With apple season upon us, how could we resist the urge to make a sweet and buttery fresh crisp with apples we picked ourselves! For a midweek treat we’re eating an apple crisp made with rolled oats, panko, flour, butter, sugar, and spices. The peeled apples were tossed with brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cayenne. Overall it was a great celebration of fall and the chilly weather to come.

Julian, CA apple orchardA: okay… so for me, a crisp is really a cop-out. it means that i didn’t want to put the effort into researching other desserts or making a crust or puff pastry, etc… but let me say this was a grrrrrreat cop-out!
T: totally. I don’t give 2 poops about how much effort went into it. I care about how it tastes, and this tasted fantttttastic! I love crisps- they’re as much about the buttery crisp part as they are about the apples (or other fruit). This was a good one. It’s cool that it was so easy.
A: i know, there really is nothing to a crisp. smoosh some stuff together, throw it on top of some sweetened fruit.. batabing, bataboom… you’ve got crisp!
T: what do you mean, “sweetened fruit”? fruit with sugar on it?
A: sure, but you could also sweeten with honey, or brown sugar, or artificial sweetener-
T: booo. Artificial sweetener?!? eeehhh. ok, go on.
A: anywho, fruit is rarely ever sweet enough on its own for a sugary dessert…. that is unless you like it tart! oooo! we should mention that we hand picked these organic apples at an orchard about 60 miles away in Julian, CA.
T: we certainly did, and it was fun. Until we ate too many apples, felt nauseated, and proceeded to get into the car with your dad behind the wheel. I like your dad a lot. That said, it was a jerky drive. Stomaches were upset. Moving on.
A: before moving on, let me say mine was fine! what wasn’t fine was the wine we tasted at the little winery directly beside the orchard! i believe the name of the place was Menghini. Let’s just say we tasted all they had in the tasting room and by the end I know i didn’t want to buy anything.
T: true. We’re not in Napa by any means. It was better than the strawberry wine at the Ponchatula Strawberry Festival we had a few years ago though. By far.
A: speak it my brother! that stuff was rank!
T: so, back to business. What are you going to rate this apple crisp?
A: for this i’m going to have to only compare the crisp to other sweets when i rate it. very few sweets rate as high as savories for me overall. this crisp gets a 4.33/5. that’s a great score! i think it was my best crisp yet. i used a few unusual ingredients this time that weren’t too noticeable. cayenne and panko for instance.
T: Yeah, I didn’t notice the cayenne (although I did see you put the panko in there). wait, I put the panko in there because your hands were dirty. Anyway, I give the crisp a 4.7/5. It was a stellar dessert, and I could happily gobble a gallon of it. Maybe not a gallon.
A: great! because we’re about to leave town for a wedding and we still have 2/3 of it in the fridge. apple crisp for dinner anyone?
T: ok that’s going too far.

Recipes in this post:

• Apple Crisp

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For breakfast we ate an oooey gooey fresh strawberry crisp made from local California strawberries given to us by our neighbor.

T: this crisp made for a nice breakfast. And then a nice lunch.
A: i mean, really, what more do you need than carbs and fruit? oh yeah, and you had ice cream with it in the morning, so there’s your dairy, too. An all around well balanced meal, what more could you ask for?
T: I guess just more of it. It’s gone now.
A: we have to thank our lovely neighbor for this dessert. This morning she suprised me by giving us a huge plate of fresh strawberries.
T: It’s nice of her to share all of her strawberries with us. It’s quite a sad story about her attempt to make some money at the farmers market last week. Apparently she bought 10 pounds of strawberries, a bunch of chocolate, a tent, and some signs. She then proceeded to dip her strawberries in melted chocolate, took them out to the market, set up the tent, put up her signs, and then was told that she couldn’t sell anything without a commercial license of some sort. Bummer.
A: for sure. that’s the main reason i’ve never attempted a booth at a similar venue. I know they check those things. it’s just the man keeping us down, my brotha
T: damn the man and his rules. Not to worry, though, Elizabeth. We will eat all the chocolate-dipped strawberries you throw our way.
A: and especially the unchocolate dipped strawberries she throws our way. those are the ones i get to play with!
T: Yes I love unchocolate dipped strawberries too. So what all went into the strawberry crisp, Amandy?
A: hehehe that’s bad. shame on you and these silly names! well, the fruity part had strawberries, a little sugar, a little flour, some ground ginger, and some nutmeg. and the crisp part had flour, sugar, oats, butter, ground ginger, and nutmeg. That way each layer of the crisp had the same spice. Oh yeah, a little pinch of salt went into both the fruit and the topping.
T: I liked the oats. That was off the chain homes. I didn’t realize there was ginger, though. Was it apparent and I just missed it?
A: i put a decent amount. i would have prefered to put fresh grated ginger and ginger juice, though. I think strawberries and ginger just compliment each other really well, so the flavor isn’t overwhelming, so much as a lovely accent.
T: that’s crazy, I’ve never even thought of strawberries and ginger going together. Have you had a lot of strawberries and ginger together?
A: no.. i can’t say that i have. but i enjoy the flavors together.
T: Where else have you had the flavors together?
A: i really can’t think of anywhere. but this morning i dipped a berry in some ginger sugar and it tasted great.
T: did you just happen to have ginger sugar on hand?
A: no silly, i thought, hmm i bet ginger would go really well with strawberries, so i mixed some ground ginger with some sugar and then dipped the berry in it.
T: interesting. I can’t help but be reminded of the wonderful ginger tea you made for me a while back when I was sick. That stuff was good.
A: thanks! i’m a huge fan of ginger, although that hasn’t always been the case. I just think it mixes so well with so many flavors. mmm mmm mmm.
T: yeah, I like it in stir-fries.
A: and ice creams…and marinades, and beverages, and and and….
T: and… the ancients would chew on ginger to relieve stomach aches. And I guess the not-so-ancients did that too.
A: shit, that’s exactly what i did for you with the tea. Ginger is definately known for it’s anti-nauseant qualities.
T: That tea was awesome, definately. I wonder how well ginger really works as an anti-nauseant, though. I mean,…
A: why do you think people are always given ginger ale when they have a stomach ache. it really does work.
T: my momma always gave me Coke when I had a stomach ache.
A: COKE!!!! hasn’t coke been illegal your whole life? laura!
T: Amanda, amanda, amanda. There’s only one coke for me, and it comes nicely packaged in a red can with the word “cocacola” on it.
A: oh… well then, did you ever think it was helping your stomach?
T: ummm… no.
A: Exactly! if she had been giving you ginger ale, your stomach aches would have been..eh.. cured!
T: I can see how ginger might have some effect on a stomach ache, but, c’mon, ginger ale is just a bunch of high-fructose corn syrup. I don’t think there’s a whole lot of ginger in there.
A: there is definately some ginger in there. anyway, we have completely lost track of the strawberry crisp! (and i have work looming in the near future ) So what’d you rate this one?
T: I rate this one a 4.4/5. It was super. Probably could have used a little more of the topping, but it was super-tasty.
A: awesome! i agree on the topping thing. I only had a quarter of a cup of butter (a key ingredient in the topping) so the amount of topping i could make was rather limited. I give this dessert a 4.3/5. It was quite tasty, but i definately think it could be tweaked.
T: will you be tweaking it anytime soon?
A: uh… if i find some good fresh berries at a reasonable price, i would love to! perhaps even make it for the 4th, since it’s such a vivid red color. It would go wonderfully with my blue potatoes!
T: I don’t generally think of fruit crisps going well with blue potatoes. I mean, yeah. I just don’t see it.
A: heheheh not during the same course. but that way i can have a very blue part of the meal, and a very red part of the meal. And white should be easy to take care of. Then i can be all.. uh… spirited… and stuff.
T: I need to know more about these blue potatoes. How blue are they? Where do they come from? Why have I never even heard of such a thing? Is this modern technology at work?
A: they’re blue blue. like a deep blue. I think they may be known as purple peruvian potatoes, but don’t bet the ranch on that one. They may be called purple, but trust me. they are blue.
T: that’s insane. Do they taste like regular potatoes?
A: i’m pretty sure they do. the last time i was at the produce market, they had blue sweet potatoes too. those i think may be crazy modern technology, but the purple peruvian potatoes have been around for centuries, if not longer.
T: I wonder if they can grow like 25 lb strawberries in labs these days. That would be neato.
A: scary.

Kwaherini mabibi na mabwana!

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