The headline for our family this week isn’t food. All the trees that were dead or in the way of our new carriage house building project had to go, and I was completely mesmerized watching the tree guys take them down. All the players in this chainsaw ballet knew exactly what they were doing, calculating angles, tying ropes, operating the lift, severing limbs, taking down trunks in chunks, and feeding the wood chipper. I guess I channeled my inner preschooler because I spent two days just watching them work.
This full schedule of gawking in awe left me little time to make an apple crisp, but I managed to squeeze it in. Ben and I cooked together too, making kebabs and roti on a previous day, but that meal was rather unremarkable, so there’s no need to share the chicken recipe. The roti recipe can be found in our recipe index.
The apple crisp was unremarkable too, except for the fact that the crisp part repurposed the oatmeal cookies that I made last week. The cookies were good but Ben wouldn’t touch them because they had raisins, and Phil didn’t eat them because he has been trying to avoid dessert. This meant that I had surplus cookies and a hankering for apple crisp.
Ultimately, Phil enjoyed the dessert by telling himself it was mostly fruit. Why did Ben enjoy the apple crisp? Deception, of course. I didn’t tell him that the crisp used crumbled oatmeal raisin cookies, and you won’t tell him either. I’m hardly the first woman to use an apple in a temptation/deception scheme, and I come from a proud family tradition of food deception, so the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
My thrifty mom used to make homemade ketchup, which my brother claimed to dislike. After he complained, she bought a bottle of ketchup. When it was gone, she continually refilled it with her homemade stuff and my brother declared it was “much better.” I don’t think he ever found out about the swap. Phil, on the other hand, loves my mom’s homemade ketchup, and it probably helped seal the marriage deal. I guess condiments are not traditionally part of a dowry, but Phil is a big fan.
Whether you spent your week felling trees, watching men fell trees, making a dessert of lies, or eating that dessert, we trust you are savoring these beautiful October days like we are!
