Apple Crisp for Breakfast, Gnocchi for Dinner and Granny Squares In Between

I spent a lot of Saturday morning cooking, which seems to be what I need to do every other week—I find that having homemade foods to eat over the weekend, with leftovers to carry me through the week just makes me feel better. (And it's handy to have food ready to eat when I get home from work and am hungry.) But this means that I tend to cook a lot of things at once, creating a bit of an activity storm. This weekend I made lentil soup, cornbread, pizza dough (which we had for dinner Saturday night, piled high with tomato sauce, red and green peppers, mushrooms, olives and cheese), gnocchi (see below) and this apple crisp. I made it for dessert, but I specifically made it with a lower amount of sugar and butter because I knew I'd want to also eat it for breakfast with yogurt. And I did. And it was good.

Apple Crisp
adapted from Everyday Food and 101cookbooks

Topping:

1 c rolled oats

1 c white whole wheat flour (all-purpose flour)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt
1/3 c butter, melted
1/3 c yogurt

Filling:
2-3 lbs apples, thinly sliced
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 375 and set aside an 8x8 baking dish (or something similar to that size)

2. Combine the filling ingredients in a bowl and stir to combine. Add to your baking dish and press down lightly.

3. Combine your topping ingredients (it will be pretty wet) and dollop it on top of the fruit, spreading it as evenly across the top as you can.

4. Bake for about 50 minutes, placing a piece of foil over the top if it appears to be browning too quickly. (I did that after about 30 minutes because I knew I wanted the apples to cook more and it turned out deliciously). Let cool slightly and serve on its own, with vanilla ice cream, or reheated in the morning with a big dollop of yogurt.

 

As I mentioned on Friday, Josh and I made gnocchi yesterday for dinner. For those of you unfamiliar with them, gnocchi are an Italian potato dumpling that are usually with a very simple sauce. Somehow, I'd got it into my head that Josh loved gnocchi, which wasn't actually true since he insisted that he'd only had them once, maybe, and hadn't even heard of them until we met. No matter (though I realized that it would have been helpful had I given him more information as to what they were meant to look like during the process) because it was a fun thing to do together yesterday and they were totally delicious. You can see the recipe here for the potato gnocchi with butter, sage and bread crumb sauce.

I also made a few more granny squares, which I am loving, though I realize that making an actual afghan will take quite a while and will require lots of yarn. That said, I do love that each one gives me a nice sense of accomplishment, so I'm going to take one at a time and see where I wind up! Hope you all enjoyed your weekend.