An Apple A Day

Good evening, Kitschies! I hope you had a productive Monday. Mine was...notsomuch. But that's kind of a good thing. The docs I work with were off today, so that means I was off, too. I had grand plans of going to the library, Target, Sam's Club, to an appointment with the hubs, go by the office, get stuff done around the house. You know - work my butt off on my day off. Well, I didn't do even half of my wish list. I went to the appointment with the hubs, went by the office, Sam's Club...AND I spent a couple hours playing Rock Band...by myself! I bought/downloaded a couple new songs so I sat on my butt, by myself, playing Rock Band. Man, I love that game!! The people who came up with this stupid thing were evil geniuses! I'm sure my neighbors appreciated the loud music coming from my living room, but I didn't care!! It was fun! But, it's back to the grind tomorrow. All good things must come to an end, right?

My coworker and I are going to get back on the exercise wagon again. I had to pinkie-swear with her that we were going to do this. I could do it on my own, but it is so much better to have somebody to complain to who's going through the same hell. We did Jillian Michaels' 30-Day Shred a couple months back. Well, I finished all 30 days...she did about 20. Either way, it really did work. It consistently kicked my butt! I didn't lose any weight, but the one time I did check, I had managed to lose at least 1% body fat in the course of a week. I'm going to keep better track of it this time around. Today was workout 1. That workout is THE WORST!! Why? Because my fatt butt hasn't seen that much activity since...well...since the last time I did this dang workout. The sessions are only 20 minutes but you work every single second of that 20 minutes and by the end, I'm dripping sweat, my legs get shaky and I'm panting like I'm going to die! I just have to keep reminding myself that the end result is worth it. On top of working out, I'm going to start modifying my diet and trying to cut out some carbs. Not all because I don't want to set myself up for complete failure. I've written down my weight and my measurements and though I won't give you the specifics, I will periodically keep you posted on my progress. Wish me luck! I'll need it - because my legs are going to be on fire in the morning - I can't wait!

Now, speaking of exercise...this is part of the reason I'm having to exercise in the first place. I love to cook. More specifically, I love to bake. If I could bake something new every night, I would. That also means that I'd probably be 300 pounds. That wouldn't be a good thing for anybody. I usually don't do apple things in the summer, but I was craving an apple pie yesterday. So, I hopped on my favorite recipe site, Allrecipes, and I did a search for apple crisp. I didn't have any oatmeal on hand, so I lucked out with this recipe as it didn't call for oats. Have a looksee...

Apple Crisp

4 cups sliced apples
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup water
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease an 8x8 inch baking dish.

Place apples in prepared dish. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Pour water over all. In a bowl, cream together sugar and butter. Blend in flour. Sprinkle mixture evenly over apples.

Bake in preheated oven 30 to 40 minutes, until apples are tender and crust is golden.

NOTES: I used a little bit more than 4 cups of apples. Who can go wrong with *more* apples? I used Royal Gala. Instead of 1 cup white sugar, I used 1/2 cup white sugar and 1/2 packed brown sugar. I think it gave it a nice pastry taste. I don't know if I melted my butter too much, but it says to *sprinkle* the mixture evenly over the apples - yeah, mine more like plopped on to the apples. I had to pick it up and put little globs all over until the apples were covered, more or less. I don't know that it made any real difference in the long run because I thought it turned out just fine.

See? The "crust" is just kinda blobbed on?

My helper, Mr Nate :)

Fresh out of the oven!

The finished product - perfect with vanilla ice cream!

I really like how this turned out. The "crust" wasn't too sweet and it was pretty light. It had a little bit of juice - a little thicker than water, but not quite as thick as syrup. The extra juice would be good drizzled over the ice cream. We have about a third of the pan left and it's taking all of my willpower to not go into the kitchen and pull a big spoon out of the drawer and...

Enough of that nonsense! I forgot to mention before that if you try a recipe of mine, I'd love to hear how it turned out for you. Please drop me an email at megharmeyer @ gmail . com - any and all comments are welcome! Thanks for reading - good thing looking at pictures can't make you fat! :D

Listening to: Dead and Bloated by STP (how eerily appropriate - thanks Pandora!)
Mood: determined