Apple Thing

As part of cooking, I'm trying to work more fruit into our diets. Ed tends to be wary of fruit (has never really enjoyed it) and, while I like fruit, I don't tend to snack, and it's just never convenient to eat somehow.

A few nights ago, I made swordfish steaks, brussels sprouts, and brown rice with sauteed onions and shiitake mushrooms. It was all great, and for dessert we had blackberries. Well, to be more precise, I had picked up the berries for dessert, and ended up serving them with some ice cream, which made them extra delicious, of course.

Tonight for dinner I made tilapia, hobo-style potatoes*, broccoli and carrots. While at the store, I picked up a couple of apples for dessert. I was hoping to make some kind of baked apple "thing" that would be tastier than raw apples but not as unhealthy as an apple pie or crumble (which I don't know how to make in any case, though no doubt one can find recipes or something).

I ended up doing this. I sliced the apples up and put them into a small square casserole (like a brownie dish). Then I mixed oatmeal, cinnamon, brown sugar, and melted butter and put that on top of the apples. (I don't know a recipe like this, but it seemed like it would work.) It wasn't enough to completely make a top layer, so it was kind of just mixed in with the apples, but mostly on top. And then I baked that in the oven for about half an hour.

I didn't have anything to cover the casserole with (we were out of foil and I had already used my lidded dish for the potatoes), so some of the apples came out a bit dry. When the dish came out I wasn't sure that it would be good at all, but it was awesome. It definitely met my intention of being halfway between plain apples and something like a pie or crumble. And it was by far the tastiest part of the meal (which I had remarked, earlier, met the "dinner at home" criteria of "I would only eat this if someone told me 'here's dinner, now eat' - I wouldn't seek it out").

So that worked out well!

(* Hobo potatoes is where you cut up potatoes and onions and stick them in a foil pouch with some butter, and then cook them in the oven - or over your campfire. I was, as previously mentioned, unexpectedly out of foil, so in fact we had pseudo-hobo potatoes that were baked in a casserole dish.)