The Real Scoop

Today's entry is so named for all of the scooping I have done today. All kitchen related, I promise.

The menu today:
Baked Acorn Squash stuffed with mangos, Crasins, pecans, and topped with brown sugar.
Steamed Broccoli
And Mini Apple Pies

Feeling pretty damn accomplished.

But because I know all of you are such curious chipmunks, I thought I would document my culinary creativity for your benefit. I'm so nice. So here goes.

Thanks to this new-fangled thing called Pinterest, I have begun melting my mind by scrolling through this seemingly endless webpage of unrelated things and I have found some tasty recipes. Not the least of which is one for Mini Apple Pies. (http://domesticdilettante.com/2012/01/11/applepie/)

As you can see, they are indeed apple pies, MADE INSIDE AN APPLE. How brilliant is that?! That way you can eat all of it. Every single last morsel is edible. Except for the dishes you had to put them in, don't eat those, you'll get indigestion and die. Instead of giving you the play by play here about cooking and such, I'll just post some pictures so you can compare my relative success to that of the more professional looking blog where I found it. If I'm feeling witty, I'll include peanut gallery commentary.

Step 1: Carve out apples like you do pumpkins for Halloween. Hint: Grapefruit spoons are awesome.

If you're not paying attention, that's the four mostly whole looking apples sitting in the upper right hand side of the picture.

Step 2: Cut up a couple more apples and use some cinnamon sugar magic on it. That's the stuff in the bowl on the bottom left hand side. Just an FYI.

Step 3:  Put product of Step 2 into product of Step 1. And place in bowl thing.

Step 4: Make pie crust. Grandma's secret. 

Step 5: Make fancy pattern with cut up product of Step 4 and place over completed Step 3.

Step 6: Bake.

Step 7: To be continued. (HINT: It happens at the end of the next chapter)

So the next thing that had to be done is to make all of the rest of dinner. Woof. Good thing I had my newly acquired Madame Butterfly on vinyl to help my house wife tendencies emote/fumigate. (I'm not sure that's the right conglomeration of words, but I think you get the point.)

Next up to the chopping block was this pair of acorn squash. (I'm not sure how many different ways you could read that sentence with different emphasis, but it's got to be good.) And I won't lie to you. I had about 2 steps of this plan mapped out. Basically something like. Kelsey get gourd, Kelsey get mango.... And that's all I've got. Some how they were supposed to go together. Where's the recipe? Don't got none. This is what we call free styling it. Word.

When I began to refine my plan a bit more (basically after I went grocery shopping) and the next step involved something akin to King Arthur and Excalibur. What kind of knife/sword I was using is irrelevant, but the point was that I had a knife/sword stuck in a gourd/rock for a while. If you would like to picture me in armor and flailing madly in time to lyric arias, go ahead. Who am I to stop you? But it worked... eventually. 

Step 1: Win battle with gourd/squash. Do not squash gourd. 

Step 2: Pull out that nifty grapefruit spoon again and wield it against the squash. You've already done this with an apple, now you should APPLy your experience to the basics of squash.

This is just a picture of the vague idea ish. 

Step 3: Bake squash for 20 minutes face down on cookie sheet (note that the cookie sheet should not have cookies on it currently-that's a project for another day)

Step 4: While the first baking process is happening on the other side of the kitchen-Skin and mangle the mango.

Step 4: Flip vinyl of Madame Butterfly over. 

Step 5: Once those are out of the oven, place whatever you can find in the hollowed out hole of the squash. I happened to use the recently mangled mango, some Crasins, and some pecans. I threw on some brown sugar just because I'm so sweet, but that's not required. Nothing ever is.

Step 6: Bake. For some time.

Step 7: Serve and Eat!

The steamed broccoli was in there too, but much more conventional than my other two experiments for the day. 

Don't forget to complete Step 7 of chapter 1, which is a lot like Step 7 of chapter 2. 

Grandma was over for dinner (I mean, with that kind of meal, I'm shocked there weren't 25 people just sitting in my driveway). Always a treat. Having fun and finishing some knitting projects after dinner. 

Success-full day.