Grandpa's Home Cooking

Dates Stuffed With Cream Cheese And Almonds

Simple to prepare and reasonable in cost, fresh Middle Eastern dates stuffed with cream cheese and almonds are elegant to serve and absolutely delicious. Every time I prepare this appetizer the platter is cleaned before you know it! Try them. You'll like them.

Cut each date lengthwise a bit more than halfway through, separate the fruit, and remove the seed. Dispose of the seed. Bring the two halves nearly together and stuff the inside of the date with cream cheese. At this point, I cut the date in half. Then I push a smokey almond in the center of each half date. 

You're looking at a pound of dates. The cost at our super market was $7.99 a pound. In this case a pound offered 24 dates. Stuffed and cut, the pound yielded 48 hors devoures.

The yellow flower was cut from one my many pansy plants that I plant each fall in my front and backyard beds. The plants produce many flowers that grow regardless of the temperature. We often have mild winters, but even when it is icy, the pansies flourish. I've had plants sealed in a frozen layer of water, which actually magnifies the beauty of the flowers.  The flowers are happy, happy now as we are having temperatures in the 60's, but we have many blooms like this one when the temperatures are in the 20s. My pansies produce orange, purple, and yellow flowers. 

Mom's Luscious Apricot Squares

 

Mom made her luscious apricot squares every Christmas. She put them up in cookie tins and then put this tin along with her many Christmas cookie tins on the dining room sideboard for family and guests to help themselves as they wished. She baked as often as she needed to keep the tins full and the family happy.

Ingredients:

• 2/3rds Cup *California Dried  Apricots
• 1/2 Cup soft butter
• 1/4th Cup sugar
• 1-1/3 Cup sifted flour
• 1/4th teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 Cup brown sugar, packed tight
• 2 eggs, well beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 Cup chopped walnuts
• Confectioner's sugar

* California dried apricots are smaller than Turkish/Middle East dried apricots but they have a sweeter and much better flavor. You'll need to go to a chain supermarket like Kroger or Harris Teeter. You'll find them in the dried fruit section. They'll likely have two rows of the Middle East apricots and one thin row of the California. (You won't find them at Whole Foods.)

Instructions:

1. Rinse apricots. Cover them with water in a small saucepan and boil for 10 minutes. They should still be whole, but soft. Don't overcook the fruit. Cool and chop. 

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 X 8 X 2 inch pan.

3. Mix butter, sugar, and 1 Cup of flour until crumbly. Press into pan and bake for 25 minutes.

4. Sift 1/3 Cup flour, baking powder, and salt. Gradually beat brown sugar into eggs. Mix in flour mixture, then vanilla, chopped walnuts, and chopped apricots.

5. Spread over baked layer. Bake 30 minutes or until done. Cool into pan and then cut into 32 bars. Roll the bars in confectioner's sugar.

Eat one and you may not be able to stop! 

 

Autumn Apple Sauce in a Crock Pot

What you see is what is left of a big crock pot full of apple sauce. Oh my, it was good! We ate a significant amount of a new batch of apple sauce I made yesterday. We make and eat a lot of apple sauce when the new autumn tart apples arrive at the supermarkets. Here is about the easiest recipe you can prepare!

Ingredients:

• 8-12 tart apples (such as Honeycrisp, Gala, Johnogolds, Braeburn, or Granny Smith)
• 1/4th cup sugar
• 1/4th cup cinnamon (try fresh Chinese cinnamon sometime!)
• Crock pot

Instructions:

Peel, core and quarter 8-12 tart autumn apples and put them in your crock pot. Do not add liquid! The apples will make as much liquid as is required. Put as many apples in your crock pot as it will hold, because folks will eat this apple sauce at every meal. It won't last long. Spread 1/4th cup of sugar over the top of the apples. Then spread 1/4th cup cinnamon over the top. Cover the crock pot with the appliance lid. Set the crock pot to low heat and leave the apples alone for 4-5 hours. Peek now and then to see how the apples are doing and to smell the wonderful aroma. You can pull always bump the temperature to high near the end of the cook time if you're running short of time. When the apples are fully cooked, use a big wood spatula or a big spoon to crush the apples into a thick sauce. Don't stir them to death. Its best to serve this sauce nice and chunky, just as the sauce is shown in the picture.

Here is a picture of my neighborhood near the lakefront on West Wellington in Chicago 33 years ago in the autumn of 1976. I had a bachelor apartment (see the next photograph) in a four+one building at 455 West Wellington. I cooked a lot of meals and served them on the little table. I used pillows on the floor for seating. Oh yeah, it was a cool place. A four+one was 4 floors of apartments on top of a floor for parking. I walked to the nearby Lincoln Park Zoo and rode the #151 Sheridan bus to my not too far away office on East Chicago at Michigan Avenue. And, of course, I rode the El all over this wonderful city. I love Chicago.

And here is a picture of my 1978 batchelor studio apartment. I paid $350 a month for this apartment which was considered to be a reasonable rent then. I understand the same apartment rents for $900 a month today.

Baked Apples

Baked apples are delicious and they are simple to prepare. It's a good year-round choice, but I especially love baking apples in the fall when there is a variety of tart apples to choose from. I love to use tart apples, such as a Jonathon, Braeburn, Granny Smith, or Grimes Golden, but some people might prefer baking an apple with a more subtle flavor, such as a Washington State apple.

My all time favorite apple is the Jonathon, but good Jonathons are hard to find these days. When I was a boy my father, Lloyd Pipes, took the family to church member Marvin Norton's Indiana farm for apples several times each fall. There we picked, and ate while picking, really big red Jonathon apples. Marvin was an expert at grafting apples and the result was that his apples were prize specimens. They were so good and juicy that the juices rolled down my little face as I ate them. There is a wonderful picture of my father in one of Marvin's apple trees appears after the recipe.

Ingredients:

• Juicy, tart apples (such as Honey Crisp, Braeburn, or Pink Lady)
• Butter
• Brown sugar
• Cinnamon   

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Use a sererated apple corer to remove apple cores. Cut apples in half. If you do not have an apple corer, you can cut apples in half and use a teaspoon or a sererated grapefruit spoon to dig out the core.

Place apples in a baking dish, cut side up. Put a pat of butter (1 tablespoon) in the core hole of each apple half. Put about a tablespoon of brown sugar on top of the butter. Then sprinkle the apple with cinnamon. Fill the baking dish with apples and put the dish in a preheated 350 degree oven. Bake the apples for 45 minutes to an hour. The apples in the picture were baked for 45 minutes. I usually bake them for one hour until they are very soft. Baked apples are a delicious treat for the family table. I always prepare them when I serve roast pork or fried pork chops.

Here is the wonderful picture of my father, Lloyd Pipes, up high in one of Marvin Norton's apple trees. Oh, how I miss him!

I remember driving out to Norton's farm in our big old 1939 Buick. The excitement built as we drove out in the country on a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon after church. We'd pick and buy two bushels of apples. Then we'd go to the farm barn where Marvin would be pressing cider. Dad bought each of us a big glass of fresh ice cold cider. Then Mom went to the farm house to buy a quart of fresh cream from Marvin's wife, Audrey. You ever poured fresh sweet cream on cereal? Oh my, you haven't lived until you've eaten cereal with fresh sweet unpasteurized farm cream.

By the time we got back in the old Buick Dad had already eaten 3 or 4 apples. As soon as we got back on the road Dad would holler out to my brother and I, who were crammed in the back seat with one of the two bushels of apples, "Hey boys, hand me a big red Jonathon apple." Dad would polish off that apple in no time! My brother, Jerry and I would already have been at work eating apples. Pretty soon, Mom, Charlotte Pipes, would speak up and say, "I guess I'll have one of them apples too." Bless her soul, we greatly miss her! The other bushel of apples and the rest of our farm goods were in the trunk.

By the end of the coming week we were out of apples. After church the following Sunday, we'd head back out to Norton's orchard to buy more apples. 

The only Jonathon's I can find these days what some call medium in size. 

From Wikipedia:

 

There are two theories about the origin of the Jonathan apple. One is that it was first grown by Rachel Negus Higley. Mrs. Higley gathered seeds from the local cider mill in Connecticut before the family made their journey to the wilds of Ohio in 1804 where she planted them. She continued to carefully cultivate her orchard and named the resulting variety after her husband, Jonathan Higley. The other theory is that it originated from an Esopus Spitzenburg seedling in 1826 from the farm of Philip Rick in Woodstock, Ulster County, New York. Although it may have originally been called the "Rick" apple, it was soon renamed by Judge Buel, President of Albany Horticultural Society, after Jonathan Hasbrouck, who discovered the apple and brought it to Buel's attention.