL surgery.  Don't even get me started on how much I want to pull a Shane Stant on the jerk that maliciously took out his knee...

That being said, I promise to write all about new fantastic barb-e-que foods, the White Party, this year's wine tasting mini-bus, vanilla pudding shots (seriously, amazing), and more.  Starting this weekend - so by Monday there will be a new post.

xoxo,
Little J

A Perfect Date

Gimpy starts his new job on Monday, so we decided that we should do something fun together, and I should take a vacation day this week.  We settled on Thursday, and I arranged for the day off.  Wednesday night we mapped out our strategy, and decided that we would go to two new wineries - one of them just opened May 1st - and go hiking. 

We got up early yesterday, and went to Fairway to get some bread, cheese, fruit, tomatoes, and pack my little wine picnic basket. Then we got on the road! 

The new winery we went to was called Paradise Hills.  It was a beautiful new building, but they were getting their growing pains out.  One of our favorite things is being able to collect a signature glass from each winery we visit, but sadly they were out of glasses AND their most popular wine.  I guess we'll have to go back! 

From there we went up the street to Gouveia Vineyards, because we knew they'd be an amazing place to have a picnic, and we weren't disappointed!  There were several places we could sit and overlook the vineyards, and I was in heaven.  

I unpacked our picnic while I sent Gimpy in to deliver a slice of my new favorite cheese (Parrano) to the ladies who helped us. It was a beautiful day, and a delicious spread.

We stuffed ourselves silly, and then went hiking for a little over an hour.  When we got home, exhausted, we had some sushi and went to see The Hangover II.  Hysterical.  If you haven't seen it yet, GO! 
I hope you all have a great weekend!
   

What's the big deal? You just call a bunch of bars and show up...

"What's the big deal?  You just call a bunch of bars and show up..."

A friend of mine said that last night at softball when I was stressing out about the Preppy Pub Crawl next weekend.  You see, now that I know we'll be over 115 people (we have 104 confirmed so far), it requires much more planning than the first year when we were 35. 

Where we live, there are a lot of bars, and the great thing is that most of them are in close enough walking distance to have a successful pub crawl.  The bad thing, is that some of them have a maximum occupancy of about 200 people.  When you are bringing 120-130 people with you, you need to make sure that they will have the capacity, the staffing, and the drink specials.  It's a bit of a balancing act to make sure that you are going to the smaller places earlier in the night, avoiding the ones with a busy dinner crowd at dinner time, and making sure everyone can get in! 

With that being said, I am totally stressed out.  I had ordered the koozies and planned my outfit, but then the outfit came and looked awful on me.  I had planned out timing of bars and then started arranging drink specials.  Then, I got a new dress... and called two of the early evening bars.  First bombshell hit! 

Butterface has a comedy show and can't accomodate us unless we start there - which we aren't doing.  The Showgirl informed me that they really, really, really wanted us to come, but their dinner crowd started at 6, so we would need to be gone before then.  I thought about things a lot during a run on Tuesday night, and decided I was going to move things around a little to accomodate.  We're starting at 3:30 this year, and were going to go to Crabby until 4:45 - it's on the water.

We'd then go to The Showgirl, hit my least favorite bar in town, and then head to a cute Irish pub before continuing our crawl.  Perfect.  I call the Showgirl's manager back, and he is excited, until he tells me that he has too many dinner reservations at 5, so we can no longer come there. 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME????  I JUST MOVED MY ENTIRE PUB CRAWL AROUND FOR YOU!

Needless to say, I wasn't happy.  Then I went to softball with this weight on my shoulders, trying to decide what to do.  I pretty much had decided I would discuss with a beach bar next to Crabby to fill in my now vacant slot, when I went to the Grizzly for drinks with my softball team.  The manager told me that Hula Skanks (huge, open spaces) would no longer be closed for renovations, as they are waiting till after the summer.  So of course, now I don't know what to do! 

Luckily, I don't have dinner plans until about 7 tonight... so I am going to do some mental shifting again during my run.  Hopefully I can get it all worked out.

We're Going Out for Steak

So Gimpy tells me the other day that he and some of our guy buddies got this really great deal for a steak restaurant in the City.  They had to use it by the end of June, and so they were going to go in the night before the Preppy Pub Crawl and enjoy these amazing steaks. 

Everyone who knows me, knows that two things are true.
1. I LOVE food.  I look at restaurant menus for fun, and when I go out to eat I try to make dishes at home that I've enjoyed.
2. I'm absurdly insecure.  Always worried that Gimpy is going to find someone prettier, skinnier, just all around better.

Keeping these things in mind, I asked Gimpy what the name of the restaurant was.  I was thinking it would be fun to send over a round of drinks for these boys - since I adore them all - so I looked it up to find the location and check out the menu.

I thought he was getting this

Here it is. 

"Roberts may sit a balcony of the Penthouse Executive Club, and be filled with flirtatious strippers, but it serves a steak that is above reproach."  Um.....

Apparently he's getting this

The insecure little girl in me immediately goes to one thought - "Oh, so now I understand why he didn't want to come over tonight because he doesn't know how late he'll be home because he'll be too busy motorboating strippers and getting bernaise sauce on their g-strings."

And I decided I wasn't drinking tonight??

Dinner for Twenty

My dear friend V will be meeting her new boyfriend's extended family in June, and they are up for cooking dinner for all twenty people that will be staying at the house.  She asked me for some ideas on what she could cook for a big group - so I figured I'd come up with some for her here!

The first thought I had, was that she should have a Mexican theme dinner.  Nothing is easier than throwing together fajitas, nachos, guacamole, queso, salsa, margaritas, and sangria.  It's a crowd pleaser, and you can have something for everyone by getting chicken, steak, and shrimp and throwing them all on the grill.  You can even get a few portobella mushroom caps if you have any vegetarians.  I know V can make some serious margaritas and sangria!

Another idea I have for them, is to whip up a lasagna or two.  You can do a veggie one with spinach, mushrooms, peppers, and a creamy bechemel sauce and do manicotti with a meat and red sauce.  Pair that with salad, garlic bread, and it's always a crowd pleaser!

You can do an old fashioned bar-b-que too!  Make some ribs and bar-b-que chicken, cole slaw, potato salad, and baked beans.  Grill up corn on the cob, and add a festive beach element to it by doing mussels or steamers in a white wine garlic sauce.

Any of these are great options when you have to entertain a large crowd and give you something for even the most picky eaters.