Stuffed Apple Pie

I saw this on FB and I KNEW I had to make it!!! I was feening for it so bad that I even went back and revisited the page a few times just to imagine how good it would taste. Well they tasted BETTER than I imagined!!!

Ok so I bought 7 apples and cored them all with a knife and a spoon taking care not to poke a hole in the apple skin.









After I cored all the apples I cut the apples up into small pieces and put them in a pan. I added over a half a stick of butter, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and over a half a bag of light brown sugar. I only wanted to melt the butter and mix all the spices together, not cook the apples. I added the ingredients to my sweet tooths taste. Afterward I just filled all the apples with the apple dices and spices.



I make all my crusts from scratch. I used 1 1/2 Cups unbleached flour, 3/4 cups of butter soft, so I can mash it into the flour, 3 packed tablespoons of light brown sugar, and 1/2 cup of ice cold water. This is what it looked like after I mixed all that and rolled them it out and started slicing the strips and top coat for the apple tops.

This was the complicated part. Making those lattices. That was tedious. But once I finished it was purdy! The apple itself was similar to an actual pie crust because it was kind of crunchy and the crust...OMG the crust was so SWEET! All the juices from the spices, mixed with the crisp apple "crust" and the crust I prepared myself all made for a very tasty treat.

Menu planning thats actually doable.

Has menu planning been your nemesis? It certainly has been mine. I could never for the life of me decide what we were going to have for dinner because I didn't like cooking and that was due in part because the whole ordeal seemed to be a chore ESPECIALLY when I didn't know what I was going to be making for dinner that night.

If you were like me, you visited the net for blogs, searched for pre planned menus, or maybe you even called up your girlfriend and asked her what shes having for dinner that night. Yes, I have done all those things and I still ended up clueless and frustrated.

One day I had an epiphany. I use Google Calendar to plan all the things in life that need to be mapped out so I figured why not plan out what we will be eating from day to day?

I felt like I should have been nominated for a Nobel Prize just for the mere IDEA of it all. Not that making a week long menu hasn't been attempted by me and millions of people before, but not to this level that I'm about to get into.

In Google Calendar, you can set up events to reoccur every day, week, every 2 weeks, every 3 weeks, every month, year, ect ect ect. What I decided was to do 31 days of menus, and have them all to reoccur once every month. That way, I will have a menu for everyday of the week henceforth and forever more. Not only that, you can set up each meal and send invitations to the event to whomever you choose ie your always hungry family members. Now your husband and children will never have to ask you that dreaded question: "Whats for dinner???" and you will no longer have to look like this: :-I They will receive an email with that days menu listed.

Here's where the hard work comes in. Now you have got to come up with all these menus. Don't panic though! Take your time. It took me 2 weeks to do it. I went to the library and checked out a grand total of 2 cookbooks. I made sure before I took them home that they were full of recipes that I would want to make that had few ingredients. Added to my arsenal was previous meals I had made that me and my family loved and my crock pot. If I had to have instructions for making a particular meal, I typed in the ingredients as well as the instructions in the note portion of the event on the calendar.

If you don't have a Google account I seriously urge you to get one so that you can use the Calendar. Its a life saver and now it makes cooking somewhat enjoyable because the stress of being ignorant of what we are having is gone. An added bonus to it all is that I can now shop according to whats on the menu for the week and that cuts down on the grocery bill.

Since Google allows you to embed your calendar I'm going to let you benefit from that mind numbing, brain twisting work that I went thru for those two weeks and let you see my menu. If it's possible. Good Luck!

Eating out is HIGHLY overrated so Sams, here I come!

I have made a pact with myself that we will not be eating out anymore. That's really saying something coming from the Queen of Eating Out herself since I suck at menu planning and I HATE HATE HATE cooking.

What brought about this 180? Earlier this month me and my fam of 5, well 6 if you count the baby but she wasn't eating, were dining at Carrabbas and the bill came up to be $80. 80 frakin dollars. I was thinking to myself, Self, I could have made 4 meals for the price of this 1 bland tasting, them charging mucho dinero and putting nada on the plate meal. So with that my mind was made up. No more eating out. Period. Its just not worth it. I mean whatt do they think I am, stupid? Like the Queen wouldn't notice that they are cutting corners on how they prepare the food so it don't even taste the same all the while they give you a plate the size of a saucer to make it look like they are being generous with the proportions. Riiiiiiight like I'm falling for that one!

Anyway since I'm now resigned to the kitchen I decided to pay Sams a visit and waddaya know, I spent $181 on food that will last us at least 2 weeks. So even though I cannot STAND cooking, I do feel good about saving money and controlling how it tastes and how much food goes on my plate.