Hot Apple Crisp

 This weekend, we decided to see what apple picking was all about.  Now that we have our girl, such trips are warranted (even though she will have no memory of this beyond pictures), right?  After five minutes of surfing the web for an orchard, we headed up to Ellijay, Georgia, to Hillcrest Orchards.  After an hour and a half in the car and a rather humorous directional argument (mapquest vs. navigation -  according to Matt, if we had followed the directions I thought I had copied correctly from mapquest, we would have been in Charleston by the afternoon  - and I must admit, he was right!), we finally arrived at Hillcrest Orchards.

What a great day we had!  Almost mid-October, the apple trees were pretty picked over but the boys didn't care.  They took pride in picking the best looking apples they could find.  We filled a HUGE bag full of all different types of red and green apples.  They enjoyed many activities while were there - bungy jumping, sliding, the petting zoo....  There were people EVERYWHERE - people chasing their kids, people eating fried oreos and moonpies, walking around with giant turkey legs, people shuffling leisurely along - typical festival atmosphere... aka, Matt's version of Hell on Earth.  Oh, he enjoyed it, though - even if he did enjoy some of it from the "sidelines."  We left feeling the same way we felt when we left Disney World a few years ago.  We had an AWESOME time, but we don't feel the need to do it again anytime soon.  

We came home with a 20+ pound bag of apples. What to do with all those apples? We made Apple Crisp (thank you, Ina Garten, one of my favorite tv chefs!).   

After peeling all of these gorgeous apples, I cut off the 4 "cheeks" of the apples (a Food Network trick I picked up from the countless hours I watched it when Brooke was a newborn).

 

My dear friend, Irmela, has given me countless cooking tips over the years - there isn't a day that goes by when I'm not thinking about something she has taught me.  Today, it was my nutmeg grinder.  In the picture above, Champ is using my nutmeg grinder to add fresh nutmeg to the recipe.  Fresh nutmeg, Irmela says, should always be used when nutmeg is called for in a recipe.  Mmmmm... she's right!

After a lot of slicing, dicing and mixing, out came our wonderful creation...hot Apple Crisp!  There are those yummy recipes that you taste once and know you will make again and again, and this is one of those.  It's actually so good that I think I'll only make it once each Fall when I can use freshly picked apples.  The apples are swimming in a buttery brown sugary sauce (hey, if you're going to make dessert, MAKE dessert.  I did not attempt to make this lighter in calories or fat and believe me, every delicious little calorie was worth it!) with a crispy oatmeal topping - mmm mmm good! 

We spooned it out tonight after dinner and put a cold scoop of ice cream on top - oh, it was delicious!!!  And to eat it knowing we picked the apples made it taste that much better.  As Champ was licking the sticky apple goodness from his lips tonight, he asked, "Mom, when can we go back to Hillcrest Orchards?"  Hmmm... guess we might consider doing it again next year afterall...