Slow Cooker Apple Cake

New Growth from the Old

Good evening and come on in.  It has been a beautiful day here in South Georgia and we have enjoyed it immensely.  We are enjoying the mild winter here and I don't miss the cold a bit and hope it stays warm for I do dislike the cold weather. 

Today I covered a footstool and the seat of a small wooden chair to update them a little.  The stool was made by my grandfather and the little chair came from a restaurant owned by Roy's grandfather.  It has to be over 100 years old and the footstool is getting close to that.  As I was tacking the fabric on the chair I realized I was using a little upholstery hammer which had once been Roy's grandfather's.  Lots of memories in this little chair and footstool.  I will take pictures and show you what I did later.

I tried a crock pot cake recipe for the first time last week and it is delicious.  It is like the dump cake I have been making for years but so easy to do in the crock pot or slow cooker.  I never know which one to call it for I see both terms used but I like crock pot or as Roy says "crack pot." 

Of course I had to play with the recipe a little bit for I didn't have some of the ingredients and I think mine is very good and Roy said worth posting for you to enjoy too.  Let me know what you think.

Slow Cooker Apple Cake

Cooking Time: 3-5 hours
Ideal Slow Cooker Size: 3½-4-quart
Ingredients:
6 cups fresh apples, peeled and sliced
½ cup apple juice
½ cup dried cranberries
18¼ -oz. pkg. Carrot cake mix – or spice cake mix
1 stick (½ cup butter), melted
1 cup pecans, chopped
1. Spray interior of slow cooker with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Spoon apples and apple juice into slow cooker, and sprinkle cranberries over the apples. Spread evenly over the bottom.
3. Sprinkle with dry spice cake mix.
4. Pour melted butter over dry mix. Top with chopped pecans.
5. Cook on Low 3-5 hours, or until a toothpick inserted into topping comes out dry.
6. Serve warm from cooker with whipped topping, whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.
Refrigerate what is not eaten. Warm and serve – even good cold.

Ya'll have a good weekend and enjoy the cake - delicious and easy.

Nuff said,
The Georgia Peach

Crock Pot Sweet Potatoes

Good evening and come on in for a visit and have a cup of coffee. Rain and cooler weather is here with the chance of a freeze tonight which doesn't make me too happy but I'll live with it and begin my hibernation. Into every Southern Lady's life a little winter must fall!!

I have a crock pot full of sweet potatoes getting ready for the freezer. A friend shared some with me and from the picture above, you can tell they were huge. I was going to cook and freeze about 4 and to my surprise 2 of these big potatoes filled my crock pot to the brim. I thought I would share this with you so you can have some in the freezer ready to use for later.

Crock pot Sweet Potatoes

6 cups peeled and thinly sliced sweet potatoes - fill up the container - used a mandolin to slice them
2 apples - peeled and sliced
1 cup orange juice or apple juice

Cook on low until tender - about 4 hours. Cool and mash then whip. Freeze in 2 cup portions to use in pies and casseroles. I find that the apples and orange juice add great flavors and apple juice is also good. Thaw out the needed portions, stir and use as you would canned potatoes but they taste much fresher.

I am also including a quick and easy gift you or your children can make. We have lots of shells, driftwood, and rocks we have picked up from the beaches we visit and I came up with this idea to use them. They will make a good gift for a parent or teacher to use as a paperweight or just to look at and think about the beach.

I used a clean Starbucks coffee jar for I like the flat sides and the larger opening in the top.   It also allows you to lay it on its side for a different seascape. You could use any small, pretty jar you have. Baby food jars would be good as well as others.

Wash thoroughly, dry and paint the top. I use the paint pens for they are easy to use and not messy, especially for children. It eliminates the brush and you can use them on metal, glass, or plastic.

Gather together your shells and beach findings and begin to layer them in the jar. I use a knitting needle to turn them over or move them to the side but a skewer would work also.

I like to put a few larger shells as a focus for the seascape but if children are doing it, let them use their own imagination and creativity. Fill the jar to the top and add the painted top.

Add a ribbon or twine with a shell threaded through one strand. You could use raffia, twine, burlap ribbon or whatever you like. A shell hot glued to the top would also be pretty. Let your creativity be your guide. Make a tag with the name of the beach and the year they were gathered as a memory bottle of a special vacation.

If you don't have sea shells you could take a field trip with the kids and collect rocks, pebbles, sticks, acorns and other natural elements and fill bottles and decorate. Buttons would also be very pretty.

I have several in my Etsy shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/francesrobson?ref=si_shop if you would like some ideas.

Have some fun with your kids and they will have beautiful gifts for family and friends or a keepsake of a special time at the beach or a nature walk.

Let me know what you did and thanks for stopping by.

Nuff said,

The Georgia Peach

Sweet Potato and Apple Sauce in Crockpot

Little Red House from Long Ago by frances robson

Good evening and come in for a visit. We have had another rainy late evening and early night and I love the sound of it on the roof. It is much needed and appreciated for our ponds were getting low and the fish really like the fresh water.

Today I had the privilege of cooking with 3 of favorite fall foods. I picked about 3 cups of peanuts off the plants, washed several times and boiled with a generous amount of salt. They are now done and soaking overnight in the salt water for me to eat tomorrow. You need to refrigerate them after about a day and you can freeze them for later if you like. This is a favorite Southern delight that many like although my husband does not. He loves them parched but not boiled. Not sure what his problem is but that's OK for it leaves more for me.

A friend brought me some sweet potatoes and I had some gala apples and I combined them like an applesauce. I cooked them in the crock pot and have put the recipe here for you to enjoy. To slice the potatoes thinly, I used the mandoline but you can slice them with a knife but they need to be really thin. For the orange juice I had to use the pasturized, bought juice for I didn't have any fresh ones but they would have been better but it still tastes good. I plan to use it as a spread for toast, a warm dessert with a little whipped topping on it or on a hot biscuit.

You can use it any way you would use sweet potato pie filling- pies, tarts or in casseroles. I am going to freeze it in 2 cup portions to use later. Try it an let me know what you think.

Crock pot Sweet Potato and Apple Sauce

8 cups peeled and thinly sliced sweet potatoes
8 cups peeled and thinly sliced apples
zest of 1 orange
2 tsps. Cinnamon
2 tsp. Apple pie spice mix
generous grating of nutmeg or ½ tsp ground nutmeg
1 cup orange juice
½ cup brown sugar

In crock pot layer the slices sweet potatoes and apples with the potatoes on the bottom layer. Sprinkle the cinnamon, nutmeg, and apple pie spice mix over the apples and pour the orange juice over the the apples and sweet potatoes. Grate the orange zest over the juice, cover and cook until tender. After the mixture is tender, stir in the brown sugar, cover and cook until done. Mash with with potato masher then beat with electric beater until smooth. Store in refrigerator or freeze.
Use as you would applesauce – spread on toast, dessert, or use as a pie or tart filling.

Use for a sweet potato casserole using your favorite recipe.

It is good and Roy even liked it although sweet potatoes are not his favorite. Next time I think I will put about 1 cup raisins in it and see what that tastes like.

Ya'll be careful going home and let me hear from you.

Nuff said,

The Georgia Peach

Good evening and come in the house and have a cup of coffee for it is below freezing outside. We had a fire in the fireplace tonight and thought about a cup of hot chocolate but was too lazy to get up and fix it. I am a tad tired for I finally unpacked my last box of kitchen stuff to put up in my updated one.

This has been an interesting time for we had to completely clean out all the cabinets, pack it up in boxes, stack them in the dining room and then unpack and put it all away. I lost one cabinet due to changing from a stove top to a standalone stove and still have some empty shelves. A lot of stuff went away for if I hadn't used it in a long time I figured I didn't need it and Goodwill will get the profits, I hope. Now I have what I have been using and it is arranged more logically than before. Enjoying having it all clean and put up.

Well, it's beginning to look and sound like Christmas, except at my house. I was waiting until I got everything put up before I began and have a total of 1 Christmas card on the mantel, but I will get the rest up before Christmas eve. It will happen but not a lot for I don't like to take it down so tasteful but not fussy is my motto.

If you doubt Christmas is coming, just watch the TV commercials for the annual products we only see at Christmas have made their appearance. I keep saying I am going to buy a Chia, clap thingies to turn on my lamps and of course there are the herb gardens we just have to have. Where are these wonderful products the rest of the year and why are they brought out only at Christmas for there is nothing Christmasy about any of it. The Chia just cracks me up and I guess the rest of the year you can actually reach over and cut of the lamp with you hand. It strikes me as hilarious that these only come out of hiding once a year so I guess you only use them once a year.

I have a good recipe to share with you. The farmers are picking many hundreds of acres of cabbage around us and Roy found one which had bounced off the truck and brought it home. We all watch for the "lost cabbages" around here and I have one friend who will follow a truck for miles waiting on a head to fall off. No use in wasting free food but they are beginning to learn not to overload the trucks so they don't fall off. You have to wait until they make a sharp turn or hit a big bump and then a cabbage will hit the side of the road. You want it to hit the grassy side, not the middle of the road and smush. I have seen people almost cause a wreck by hitting their brakes for a cabbage.

Anyway, this is one of our favorite meals and the measurements do not have to be perfect but season to taste.

CABBAGE AND SAUSAGE

1 cabbage - sliced in thick slices
1 lb. smoked link sausage - sliced
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper to taste
chicken stock - I use the canned

Slice the onion in thin slices and chop the garlic finely. Saute the onion in about 2 Tbsp. olive oil and add garlic and saute until the oils are released. Don't overcook. Add the sliced sausage and saute until sausage is hot. Add the thickly sliced cabbage, just enough stock to steam the cabbage, salt and pepper to taste and cook until cabbage is tender but still slightly crisp. Don't cook it until it is mushy.
Option: You can add sliced, cooked potatoes if you like. I like to use leftover baked potato for this.

I accidentally found a good side dish for this:

Red Beans and Nibblet Corn

1 can seasoned red beans
1 small can or 1/2 large can nibblet corn
1/2 onion chopped
1 small clove garlic - diced
salt and pepper to taste.

Saute onions and garlic until softened. Add the beans and corn, season with salt and pepper, and cover. Simmer until heated through and the beans and corn have absorbed the flavor to the onion and garlic.
This is really good.

Serve these with hot cornbread and a green salad and you have feast for a king and queen or a good Southern family.

You could also use pinto beans instead of the red beans if you have them and the Mexican corn would be good. Just use what you have and be creative.

Well, that's about it for tonight for I am tired and ready for bed. Have along day tomorrow and need some rest.

Take care going home and come back to see us.

Nuff Said,

The Georgia Peach

Roy's Workshop by frances robson

Good afternoon on a hot Friday afternoon. Ya'll come on in the house and have a glass of tea. At least it is not in the 90s today but it is so dry. We haven't had rain in several weeks and we are having to water our citrus trees a lot for some are loaded with fruit. I don't want a hurricane to come through but would like a good frog strangler or maybe it will pour cats and dogs. Where in the world did we get these terms from? It would be a mess if this really happened. Can't you just see dead frogs everywhere after the rain had strangled them or being overrun by cats and dogs? We have some interesting descriptions don't we?

A friend of mine who is taking classes for his masters degree called me last week with an interesting request. It seems he is taking a class in linguistics and needed to interview someone from South Alabama for the professor said we talk differently than other Southern states. Now I almost took exception to this for I don't think WE talk differently, just other folks but I agreed to talk for him. It's seldom that someone WANTS me to talk so off I went.

Todd had several questions prepared for me to answer and he wanted to record my answers. Well, I know I sound really countrified on tape which is why I avoid it even for a message on my phone. I just know I don't sound like that for it is kinda bad. To please Todd, for he is so cute, I said OK and he began to question me about Camden, AL, other places we had lived, my family and lots of other personal questions.

Being a Southern Lady, I had no problem talking about where I grew up and my family for we all do that rather well. He was a little surprised to find out that my family is from Mississippi and we have lived in Mississippi, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama so my accent may not be a true "South Alabama" accent but it's close. I didn't absorb a lot from the other states but heck, it's not a dime's worth of difference in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia accents. North Carolina strays a bit over on the coast and especially the outer banks. Their accent is almost English but different. It is definitely different from lower Alabama.

It was kinda funny. As I answered the questions and got wound up and talking, I began to lapse right back into that soft, Alabama drawl that is like honeysuckle and wraps itself around the speaker and the listener - sweet and aromatic and binding. Once you hear a Southern accent you have to like it and if you don't, you have a problem.

Through the years I have changed a little bit for as I became "edjicated" and began to teach school, I tried to clean it up a little bit so people could understand what I was saying. When I went off to college in Montevallo, AL, many moons ago, they thought I sounded "funny" so I tried to clean it up a little but it didn't work. I have kept that Wilcox County drawl but when I try, I can speak little plainer but I really don't think dropping all my Rs and word endings is too bad. Sounds good to me. I just wonder what that professor is going to say when Tod plays that tape. I can hear him now saying how country and southern and that's alright for I am both.

How do you like my "Santa Claus" above? Roy loves to work with wood and refinish furniture and that little, white rocker was our mama's when she was a little girl. Someone put "new" rockers on it at some point but they are rockers taken from another rocker and were cut down to fit this one. It was probably Granddaddy Burt for if it almost fit, that was fine - just nail it on. He was not exactly precise at times with his building and repair. I sat in it and our children and grandchildren have rocked in it.

It has been down in the shop and I wanted it cleaned up for our great-grands and Roy does a much better job than I do. He was hoping to take it apart, strip it, re glue and paint. He found that he couldn't do that so he is stripping, tightening joints and repainting for us.

He is also painting a wooden bench that Grandaddy Burt built many, many years ago. While helping daddy add onto our house when I was a little girl, he built a carpenter's bench to use. When they completed the rooms daddy kept the bench and I brought it here to refinish and put in our sun room. It is rough, beaten up but I love it for Granddaddy made it and we used it for many years in the yard and on the carport at mama and daddy's. When I get it in the house, I will take a picture and share with you.

I fixed a good and quick dessert yesterday and thought ya'll might like it also. It is baked apples in the microwave and I don't have a recipe all written out with measurements for I didn't measure but I will do the best I can and being exact it not necessary. So, here it is and enjoy.

Microwaved, Baked Apples

1 apple for each person plus 1
brown sugar
cinnamon
nutmeg - freshly grated
lemon zest
fresh lemon juice
butter

I used a pie plate to cook these in and it worked well. Cut the apples in half, core out with a small spoon or find that a serrated grapefruit knife does a good job. Place the apples, cut side up, on the pie plate. Put about 1 tsp. of brown sugar in each half, sprinkle with cinnamon, grate nutmeg over each half and put on a small tsp. butter in each half. Grate lemon zest over the buttered apples, and squeeze lemon juice over all of the ingredients. 1/2 lemon will be enough for you just a little bit of the tartness is what you want not lemonade.

Cover with plastic wrap or I have a microwave cover which does a good job. Microwave on high for about 4 minutes and check to see if butter and brown sugar have melted and joined forces and the apples are tender but not too soft. You want a little crispness but not much.

To serve, place 2 halves in a bowl and top with whipped topping sprinkled with a little cinnamon or a scoop of vanilla ice cream on each half. Just use whatever you have or serve it alone. It is better when warm but refrigerate leftovers and reheat later.

I used the Splenda brown sugar for it has less calories but I did use real butter. Freshly grated nutmeg has become one of my favorite spices and the freshly grated is so much better.

Apples are coming in now and this would be a quick, easy and delicious way to cook and eat apples. Try it and let me know.

The picture below is the moon early this morning before it set for the day. It was so pretty, I just had to take a picture to share with you. God gives us such awesome beauty.

Got to go sweep and mop the kitchen for it is a lot dirty. You can eat most anything you want off the floor.

Ya'll have a good weekend and be careful going home.

Nuff Said,

The Georgia Peach

Morning Moon by frances robson

Quartet - by Frances Robson

Good evening, ya'll. Come into the house for the Net Porch is too chilly. The wind has been blowing like March and brought in some rather cool air. I hope it is warmer tomorrow for on Saturday it was in the middle 70's and I had on sandals and capris. Today it was shoes, socks and jeans. Welcome to the South Georgia in the spring. If you don't like the weather wait until tomorrow.

We had our food pantry open at our church this morning and it is always a joy to work with my team and to meet the people who come for help. It is so wonderful to be a member of a church who cares enough to help feed people. We are seeing more young couples come in which is a reminder that this recession is affecting people who would rather work but can't find jobs. Being able to help them with food, though not a lot, blesses them and me.

Being rather tired tonight I am going to share a good recipe I cooked this weekend and then sign off, take a bath, curl up with my book and probably go to bed soon.

I bought chicken thighs on sale this weekend for 89 cents/pound and had enough to cook a good meal and freeze 3 packages for later. I found this recipe in my Rival Crock-Pot recipe book. It is easy, delicious, cheap and nutritious. What more could you ask. Of course I tweaked it just a little and will probably tweak it each time I make it but I am a compulsive "tweaker."

Mediterranean Chicken

4 - 5 chicken thighs, breasts or legs - salted and peppered to taste

1 can or jar pasta sauce - I used Hunts spaghetti sauce with mushrooms - use your favorite

1 large onion - thinly sliced

2 cloves of garlic - finely minced

1/2 cup chicken stock or dry white wine - I used the wine

1/2 tsp. cumin

1 tsp. Italian seasoning

Salt and pepper to taste

Optional - 1/2 cup sliced, pitted, green olives

Combine pasta sauce, sliced onions, garlic, stock or wine, cumin and Italian seasoning in crockpot. Stir and add salted and peppered chicken turning the pieces to coat with sauce. I sprinkled it with a little fresh rosemary to add another level of flavor. Cook on low for about 8 hours or high for about 6. Serve over cooked pasta or rice. I used spinach pasta cooked in chicken stock. Wild rice will be good or pasta of choice. Cooking your rice or pasta in stock adds a great flavor and if you don't have stock add chicken bullion to cooking water. This is so much better than plain, salted water. I like to leave the bones in while cooking because it adds flavor.

I took the leftover pasta, poured the chicken and pasta over it and refrigerated it to use later. It should freeze well also. I think I will sprinkle it with cheese when I get ready to heat it. I hope you enjoy it and let me know.

That's about it tonight for I am quite worn out. Talk to you tomorrow and ya'll come back to see me.

Nuff said,

The Georgia Peach