Apple Hill and Apple Sauce

This past weekend Mike and I took another trip up to Apple Hill. I'm telling ya, I can't get enough of that place! Well...actually, we went for the Apple Hill Harvest Run this time around, but don't think for a minute I was leaving without getting my apple goodies on!

Mike actually ran a race with me!! I was so proud of him!  This guys hates to run, but he's been doing so well lately going on runs consistently and taking Sophie out for runs.  I'm starting to rub off on him...yeeeea probably not.  The course wasn't too bad if you're used to altitude and inclines ;-) Starts out with 1/8 mile initial incline and for about 2.5 miles it's literally flat or all downhill.  And when there's a downhill...you know the uphill is coming.  For the last mile it was a slight incline until the last 1/4 mile with a steady increasing slope....ughhh what a way to have to finish.  Not gonna lie...had to pee so bad at the end, I HAD to book it bc it was about to be an emergency!

Sorry for the terrible iphone3 photo :-/

I completed the 3.5 mile race 6th in my class (ages 19-29) with a time of 26:48, that's a 7:39/mile pace.  I was pretty stoked about that!! I was so proud of Mike, he finished the race 34th in his class!! He ran the whole way on his bum knee.  He was hurtin the next day for it, but I'm so glad he ran it with me.

Our friends Lisa and Jenna came out to the run as well! 

We were all pretty much there for the free stuff.  Several orchards gave out free pastries, juice, and one of the wineries a free reserve wine tasting! Woop!

We had priorities though and made our way to High Hill Ranch.  My fave!!  I got a Caramel Apple Shake at the Cider Shake and the girls got Sparkling Moonshine (Apple Cider Wine and Champagne).  It was unreal...I would've been dancing on the tables after one of those!

I couldn't leave without my fritter! Mike was so darn good...usually he can't leave without a caramel apple, but he actually passed it up.  He has been doing so well on his "plan to eat better" (not calling it a diet ;-) I also stocked up on apples with the plans of making this baked apples recipe from How Sweet It Is.  I will be trying that next, but first...I went for the easier recipe!

Crockpot Apple Sauce by Mommy Makes it Better.  

Of course, I pinned this one a while ago and have been meaning to make it.  It was sooo super easy.  Besides the initial work of peeling and coring the apples, you throw all the ingredients in and wait 6 hours for your crockpot to do all the work.

All the apples will break down in the crockpot...then when it looks like this, you can either use a blender or just whisk it up a bit and WA-LA! You've got warm apple sauce.  

See, warm...condensation happening.

I had just a smidgin and it tasted like Fall!

I decided to put my creative touch on it with the mason jar...I placed a cupcake wrapper in between the lid and tied some cinnamon sticks with twine. 

Would make a cute holiday gift for friends and family!  

This one's going to my dad...he loves all things apple!

Along Came a Crockpot...

And all of a sudden I know how to cook...kind of.  I love that since I started working from home and now that I'm just home most of the day, I can really utilize my crockpot.  Not to say that I couldn't when I worked outside of the house, but I'm still hesitant to leave something plugged in and emanating heat for 8 hours of the day.  I don't want to be the one at fault for burning our house down. ;-) And because I haven't mastered cooking full-on meals, I've resorted to easing into my cooking escapades slowly by using the "slow cooker".  Ooh, the irony! 

My bf loves his meat just like pretty much every guy does, so when I found this Pulled BBQ Chicken recipe on How Sweet It Is, I knew he would LOVE it! And for someone like me who doesn't usually gravitate towards meaty dishes, it actually looked pretty darn delicious!  I used some variations in the way I prepared it, so I'll explain...

Jessica used 6 large chicken breasts in her recipe, but I knew that 1) it's just Mike and I eating this and 2) Mike can't stand leftovers (except for a good pizza or Hamburger Helper dish, and maybe this would be included but I didn't want to take my chances) so I decided to halve the recipe. 

Here's what I used...if you compare hers to mine you'll find I used some creative liberties in mine ;-) but I gotta say, it totally worked!

Ingredients:

3 large boneless and skinless chicken breasts

1/2 Tablespoon of paprika

1/4 teaspoon of garlic salt

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of pepper

8 oz. of beer (yup same amount she used with less chicken just because the BBQ sauce I used was thicker than hers, so I wanted the extra liquid to thin out the BBQ sauce a bit)

1/2 bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce (about 14 oz.) 

So, while at the grocery store I thought for sure I saw "Sweet Baby Ray's" BBQ sauce on the recipe...well, I did...but it was the example of what NOT to use as it is a thicker sauce and may burn if left too long in the crockpot.  Because of the thickness of the sauce I used what I call a "thin" beer rather than the Amber kind Jessica used.  I used 8oz. of a Corona.  

I woke up rather late and the recipe called for 8 hours of crock pot cooking...at 10:30 I was not about to be eating dinner at 7-8 at night.  No Sir-ee!

So, I poured the BBQ sauce and beer in the crockpot and stirred till both were evenly mixed.  Then, I seasoned the chicken with all the spices and added it to the crockpot.  I cooked on HIGH for about 1.5 hours before turning the crockpot to LOW.  I allowed the chicken to cook for another 2 hours before switching the crockpot to WARM for another 3 hours.  We were ready to eat at about 6! 

Every so often I would turn the chicken making sure all sides were adequately cooked and soaking up the sauces.  By doing so, the chicken started to pull away from itself on its own.  It really was perfection! 

I used a Colombo Potato Dinner Roll as the bun for our mini pulled BBQ chicken sliders.  And from my Best of Betty Crocker Magazine, I made a perfect bowtie pasta salad to go with the meal.  

Mike was definitely satisfied with my cooking choice and devoured 3 mini sliders in minutes!

And as promised...the apple treats are still a-comin! I will be making Mini Apple Pies tomorrow :-) I can't wait!

Creations

I have this paper-source planner that I somewhat use as a journal. I like to keep track of all the crap I do during the day that seems to be of significance to me: my workouts, movies the bf and I watch on Netflix, places we go, and of course all the things I create...my projects. My planner has this nice section in it that says "do something creative this week". Now, as I was looking back into my planner and reading my daily entries, I noticed...I don't need that little section to remind me to do something creative. Creation seems to flow naturally out of me, as if it's an arm or a leg.

But after looking at that little section of my planner, I felt the need to capture my recent projects.

A lot of my inspiration lately has come from scouring Pinterest in my free time. I absolutely love and am addicted (yes, addicted) to this virtual pin board site. It's like a cork board or a more specific bookmarks folder that customizes and categorizes things into whatever you feel is important to you. For example, my boards are categorized into fashion/style, photography, recipes/food ideas, decorating/decor, etc. but with a twist on the names...Fashion = My Style Pin board, recipes/food ideas = Good Food Decisions, decorating/decor = For the New Place. You get the idea. You can customize it to no extent. Anything that jumps out at you on the Internet is fair game to pin. And what's great is the link is automatically saved to the image you've pinned. Simple as that!

So onward to some of my recent creations and the inspiration behind them!

You guessed it, these date back to the Fourth O' JU-ly. Chocolate dipped rice krispie treats! I needed something summery and yummy for a birthday BBQ around the holiday of Fireworks. I jazzed it up with my sparkly starry garland I found at Michael's.

The Dry-Erase Board

I thought it would be helpful to create some kind of weekly organizer for my desk as I'm now working from home. Something to keep my daily agenda handy and visual. I made a dry-erase board out of an old frame. I put a solid color in the center so writing would be easily seen and framed it with a cute plaid pattern.

I guess it turned into a dry erase board for daily notes to the bf ;-)

Below we have milk chocolate dipped frozen banana pieces with white chocolate drizzle. I've found that I'm my most resourceful in the kitchen when perishable items are almost to their limit. I hate to throw out food because I've been too careless to notice it needed to be eaten days ago :-/

I happened upon a similar picture on Pinterest and thought...shoot, I can do that! And it was so much easier than I imagined. The picture I found had a white base coat and I thought I'd spice it up a bit with a minty green. I think it's all about the color choices. I chose bright colors for the dots that would easily stand out on their own. I think the dark navy really pops and frames the other color choices nicely. I just started balancing the dotted trail down the side of each nail...it was all a bit haphazard and I had no real plan as I went along. So go ahead and try it, you may come up with a masterpiece :-)

Usually my baking creations are typically sweet and sugary. You know it's love when you're hopping out of your comfort zone and trying to make your boyfriend some of their favorite foods. He happens to love Pillsbury Crescent Rolls.

I tried to recreate them.

The dough decided it didn't want to rise and the final product was quite dense. Buttery goodness but dense. A meal on it's own! It's the thought that counts right?

The bf and I recently took a summer vacay to Vegas! Me being the impeccable planner that I am, every outfit needed to be styled and planned to the tee. I was short some accessories for a bright sunny outfit and I felt I had already spent enough getting a few new things for the trip (ha, a few!). So I decided to make this delicate little beaded bracelet. The best part, the bf thought it was the cutest thing that I was ACTUALLY wearing my creation. I think he finds it quite charming that I make things and wear them.

Along with the accessories, it was also about figuring out the perfect nail color to go with ALL outfits. Not to say that minty green is the perfect nail color, but it was definitely a fun color that I thought was perfect for Vegas. I got some help from a great blog, Cupcakes and Cashmere, where she used a loose glitter technique. I don't think I've perfected it. Rather than a cascade/fade of glitter... it ended up looking like a glitter french tip. Either way, they lasted a 4 day trip to Vegas for which I was grateful and didn't have to spend a thing on a manicure! And this was way more fun!

So, the bf's birthday is coming up and he loves the San Jose Sharks. He was in need of another picture in his office and had mentioned that he wanted some Sharks gear in in there too. Neither of which he's fulfilled since moving into his new office. I love to paint, but I'm in no way a painter, so I decided to draw and watercolor the Sharks logo. It turned out better than I thought it would! I'm quite proud of my work. Needless to say, I was so proud I gave it to him 2, almost 3 weeks early....oops!

I cooked the other day. Again, I think it was an act of love. Because I work from home, I came up with the genius idea that I need to use my crockpot more often. I hate the fact that you have to leave that sucker on all day, but bc I'm home all day...I have a renewed love for it! Now I'm going to defend what little cooking skills I have and say...this dish below required a lot of creation, imagination, combining of two recipes to get just what I wanted, and then trial and error as it sat in the crockpot. And holy moly was there a crap ton of prep work involved (who knew?). I thought the crockpot was supposed to cook the dish for you!

Curried Beef Cubes with Potatoes, Onion, Bell Peppers, and Tomatoes! I swear I put 5 times more curry powder than the recipe called for and it was still mild tasting :-/

I think it's become an expectation in the that for any family get togethers, dinners, birthdays, or holidays...Meredith is bringing the dessert. Well, at least that's what I expect, and I must admit, I get darn excited to provide!

So again, I was inspired by the fabulous Pinterest and saw a Cake Pop picture...but these weren't cake pops....they were Oreo Pops! Genius because they are a cinch to make. Cake pops are incredibly time consuming, so these are a great alternative. Place a stick in Double Stuffed Oreos (I used the Heads or Tails kind to get a great balance of chocolate and vanilla) and then dunked in white chocolate meltys. The picture I found had their Oreo Pops covered in sprinkles. I had to add a bit more spice than that, so I threw a bunch of mini M&Ms to mine. Place in the fridge for a few hours and WA-LA! They are amazing cold and with ice cream...or in the morning with coffee (shhh!).

I did it again, the bf's birthday still hasn't surpassed (it's not even this week yet)...and I gave him another part of his gift. Can't hold on to a surprise to save my life! I found these modern and SWEET a$$ martini glasses on Red Envelope. Sadly, I couldn't personalize them (a crime on a site that supposedly specializes in that sort of thing). I knew I could get them washed and a drink made while the bf was playing his COD (Call of Duty). I at least was able to surprise him that way. ;-) I made a delicious blueberry pomogranate martini with a sugared rim. I poured a small amount of the blueberry/pom juice over the sugar to get a pinkish colored sugar on the rim. And I thought I was classy adding blueberries (that look like olives).

I love to leave off with some great quotes, so remember... "All art requires courage" - Anne Tucker

AND

So, comment back and let me know what you've created!