Flavors of Fall: Homemade Apple Butter - In your slow cooker (crockpot)

Since we received the foodie pen pal box and since the day of Rugged Maniac and eating at Cracker Barrel with mom I have been dwelling on apple butter.

Our lovely foodie pen pal was gracious enough to make apple butter and send it our way - sorry honey, I didn't share.

Hers was smooth and creamy. Delicious too. Cracker Barrel tends to have a more grainy texture to it, not much though, still delicious.

I've always enjoyed apple butter but can never really justify the cost to buy a small jar of it. Well no need to try and justify the cost now.

Find apples on sale - like 88 cents a pound from your local grocer (or local apple orchard) and use ingredients you already have in house probably (ground cloves, apple pie spice, cinnamon, sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla) then add to your fabulous crock pot and fo-get about it! (done in my best Brooklyn accent I can muster).

So to google I went to find a recipe. I searched and searched to find one that didn't contain 10 bazillion cups of sugar or required me to buy applesauce, I mean, that's cheating right? I want to make it myself not use Mott's applesauce to help me. Gosh, I will buy the apples - especially during apple season and when they are dirt cheap. Of course I'm that anti-box mix baker usually (not that I don't use boxed mixes on occasion).

So after searching and still modifying I found one over here at My Baking Addiction. A lovely blog if I do say so.

I still ended up modifying her recipe, which you will see here shortly.

First I had to go buy some apples - and by some, I mean about 15.

Then I had to prepare to peel, core, and slice. Of course do I have an apple corer? No, so old fashioned knife and wood shop made cutting board (from high school days) it was.

That's my apple army if you couldn't tell. They were taking over my counter space (what little my kitchen has - I hope to one day have a big kitchen with more room than I know what to do with. One day)

I ended up using 5 different types of apples - I wanted variety and something more than just a monotone flavor. I wanted depth, sweetness, tartness, and appely. Yes, appely - it's a word now.

So after peeling - which seemed to take forever and a day - my father called while I was doing so to congratulate me on my costume win at work.

After peeling for forever I finally was able to slice them up into pieces and add them to the crock pot.

Then it was time to cover in the cinnamon, cloves, spices, and sugars.

At this point it looks like I'm making apple pie filling.

So in all it took about 14 hours to make. You have to stir a few times, no biggie really - this turned out fine without excessive stirring (I slept through the first 10 hours of this cooking).

The recipe is as follows:

Slow Cooker Apple Butter
6 1/2 lbs apples - peeled, cored, and sliced (about 15-16 medium apples)
1 cup granulated sugar (I only used 1/2 cup)
1 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed (I only used 1/2 cup)
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp vanilla extract (pure tastes best)

1. Place apples in slow cooker. In a medium bowl combine spices and sugars. Pour mixture over apples and mix well.
2. Cook in slow cooker for 10 hours, stirring occasionally (or like me only stirring AFTER 10 hours because I went to bed), until the mixture is thickened and dark brown.
3. Use an immersion blender (if you have it - or use a potato masher like I did) and puree apples until smooth.
4. Spoon mixture into sterile containers, cover and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks or freeze.
5. Serve on whatever suits you - breads, muffins, sweet potatoes, pork chops, or even just eat straight up with a spoon (like I do)

NOTES:
---I cut back from 1 cup of each sugar to 1/2 cup of each due to the variety of apples I used. If your apples aren't as sweet you are more than welcome to add more sugar.
---My apples included, 3 gala, 3 braeburn, 2 golden delicious, 4 granny smith, and 3 Fuji. You are welcome to experiment with whatever suits your fancy.

And here is the final product, I used cans that I have collected from foodie pen pals and friends who can. I do not. I don't have the materials to can quite yet, though Mike and I would love to have a garden and do so.

Yum! This is a bit grainier due to not having an immersion blender to use to smooth it out. Oh well, tastes great anyway even when mashed with a potato masher.

That is all my friends. This proves you don't need to buy most things, you can make just about anything you find jarred, canned, or packaged at the store.

Now go out and cook!

Oatmeal and Oat Obsession

Ok, so I have had this oats obsession this week. Absolutely been OBSESSED. Much like Julie was with Julia in "Julie & Julia." One of my favorite movies by the way.

Julie & Julia Quote:
Julie: I'm totally obsessed.
Eric: She's totally obsessed."

So, to move forward - what did I do with my oat obsession? Well I made oatmeal, naturally. Crock Pot oatmeal no less. I could have made cookies, oat bars, etc. But I settled for something healthier and delicious to boot and would be ready for me to eat as I shuffled through the kitchen at O'dark thirty in the morning. Now that I do not NEED to exercise in the mornings before work I give myself the benefit of eating in bed in the wee hours followed by drifting back to sleep before my second alarm sounds or, depending on the day, I will talk to Mike while he is finishing his last hour of work. Which I do enjoy my morning phone calls with him :) Start the day right.

So first we will start off with a dangerous oatmeal that I found the recipe for and thought would be a good idea to make for Mike and myself last weekend. Well, anything that is buttered and bruleed is probably not a good idea to eat when trying to be healthy. Hmm, noted and I should know better. So we have "Oatmeal Brulee with Brown Buttered Pears and Cinnamon Ginger Cream." Sounds delicious, no? Well it was quite delicious, however, dangerous in the calorie department. AFTER eating it I plugged all ingredients into my phone and discovered that it had a whopping 605 calories!!!! Holy butter balls Batman!!! Yeah, not making that again, even though it was quite yummy - minus the burnt bits of pear - oops, my bad honey! ;)

Lovely, yes, delicious, yes. Healthy - far from it. Granted, anything with cream, butter and sugar is going to be not so great for you. I told Mike the calories and even he was shocked. So having to put up with my desire to make oatmeal for us for breakfast he soon was rewarded with a toy.

 

A layout boat for duck season, of course we finally get it to where it's going to be stored and it has to be tested. Rightfully so - Mike gets out to the middle of this pond and starts saying "take a picture! take a picture!" Hehe, like a kid in a candy store. He's a happy man, so this lady is happy too.

So after our layout boat adventure and our lesson learned from bruleed and sugared oats the weekend ended and I headed back home to work :(

So this week I have made two different types of crock pot oats. Pumpkin pie oats and banana oats. I found the recipes at Sugar Free Mom's site. These are SUPER easy to make and just add your desired amount of sugar once everything is cooked. That way everyone can add what they like instead of having one taste for all. I added honey or stevia to mine. Brown sugar to the pumpkin pie oats though. Yum yum yum.

Before cooking

After waking up

After stirring

After adding brown sugar and cinnamon

These are quite filling and quite low in calories. Even though Sugar Free Mom says not to use old fashioned oats, I did. I don't like spending more on something if I don't have to so I stick to my old fashioned oats and save a buck. I came up with 195 calories per 1/4 recipe of the Pumpkin Pie type and 125 calories for 1/4 of the banana oatmeal.

Banana oats with cinnamon

The basic recipe is:
1 cup oats, old fashioned in my case
3 cups water
1/4 tsp salt

Cook on low for 8 hours.

For banana oatmeal: add 1 banana, 1 tbsp butter, 1 tsp vanilla extract, & 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon.
For pumpkin pie oatmeal: add 1 cup canned pumpkin puree *not pie filling*, 1 tsp vanilla extract, and 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice.

Obviously you can customize this oatmeal however you feel compelled to. I've thought about apple spice, cinnamon sugar, peaches and cream, or just about any combination you could possibly find in the store you could easily make overnight in your crock pot for a better price and better quality and known ingredients. Sounds good to me.

I have eaten these for the past 3 days and it's probably a great way to start my day since I have entered month two of insanity. Monday afternoon I was scheduled to do the Fit Test as well as Max Cardio Conditioning Circuit thingy - well to say the least I cursed, griped, hated, loathed, and told Shaun T. where he could go and how to get there while doing this set of workouts. I then looked at my hat on Tuesday when I did Max Plyo and went for a 2.5 mile run PRIOR to Insanity. This is what my hat looked like.

Can we say DRENCHED? Yes, drenched. I sweat a lot during insanity to begin with and this is why it is recommended to have a towel handy while doing these workouts  - but my goodness gracious. I probably would not have noticed had I just taken the hat off and tossed it to the side but I went in the bathroom and looked up in the mirror and saw this. WHOA!!! Time to hydrate for sure! Mike is doing the Insanity program as well and is a week behind me. He's in for a treat next week. Though I truly believe  month two is where the big changes start to happen. Believe me, I've been cursing Shaun for a week now in month two but I know things are changing. Anyway, enough of about this, I'm not getting paid to endorse a program - hmmmmm ha ha, just kidding. I won't do that to y'all, this is about food right?

Right -

So go make some oatmeal and get creative. Go out and cook!