Saturday, October 1, 2011

Vegan MoFo: Apple Crisp (A is for Apple)

Hello blogging world! I'm back for my fourth year of MoFo blogging in a row! This year, for the first time ever, I have a THEME! An alphabet theme!

Maybe you can tell by my overuse of exclamation points above: I'm excited to be back and blogging. I always mean to keep doing it after MoFo but somehow it always peters out a couple days later. Maybe 2011 is our year, baby. We'll see.

Anyway: on to A. Aren't all things that start with A absolutely amazing? (Ach, ailiteration!) All edibles, anyhow. You have avocado, allspice, anise, ancho peppers, artichokes, arugula, almonds, amaretto... um, I can keep going like this for some time. So you might wonder why I chose to start off my alphabet challenge with the humble apple.

Well, three reasons:

1. Apples are awesome.

2. I had a big basket of them leftover from the Emperor's second birthday party last weekend. One of our wonderful friends brought these absolutely great apples from her apple trees and I think due to there being SO MUCH FOOD to start with, they didn't get eaten at the party. I wanted to do something cool with them before they started to get mushy.

3. It's fallllllllll! What says "October" more than the start of apple season? I know some of you are thinking "pumpkins." You people are wrong.

One of the many great qualities of apples is that you really don't need much to tart them up. They're just so freakin' GOOD on their own. I thought about a lot of different fancy things that I could do with my giant basket of apples and kept coming back to a very simple apple crisp. I used the recipe from Tamasin Noyes' American Vegan Kitchen (hey there, PPK cookbook challenge!) which produced this:

A is for apple crisp

Apple crisp & coffee

Thoughts on the recipe/how it turned out: the recipe makes a LOT of topping. Like, 3 times as much crumble as I usually put on top of a crisp. I'm not complaining... it was really delicious. Just definitely more of a "treat" apple crisp than a weeknight dessert (or in this case, weekend breakfast, heh) crisp.

I think I sliced the apples too thin though. About half of them totally disintegrated into almost apple-sauce like liquidiness. Maybe I was a little overzealous with the mandoline.

Didn't manage to get a good picture of the Emperor eating this, but he loved it. At one point he was chanting "more more more please! more more more please!"

Back tomorrow with More More More MoFo!

PS: your daily bonus picture of the Emperor. Doesn't he look like a million years older than he was at MoFo last year?

Pirate hat

13 comments:

omgoshimvegan said...

I love apples and that crisp looks wonderful. Happy MoFo'ing

Andrea said...

Aww, the emperor is so cute!
I love apples, too. I must try that crumble!!

sara said...

apple crisps are the best way to make your kitchen smell amazing. this one looks awesome. emperor is adorable!

GiGi said...

Wow the little emperor got so big since last MoFo. Crisps and crumbles and hot fruity things are the stuff of October dreams. Yum.

Shannon said...

OMG, the emperor is getting so big! Still a super cutie!

Monique a.k.a. Mo said...

ZOMG! He is adorable! That apple crisp looks good.

Willie said...

Love your alphabet theme! Sounds like a good way to keep content coming for the month!

MeShell said...

Aw, he's adorable!

I freakin' love apples! Especially in crisp form! :)

vegan.in.brighton said...

What a great theme! I love apples & I'm really excited that it's local apple season here now.

Unknown said...

Apples smell WAY better than my caramelizing onions! lol! And the emperor is SO CUTE! pinchable. Someone asked me if I had a theme for MOFO (I am a newbie), now I know what he meant! Look forward to your posts.

Anonymous said...

The emperor is adorable! Apple crisps definitely make your kitchen smell like fall.

Amey said...

hoooooooorah! Coldandsleepy is back! with APPLES! which was sort of the whole theme of your mofo last year. I'm so glad I get to read your blog for a whole month!

coldandsleepy said...

Amey, you're so right! I was looking back through last year's posts and couldn't stop laughing-- I forgot just how many apples we ate and about the great faces the Emperor used to make while eating them. It made me a little sorry that I don't blog about our adventures more often outside of MoFo.