plums in the icebox

pumpkin apple baked oatmeal

I kind of feel hypocritical posting this recipe, after I railed against pumpkin over at Blisstree. Although I do think people are WAY TOO caught up in pumpkin frenzy during the fall, that doesn't take away the fact that I actually do enjoy it. I bought a few cans the other week and made a crustless pumpkin pie (consumed solely by me, as R does not like pumpkin). Then I made gluten-free pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, and then I made this baked oatmeal. Two cans of pumpkin, three recipes, and I'll be good on pumpkin until Thanksgiving. Pumpkin pie filling will probably be about the only thing I'll be able to eat on Thanksgiving, anyway, as I am getting my wisdom teeth out two days before! WAHOO!

I based this pumpkin apple baked oatmeal recipe off of my original baked oatmeal recipe on HelloGiggles. It's warm, filling, and perfect for cold mornings. Plus it has that which is apparently the DEFINITIVE flavor of fall, the almighty pumpkin. 

This would be a great meal to serve your relatives for breakfast when they're staying for Thanksgiving: I bet you could even use leftover pumpkin pie filling instead of plain old canned pumpkin. If you want to go even further into fall flavor overload, you might stir some dried cranberries into the mixture before baking. 

Pumpkin Apple Baked Oatmeal

serves 2-4

total time: 50-60 minutes

total hands on time: less than 10 minutes

What you’ll need:

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/2 cup plain gluten-free oats

1/4 cup sugar

hefty dash of cinnamon

pinch of salt

1 egg

1/2 cup of apple sauce

3/4 cup milk

1 cup canned pumpkin

1 apple, sliced

optional: small handful of chia seeds

What you'll do:

1. Preheat oven to 325.

2. Grease a baking dish (9x9 or similar size, I used a round Pyrex) with oil of your choice; I used coconut.

3. Mix dry ingredients together in a small bowl.

4. Beat egg and milk together in another bowl, then stir in applesauce and pumpkin. 

5. Slowly stir dry ingredients into wet ones, then pour the whole mixture into pan. Slice apple and arrange on top.

6. Bake at 325 for about 45 minutes, or until edges are slightly brown. 

You can also put bananas on the bottom, as I did in my original recipe, or try some thinly sliced apples. I didn't put any apples on the bottom this time, but I think that would make the baked oatmeal just a bit more moist and a lot more delicious. 

 

apple picking + apple mush!

Here are the obligatory food blogger fall apple picking photos! We drove out to Bluemont, VA the weekend before last and picked a bunch of apples. So many, in fact, that I still have a huge amount sitting in my kitchen, even though I've already made apple muffins, apple cookies and apple mush (recipe below; it's tastier than it sounds, I promise).

We ended up getting 20 pounds of apples; I was feeling ambitious that day, I guess. The first thing I made? Apple mush. I can't think of a fancier/more appetizing name for it although I guess apple confit might work. But we're utilitarian here—this stuff is apple mush. And what is it?

Well, apple mush is kind of halfway between apple sauce and apple pie filling. It's a sweet, soft, mush of apples, and it's super versatile too. I ate mine on top of yogurt for breakfast, but it's just as good with ice cream, with oatmeal, or heated up alone and then squirted with a bit of whipped cream. Apple mush is also great for dipping graham crackers or cookies into (or crumbling them on). It's also the easiest thing of all time to make, providing you have a crock pot. 

Apple Mush

makes about 3 heaping cups of apple mush

total hands on time: 2 minutes

total time: 2-4 hours

What you'll need:

10 apples, cored and sliced

1/4 cup raw sugar (or try honey!)

cinnamon to your taste (a few tsps, at least)

What you'll do:

1. Place ingredients in a crockpot and cook on low for 4 hours or high for 2 hours. When it's done, you should have a sweet, soft, caramelized mess of apples.

You can peel the apples if you want something a bit more like applesauce, or cut them into different sizes. Use as many apples as you'd like, as long as you vary the amount of sugar and cinnamon used; you can also try other spices. Cardamom (which I never seem to have in my cabinet) would be delicious, as would a bit of vanilla. Nuts would also add something to the mixture; you could add them halfway or stir in at the end for a bit of crunch. Apple mush keeps in the refigerator for about a week.

confession: i suck at lunch

 

A non-lame lunch I made a few months ago: corn, chard and parmesan frittata

I don't know what my problem is. Lately, I have just totally sucked at eating lunch. 

The weird thing about this entirely-lame predicament is that I work from home, so theoretically I'm able to cook up a three course meal for lunch, if I want to. But after I spend all morning writing, I just want to eat something quickly before I go to teach my class at the CC, grade papers, send emails, or do even more writing. I find myself starving at 1 pm, half-heartedly eating a string cheese because everything seems either too complicated or unappetizing.

There's leftovers, of course, and healthy (ish) frozen foods like Kashi and Amy's meals, which I do eat pretty frequently. But I'm just getting so borrrrrrrred. Most days I eat some combination of beans, quinoa/rice and tomatoes/spinach with cheese and salsa, but I'm getting pretty bored of that as well, as healthy as it may be. Sandwiches alway seem like a good option until I remember that GF bread is really way too small to eat a decent sandwich on. And there's always hummus and stuff like that, but I never really full satisfied if I just eat a graze-y lunch. 

I know this is like the stupidest problem in the world to have, but I've taken to the blog in hopes of getting some good suggestions for easy, non-fussy lunches I can make for myself. So tell me, readers. What do YOU eat for lunch?