A Toast! Over 100 Posts!

 Over One Hundred Posts!

Cider Filled 'Apple Glasses' Three Ways

 

All food takes us on a journey. Some we realize, other slip by into unmemorable meals and bites on the go. In the same sense, all food blogs take us on a journey. We peer into our friends, neighbors, strangers lives and see what they are up to in the kitchen and every once in a while read their stories. We become inspired. We make stories of our own.
When I first started my food blog, I wasn't exactly sure the direction I would take, although I knew this is what I wanted to do. Food consumed my life. (Yes, pun intended.) So, as I began this endeavor, I just typed what was on my mind that day and a recipe and hoped for the best. It soon became apparent to me that a normal food blog just wouldn't do. Each bit of food and drink has its own story to tell or song to sing. I wanted readers to be inspired, to laugh, to be amused, or to maybe be a little scared (think Halloween). I wanted the stories to be just as good or amusing or entertaining as the actual food. This was a tall order to fill.
The first really inspired post hit me at work like a ton of bricks. It just came to me and I immediately wrote down the stream of thoughts going through my mind....The Making of Raiders of the Lost Meatloaf... I then made everyone I knew read it. Some, ok well most, had no idea how to take it. That's been the case with many of the stories. This blog is so unlike those I've read, readers sometimes just stare blankly. But that's ok. It's different and different is good. This blog can appeal to those who love to read, who love food, and are looking for a good recipe.

The next thing I knew I was dragging my poor husband into the woods while I dressed up as a zombie with a loaf of bread and a whisk in my hand for a muffin recipe. I became a reporter from the Prohibition era while making a Valentine's Dinner. This was a two part series. The short ribs and the entire meal was great. The stories were so much fun to do.

Then came the characters. Oler, my cute little cauliflower, became my first creation, complete with safety glasses (needed for his daring escape attempt) and shelf brackets for arms. He attempted to escape from our attic by using my winter scarf (along with some fishing line). Poor Oler...despite his brave escape, he made a wonderful soup.


Other new friends of mine included an entire original story around a barrel of bourbon and a drunk fairy, and a story about a bigfoot who turned the tables on a poor character, pranking him every chance he got. I bought two plain white Styrofoam heads and painted them to be "Meatball Head and Lady Marinara" in a parody of Hellraiser.


  The heads were so unnerving that until I finished the story, I was constantly moving them from one room to the other. I swear they were watching me.
 I cut out a gift bag and it soon became a top hat for a "mad hatter" type character in a story about edible flowers.
I ended up carving a red pepper and an eggplant into characters for a Ratatouille recipe. They didn't last long. Mold set in and I sent them on their way.

I carved a few more veggies into characters writing a story about Ranch Dressing. Our neighbor, now used to my escapades, casually walked by saying hello while I knelt down, positioning my little veggies and the toothpick arrows in their fight for the ranch on my patio. He didn'
t seemed phased one bit. It made me wonder. When he had grown so used to this abnormal behavior? In any case, I loved that little Jalapeno. I swear it really looked like he was yelling.
Speaking of peppers, I eat a lot of them. I wrote a poem about Peter Pipers Parents. I made Stuffed Pepper Soup and a story came about that had some striking parallels to Edgar Allen Poe's, The Telltale Heart. There was even a photo bombing Red Hot Chili Pepper when I stuffed them with shrimp and kale.
I then scared myself writing about Rosemary's Baby's Beans, but it was Halloween after all. I couldn't bear for Halloween to end so I had to do a few more stories with (hopefully) amusing twists and good food.
The stories I write seem to take on lives of their own. There are times when I have a recipe I need a story for but more often, with the really good ones, a character comes knocking at my imaginary door. It won't leave me alone until I sit down and let it tell it's story. Once I hit the publish button there is an enormous sigh of relief.....that is, until another one comes knocking, begging for it's recipe and story to be made and written.
Sometimes the stories or recipe just don't work out the way I've intended for them. For instance, this post....Let me take you on a tour of my mind's inner workings.
The concept started as.... I want to make a two part blog post/story about Snow White. The first part would be a roast done in the pressure cooker. The herbs and spices I would use would be the same a huntsman would use on wild game...juniper berries, sage, etc. A knock would come at my door and it would be a huntsman looking for his Queen's daughter. He would be in a hurry and need my help. We would prepare the dinner before I would realize he was up to no good and send him on his way.
Unfortunately, every time I made a roast of some kind for the blog, it wasn't quite right. The pictures were unappetizing and it just never came to be. My focus then went to what would have been part two, The Apple. I knew I wanted the actual queen to show up at my door in disguise as an old woman looking for her daughter.  I wanted the apple to be a hollowed out drinking vessel and do three versions of a drink.

The first batch of apples were bad so I had to wait. The rest of the week I found myself working late, unable to work on my project. Eventually I gathered some pretty leaves and spread them out on the table along with my hollowed out apples. My recipes were going to be simple and progressively stronger (with alcohol). One mixed cranberry juice with cider. The second added bourbon. The third used bourbon and hard cider with the cranberry.
I began with the bourbon, cider and cranberry. I filled the hollowed out apples and they began to leak. I quickly swallowed down all of the drinks before they emptied out all over the table and onto the floor. Now, a little buzzed, I used the rest of the apples, (although hollowing out a bit less) doing the same. Once again, little pinhole leaks led to a very buzzed blogger. All, the apples had run out. I had to wait for another night.
 A few days passed and almost all of the leaves on the tress had fallen. I changed my mind about calling my apple drinks poison apples I had done quite a few posts that were scary and friends were beginning to wonder about me. (I love the horror genre but I needed to lighten things up.)
I decided to keep my drink recipes and the vessels but now the story would change. How? I began to scour myths and legends. I originally wanted fanciful but what I ended up with was this:

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” ― Apple Inc.

I learned that the apple is the mascot for the unique, the eccentric and the avante garde. Along with the usual symbology and commonly held beliefs, this little fact jumped at me. The apple somehow is the catalyst for those bucking a trend, a way of thinking and commonly held beliefs.
Take for instance the Apple Corporation. Before Apple, a personal computer was unheard of. It was built because it's creators didn't accept the social norm. Many bottles of cream soda were consumed in a garage while the first pc was worked on. Trips to India were taken and inner working of life and the mind were being contemplated. It's a fascinating story. The mouse I am using now came to be by using a butter dish and roll-on antiperspirant as a prototype.  They listened to their inner voices, they almost reveled in being different and embraced being eccentric and changed the world. To them, let's toast.

Slice the top of an apple off.
With a melon baller, scoop out the insides leaving a lump in the middle. This is important as all of your liquid will leak out if you don't leave a lump in the middle.
*Rub the apple with a cut lemon so it won't brown.
*Dip the 'Apple Glass' so it's rimmed in cinnamon sugar.





For your Personal Apples for Everyone,
use One Part Cranberry Juice
       Two Parts Fresh Apple Cider

... We went into the garden, & drank tea under the shade of some apple trees, only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. "why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground," thought he to him self: occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a comtemplative mood: "why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. there must be a drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths centre, not in any side of the earth. therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the centre. if matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its quantity. therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple."          --Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life a conversation with Newton in Kensington on 15 April 1726

As one of the first logos, Apple used Isaac Newton. Isaac Newton, what an appropriate icon to use. We all know the story of Newton and the law of gravity and the apple tree. Some of us even remember that the idea of gravity being proposed at the time Mr. Newton was living would have been considered pure heresy. Heretics of the Church were executed for much less. Did you know that Mr. Newton was also considered an eccentric? He was endlessly curious about so many things. Upon waking he was known to sit at the edge of his bed in silence while streams of thoughts just flowed. He once stuck a needle in his eye socket to contort the shape of his eye just to see what would happen to his vision. On another occasion, he taught himself Hebrew just so he could read the plans of King Solomon's Temple. He also invented calculus but kept it to himself for over thirty years. He's such a fascinating figure that I could go on and on but I'll leave you to your own research and reading. For now, let's toast the man whose name and the image of an apple has become synonymous.

The Relative Apple and the law of attraction..
use 1 oz Bourbon
one Part Cranberry Juice
Two Parts Fresh Apple Cider

The tartness, the apples, the woodsy bourbon, the cinnamon straws...you'll gravitate to it every time.
Cross my heart and...
on to the next name synonymous with the apple and also the eccentric..



John Chapman
Do you recognize the name? Perhaps not but back when The United States was becoming The United States and pioneers were moving westward, there was John Chapman. At the time, laws required orchards of apples and pears to be planted to uphold a right to claimed land. Mr. Chapman decided to scout out lands west, plant orchards and eventually sell them to those moving westward to make money. In the process, this odd fellow ended up making history instead. He became a legend in his own time and is better known as Johnny Appleseed. He walked barefooted across the wilderness through snow, wind, rain. He donned a shirt made out of a coffee sack. He was never in one place for very long and traveled extensively, preaching and planting. He was a vegetarian (unheard of in that time and place) and an animal lover. He went out of his way to save old horses by finding them new homes. He was so eccentric, in fact, that he was able to walk between the worlds of Indian and Settlers  (and the wild) seamlessly. People and animals loved him...
And one more thing...

Those apples he planted? They weren't the edible kind. They were the hard cider making kind that was the choice of drink back then. He helped to spread hard cider throughout the settlements.
And to this walker between worlds, let's toast with a

Johnny Apple

use 1 oz Bourbon
1 part Cranberry Juice
and 2 Parts Hard Cider




And to all the eccentrics out there, the world changers, the avante garde,
to those who don't take no for an answer...
to those who keep on keeping on despite the nay-sayers...
those who remain true to themselves...
The Steve Jobs, The Isaac Newtons, The Johnny Appleseeds everywhere...
This Apple's For You!!!!!