Apple Oven Pancakes, 2010 posts continued...

Remember what our fruit trees looked like in the summer/fall of 2010? This link will jog your memory... So, What do you do with a bumper crop of apples? You make Apple Oven Pancakes every Sunday morning for a while...
Here's the recipe: 
3 1/2 tbsp melted butter in pan, spread on 4 Tbsp Brown sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Top with sliced apples (recipe says to peel them, bah!)

Pour batter (4 eggs, 1 cup flour, 1 cup milk, 1/4 tsp salt, take care to not overmix) over apples and bake @ 400 degrees x30-35 min. I use my Pampered Chef pie plate which is slightly bigger than the average pie dish, so I doubled the recipe.

The pancake rises in the oven. When done, immediately loosen sides and flip onto a dish. In a couple minutes, the pancake will lose its puffiness, and just be pure deliciousness!

A slice of Apple Oven Pancake with a lake of lemon juice surrounded by powdered sugar mountains! Yummy!

Serve to happy children!

Cow Kicking and Apple Picking...

We were invited out to Joey's farm again to watch them move their cows from one pasture to a freshly harvested corn field. Again, quite a process. Here's Jonathan very excited to see all the cows. Annisia had fallen asleep on the way out to the farm.

Here they come...Heather (Joey's daughter) was in a truck behind the cows, Dean was in a truck to the right of the cows, and Joey was in a 6 wheeler to the left of the cows and Dad is in his truck on the right of the picture. This is so they would turn away from him and go to the left.

They crossed the railroad track, saw Dad, and the lead cow wagged her head and headed left, just as planned!
And all the rest followed her, right through the gate into the corn field. Voila!

The first about 7 I saw come through the gate kicked up right when they got into the field. They were either excited about new feeding grounds or the tractor parked there spooked them...

And here comes everyone after the last cow. I leaned out the door and asked Joey if he put chamomile tea in their water feeder that morning! He said, "It doesn't always go this smoothly." What a treat!

Then, on the way home, Mom took us past a neighboring farm. The young man of the farm raises bulls for rodeos. I wouldn't want to meet this guy in a dark alley, would you?!

That afternoon, we picked apples from a neighbor's tree. We got a ladder and an apple picker. I think we picked a couple bushels of apples. When we got home, Mom and I went into the basement and found this apple corer/slicer/peeler and I did up a few apples.
Jonathan really liked the spiral sliced apples, but my mom really likes the peel. "That's where all the vitamins are!" So she and Annisia were eating peel spaghetti.

Now I have lots of apples in the garage. What should I do with them all? Applesauce (any good recipes out there?), apple fritters, dried apples (hmmm, need a dryer for that...), makings to freeze for apple pie and apple crisp, pickled apples (that's Michael's request...what are they anyways?!), sliced apples for meat dishes...

My sister, Janice, also picked close to two bushels of tomatoes for me, blanched, bagged and froze them for me. So I plan to make spaghetti sauce, salsa, and stewed tomatoes with them...sometime down the road. Whew! All this is making me tired!!

OK...trying to catch up...

Jonathan and Annisia hamming it up for the camera...I think Annisia has a mouthful of snack. This pic was taken May 25, 2008.

These were our apple blossoms. We have had quite a bit of wind lately and have lost most of our apples, though. A bummer...

Here is a coat and hat hanger we put up for the kids. Michael cut and finished the wood, I cut out the lion and bear from that craft foam stuff and glued it all together, and Michael put the hooks on and hung it. Isn't it cute? The kids love having it right where they can reach it and rarely have a problem hanging their coats when asked.
My columbine was beautiful this year. It is spreading all over though. I seem to miss harvesting it before it drops even more seeds. Does anyone know if columbine will take on colors it grows next to? Some of mine seem to be darker than others.

Fruit and Flowers

This is our Italian plum tree. It went nuts this year. It hasn't produced fruit for at least 3 years and that time we may have gotten 30 plums! This year, Michael thinks he pruned off a hundred plums and we still have them coming out our ears. Loren and Joe are here this weekend and Loren said he'd help me make jam tomorrow. Yipee!


The landscaper who expanded our sprinkler system and planted those evergreen trees said he has never seen so much fruit on a tree here in WY, and especially has never seen such big plums and apples here. His wife is so impressed she is coming over tomorrow to take photos of the tree!

This is one of our apple trees. The apples are a beautiful red with a whitish fruit. They have gotten quite large too.

And these are my asters. I love these perennials. They grew kind of tall this year...my mother-in-law told me I could clip them down in the spring next year and they wouldn't grow so tall and would bush out.

Do you see the bee?