When Good Food Goes Bad Part VI: Apples

Andrea Karim — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 05:59:27 +0000

I hail from The Apple Capital of the World, so I know a thing or two about apples. For instance, eating three apples a day helps you lose weight.

That is, if you can manage to eat three apples a day. As somone who really loves apples, I can attest that apple fatigue is REALLY easy to come by.

My mother, in addition to supplying my Peeps habit, is my apple dealer. OK, apple-giver. When she comes to visit, she brings me bags of apples from the warehouses of our hometown, where apples are much, much cheaper and can be purchased directly from growers. And I eat at least an apple a day, and it's true that I do feel better and get sick less when I keep up the "at least one per day" regimen. I still go see my doctor, though, because he is incredibly handsome.

Anyway, I recently found myself, through a chain of events that is far too boring to recount here, to be the recipient of at least three bags of apples. Even eating three a day, I wasn't getting anywhere. My newly-restarted veggie and fruit deilvery service delivered another bag, and my fridge was starting to look like the apple warehouses back home.

So, apples: I tend to make apple sauce and apple tarts, just so I can get my fix. The apple sauce still falls within the realm of healthy eating - the tart, alas, counteracts most of the goodness brought by the apples. And of course, the BEST way to eat an apple is raw. But if you've got too many and you're worried about one bad apple spoiling the whole bunch, here are a couple recipes to help you prevent waste and eat happily.

Apple-Berry-Sauce

The great thing about apple sauce is that you cook it and mash it up quite a bit, the result being that you can't really tell what was in there before. Any kind of apple will do. I also throw in other fruit that is looked threatening aged. Tonight, for example, my apple-fruit sauce consisted of three Granny Smith apples, five pink lady apples, one mango, a bag of organic blueberries, the juice from one orange that was starting to mold on th outside, and one Fuji apple for good luck. I don't add any sugar to my apple sauces, because I like them a little tart, and there's enough sugar in fruit as it is - but that's really up to you.

Ingredients:

Bunch of fruit, sliced into large chunks, rinsed
Water

Directions

Throw about 1/2 cup of water in a big pot. Boil, add fruit, boil for 10 minutes, then cook on low for about an hour or until everything is mushy. Smash with a potato masher or blend in a food processor. Add sugar (or Stevia, or Splenda) to taste with each individual serving.

Fruit Tart

Because I'm diabetic, I can't have lots of pastries. So I compromise by making the apple tart without the tart.

Ingredients:

Lots of apples and pears (peeled or unpeeled, enough to more or less fill a baking dish), sliced thin (I bought a mandoline to do this)
Additional fruit (optional)
Brown sugar
Kosher salt
Half stick melted butter or margarine
Chopped nuts of your choice
Wheat germ (optional)

Directions:

Layer the apple and pear slices in a thin layer at the bottom of a large greased baking pan. Drizzle melted butter on top, then sprinkle with chopped nuts and wheatgerm. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used up. Every third later, sprinkle an eensy bit of salt.

Cover with tin foil and bake at 350 degrees until the volume has decreased by about half. Uncover, turn off heat, but leave the pan in the oven to brown the top lightly. You can broil it if you wish to get a more crispy top. Slice and eat. REALLY good with ice cream.

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

mangos

When Good Food Goes Bad Part VI: Apples

Apple-Berry-Sauce

Fruit Tart