Recipes: Homemade Apple Pie

One of the things I knew I would do with this blog is post recipes.  I am pretty well known for being a good cook and I am especially gifted with desserts... probably because I have such a big sweet tooth.  In our house, I am the one that does the cooking.... mostly because this is one skill my husband doesn't have and I am a picky eater.  I would rather go hungry than eat something I don't like (which is a real problem for me and having to eat Army food).  Anyway, I am not one of those women that demands that my husband cooks and then complain because he makes something I don't like.  So we have a deal, I cook and then I don't complain.  If I want a certain type of food, then that's what I make.  (My husband has gotten pretty handy with the grill though, I must say).  

So, since I always cook, I have accumulated a lot of recipes.  And I am pretty good at tailoring them to my own tastes. I am sure this will be the first recipe of many...

This is my favorite homemade apple pie recipe.  I am not great at making it pretty, but my husband and neighbors were very happy with the results.

IngredientsPastry:

• 2 1/2 cup(s) All-Purpose Flour
• 1/2 teaspoon(s) Salt
• 10 tablespoon(s) Cold Butter Or Margarine, cut up
• 6 tablespoon(s) Vegetable Shortening
• 6 1/2 tablespoon(s) Ice Water

Apple Filling:

• 2/3 cup(s) Sugar
• 1/3 cup(s) Cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon(s) Ground Cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon(s) Nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon(s) Salt
• 3 1/2 pound(s) Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, And/Or Braeburn Apples, each peeled, cored, and cut into 16 wedges
• 1 tablespoon(s) Fresh Lemon Juice
• 2 tablespoon(s) Butter Or Margarine, cut up
• 1 large Egg White, lightly beaten
• 1 teaspoon(s) Sugar

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Directions

1. To prepare pastry: In food processor with knife blade attached, blend flour and salt. Add butter and shortening, and pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle in ice water, 1 tablespoon at a time, pulsing after each addition, until large moist crumbs just begin to form.
2. Shape dough into 2 balls, 1 slightly larger. Flatten each into a disk; wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate 30 minutes or overnight. (If chilled overnight, let stand 30 minutes at room temperature before rolling.)
3. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place cookie sheet on rack in lower third of preheating oven to bake pie on later. To prepare apple filling: In large bowl, combine sugar with cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Add apples and lemon juice, and toss to coat evenly.
4. On lightly floured surface, with floured rolling pin, roll larger disk of dough into 12-inch round. Ease dough into 9 1/2-inch deep-dish glass or ceramic pie plate. Gently press dough against bottom and up side of plate without stretching. Trim dough edge, leaving 1-inch overhang; reserve trimmings. Spoon apple mixture into pie crust; dot with butter.
5. Roll remaining disk for top crust into 12-inch round. Center round over filling in bottom crust. Trim pastry edge, leaving 1-inch overhang; reserve trimmings. Fold overhang under; bring up over pie-plate rim and pinch to form stand-up edge, then make decorative edge. Brush crust with some egg white. Reroll trimmings. With knife or cookie cutters, cut out apple and/or leaf shapes; arrange on pie. Cut short slashes in round to allow steam to escape during baking. Brush cutouts with egg white, then sprinkle crust and cutouts with sugar.
6. Bake pie 1 hour 10 minutes or until apples are tender when pierced with knife through slits in crust. To prevent over-browning, cover pie loosely with tent of foil after 40 minutes. Cool pie on wire rack 3 hours to serve warm. Or cool completely to serve later.

Health & Exercise: My Journey into Alternative Therapies

I mentioned in my yoga post that I see a massage therapist and thought I would share about the alternative medicine that changed my life.

My pain began probably somewhere between my junior and senior years of college.  I had experienced joint pain in my knees (mostly from running long distances on hard surfaces and years of improper running shoes) before but I started to experience pain in my shoulders, especially when doing push ups.  Slowly the pain grew and I occassionally had painful popping in my right shoulder and then the left.  My treatment... ignore it! Suck it up! Rub some dirt in it! Drink water! And every other terrible piece of Army advice.

Then about a year ago, I started having neck pain.  I thought it was from bad pillows and some lack of sleep.    I tried some Aleve and of course, that did very little.  So I ignored it some more.  Then in January I had the worst headache of my life.  I was sensitive to light, my right hand went numb, and I was slurring my words, when I could find them.  I went to see my doctor after and she was concerned that it was either occipital neuralgia, migraines or a stroke.  I was having lots of what I called residual headaches (basically two weeks of minor headaches constantly) and so she gave me medicine for that.

At this point, I had never considered that the shoulder pain was related to the neck pain was related to the headaches.  So, I kept ignoring it.  Then I had another crazy headache in May.  I took two fast dissolving pills that are over $100 each and it did nothing except make me nauseous and sick the whole next couple of days.  So I went to see my doctor again.  Though still concerned about occipital neuralgia, and about why I wasn't going to the ER about possible strokes, she knew that since I didn't respond to the migraine medicine, it wasn't that.  So she wondered if it was tension headaches.  And, being the best Army doctor I have ever met, she sent me to Acupuncture and a Chiropractor to see if some of the tension in my neck, shoulders and back could be causing the headaches.

Both the chiropractor and acupuncturist believed this to be the case.  My chiro explained it like this: The muscles in the neck and back are connected to the nerves at the base of my skull.  There is so much tension in my back and neck that when it gets too tense my muscles are pulling on those nerves causing terrible headaches.   So I started seeing each of them weekly.  The chiropractor's adjustment helped more than the acupuncturist's needles, but both were only causing temporary relief.  I was still in so much pain and it was really interferring with everything by that point.  The little relief I was getting made it feel that much worse when the pain came back.

My chiropractor then told me that really what I needed was a massage therapist who could specialize in trigger points, because I have so so so many of them.   Unfortunately, massage therapy is one thing that Fort Carson doesn't offer, so it wouldn't be covered by Tricare (the Army's medical insurance), like acupuncture and chiropractor were.  

However, my husband's flexible spending account (FSA) would. Anyway, seeing Parker at The Shade Tree Massage in Colorado Springs changed everything for me. She is a neuromuscular massage therapist and I see her for trigger point massage. It is a very painful type of massage because it goes deep into very tender areas, but Parker helps increase circulation to the areas and always keeps moving around to cause less pain in the trigger points. After all the pain I have been in for months, I am finally reaching a point of being pain free. I am certainly not there yet, but there are many days where I have little to no pain. And most of the time, even when the pain comes back, it isn't as bad as it was before I started massage therapy. I was in so much pain that I pretty much quit doing outdoor activities, couldn't clean my house without pain and headaches, and simple things like laundry became nearly impossible. I needed so much more sleep and rest and I was begining to feel like I couldn't do anything else. But with Parker's help and a lot of trigger point massage, I am truly getting my life back! *For more information about Parker and The Shade Tree please visit her website at theshadetree.massagetherapy.com.