Apples!

Did you know that last Saturday (October 16) was World Food Day? No? I didn't either, until I saw PhD in Parenting's thought-provoking post here.

Being the good world citizens that we are, K and I spent most of that day focused on food-centered activities ourselves. (And, okay, I understand that the point of World Food Day is to raise awareness and solve the hunger problem, but I was trying for a nice, socially conscious tie-in to the rest of this indulgent post.)

It's fall (again, did you know?) and that means apples. K loves apples. She loves enthusiastically identifying them at the grocery store, she loves begging for them until I agree to buy them, she loves putting as many into the produce bag as she can before I cut her off . . . then when we get home, she loves doing things like throwing them down the basement stairs or taking one bite then forcefully offering the rest to the cats. This, combined with my grandma's propensity for loading me down with foodstuffs whenever we visit her, leaves me with a lot of excess apples, especially at this time of year. 

Photos courtesy of Blue Jean Gourmet and Sonya Cuellar

What a problem to have, eh? I know, I know. What did we do? First we tried our hand at applesauce in the crock pot. (An encouraging friend said "Applesauce is sort of a free-form transcendental experience," and as such, we're not bothering with a recipe here.) Once the obligatory healthy use of apples was out of the way, we moved on to:

Oh. My. God. The Blue Jean Gourmet knows her stuff, folks. Her recipe for Apple Sour Cream Muffins can be found here.

I made my obligatory mom alterations (no nuts -- hello, toddler food allergies!), whole wheat subbed in for part of the white flour, and a little Splenda in place of some of the sugar, but -- really, this whole post was just an excuse to tell you how good these are. Mmm. Apples.