If you can't stand the kitchen heat... come into mine!

Fall break for me means running around with my mama this year until sisters get home from school to play. 'Bout time it's here! This morning I actually slept past six (well, actually past eleven, but usually I'm up at 6ish or 7:30, whatever). And with my new beautiful double bed that's dark stained wood with pretty knobs and slats, resting is easy. I have this thing with getting excited about pretty furniture nowadays... guess I'm really growing up on ya.

And if fall break means quality r and r with Mom, it definitely means time well spent cooking! Tomorrow the game plan is to run errands so that we can just return and cook with the likes of Red Molly playing in the background of our kitchen scene. (You really should click on their link. We're best friends. Actually they don't know we are, I've only met them once. But if we knew each other, we would be best friends! And I would let them show me how to sing definitely!)

As far as recipes, what's in our oven tomorrow? Oh, just a crisp apple pie, Mama's favorite recipe. We know, we know, it's a lot of people's favorite fall dessert. But it's especially ours since it was her daddy's favorite October birthday treat. We eat one every year in his honor and memory!

Recipe: should yield, well, at least five... there's five of us!
Crust: (Prep time is 15 min. but make ahead and chill for at least one hr. We chilled ours overnight.)

Stir together 2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup plain yellow cornmeal, 2 tablespoons sugar, 3/4 teaspoons salt. Cut 3/4 cup of cold butter and 1/4 cup chilled shortening into flour mixture until mixture resembles small peas. Then mound mixture on one side of bowl. 
Drizzle 1 Tbsp. apple cider along edge of mixture in bowl. Using a fork, gently toss a small amount of flour mixture into cider until dry ingredients are just moistened, then move mixture to the other side of the bowl. Repeat with remaining cider and flour mixture. Then gather dough and flatten two "disks". Wrap and chill.


The good part, the filling (don't skip the apple jelly part here!): preheat oven to 425. Peel and core 2 1/4 lbs. of Granny Smith apples, then place wedges in a large bowl. Next, stir in 2 1/4 lbs. of Braeburn apples, 1/4 cup all purpose flour, 2 Tbsp. apple jelly, 1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice, 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg. 


Sprinkle dough disks with flour, top with wax paper. Roll. Remove wax paper. Press dough onto pie pan. Stir apple mixture, spoon onto crust. Pour remaining juices in bowl over apples. Sprinkle apples with 3 Tbsp. of sugar, dot with butter. Roll other dough "disk" and place over apple mix. Flute your edges (like the birds do with their feet in Snow White, only use a fork), brush the top of the pie with remaining apple juices from before. Bake for fifteen minutes. Then top with Vanilla ice cream! Delish.