Hot Cranberry/Apples

Another cloudy, drippy, humid day today. Will the sun ever find us again? The air is so moist outside that you come in with damp hair. The worst of the worst bad-hair days.

I spent part of the afternoon making a large pot of lentil soup. After all the not-so-healthy holiday foods, it's time to get back to a sane and safe diet here. And lentil soup is a good place to start. I went to one of the smaller grocery stores near to us, instead of going to the larger supermarket. As a result, I couldn't get the pre-chopped onions/celery/peppers/carrots.... I had to stand there and wash/peel/slice/chop all of those vegetables. The old-fashioned way, with a knife and a cutting board. Took me longer to get the soup going, so that's the last time I'm going to buy soup-fixings at the smaller stores.

I also made the hot cranberry and apple dish that our friend L brought over for Christmas dinner. Her recipe was delicious, and she gave me a copy of it and I made it before New Year's Eve. I cut back on the butter and the sugar, as she suggested I do, but I still wasn't happy with the result. Not that it wasn't delicious-- it was, and we ate it all. I ate more of it than my husband did... I think I had it for breakfast one day, and for lunch the next.

But this dish is too good to just make once in a while, and I love anything with hot sliced apples. So I set out today to make it a more healthy baked dish. If you love apples, and if you love a hot cranberry sidedish, then you'll like this one:

Into an 8" square pan that you have spritzed with a non-stick cooking spray... sprinkle two tablespoons of brown sugar. Just enough to lightly coat the pan. Then take two large apples (your favorite kind).... wash them, slice them and then chop them up into small bite-sized little chunks--- don't peel the skins off. On top of the chopped apples, add about a cup and a half of dried cranberries. Sprinkle the cranberries all over the apples so every bite of apple will also get a taste of cranberry.

On top of that, sprinkle about 2 tblsp. finely chopped pecans. Then... mix 1 cup of oatmeal (not the instant kind) with 1/2 cup crushed pineapple with juice, 1/4 cup orange juice, and 2 tblsp. of yogurt (any flavor). Mix all of that together, and spread it on top of the cranberry/apple mixture. Sprinkle a bit of cinnamon over the top, then just a smidge more of brown sugar.

Into the oven it goes, at 350 degrees, for about 40 minutes. Serve it warm, with turkey or chicken... last week, I served it with salmon. I also had it for breakfast. Totally delicious, as good as the original recipe, which called for an extraordinary amount of butter and sugar. I love it when I can take an over-the-calorie-top recipe and change it around to make it more healthy.

I had a piano lesson today.... didn't do as badly as I thought I would...... let's see if I can buckle down and get back to practicing every day the way I was doing before the holidays. Pre-holiday time and post-holiday time... that's how life gets measured around here between November and January.

And pretty soon, I'll be deep into the preparations for the Valentine's party.