Nebraska City

Posted on by Jordan

Saturday Heather and I went to Nebraska city.The idea was to see an orchard / pumpkin patch or at least experience some authentic fall atmosphere.

Our first stop was at the Arbor Day Farm, which consists of a place to buy food (“pie garden”) a large apple sorting system, sales area for apples and apple-biased things, Nature  trails, and other Arbor Day related activities.

The apple-sorting and cider press (all somewhat historic I think) they had there were all dormant. I *think* they fire that all up during the “apple – jacks” days or whatever the festival is called. We decided to have lunch before checking out the rest of our options. Standing in line with twenty people in front of you all buying apple pie, with ice cream, or maybe just an apple slushy, made ordering a hamburger seem like a healthy choice. Eating them, they didn’t seem especially healthy, but they were pretty good burgers.

After lunch, we headed out on the nature trail they had, taking our time to enjoy thle amazingly beautiful day. The leaves were just starting to turn, so everything smelled like fall. The temperature was in the high 70s so we didnt really have a crisp day, but it made spending a long time outside really pleasant.

Before leaving we made a stop for some pie, because well, it was apple pie at the Arbor Day Farm. Pretty good pie, not as good as the pie Heather and I made, at least while it was fresh from the oven. Fresh from the oven pie is hard to beat though, so maybe that’s not a fair contest.

We left the “farm” and headed to an orchard. The orchard was running hay rack rides out from the parking lot though their pumpkin patch and actual orchard. We hopped on one of those, and had a nice, if somewhat slow ride out to see actual apples growing on trees. They also had a large vineyard, with grapes still on the vines. We had gone to the orchard with a vague plan to buy apples, but then realized we didn’t really need a huge bag of apples. In hindsight maybe we should have gotten a few just because, but we went home empty handed.

Heather and I really enjoyed the trip, and judging from the weather today, we may have caught one of the best possible days to make the trip!

-Jordan

Pie!

Posted on by Jordan

Yesterday was cake, today is pie, you might think this blog was desert oriented! 🙂

Heather was given some “for baking” apples from somebodies back yard a few weeks ago, and we had said over and over again that we should try making something with them. We never had time over the last two weeks until last night.

I had looked around for a recipe that would come close to being healthy, or at least not loaded with sugar. The best I could come up with was a recipe for “Sugarless Apple Pie,” a recipe that used apple juice concentrate instead of sugar for sweetness. I was a little skeptical, but figured it was worth a try… the worst we could do was ruin some free apples and a little pie crust.

Heather undertook to peel the apples using a “cut them up and then remove the skin” method that I didn’t really think was going to work, but without a peeler I couldn’t say much. It turns out her method actually works really well… faster than my peeling them with a knife and then cutting them up (moral of the story, we need a peeler). Once the apples were cut up, we just followed the recipe for the filling.

The crust came as 2 pie crusts, both in tins. If the directions hadn’t explicitly said you could dump one crust out and use it as a top for your pie I don’t know if I would have figured that out. I guess you can’t be an expert when its your first pie. We did that, but the crust stuck really bad to the foil we thawed it on so it was kind of a mangled mess when we tried to move it onto our pie. We were also worried that, because the picture in the recipe didn’t have a top, we shouldn’t have a top. I wish I would have taken a picture of the pie before we baked it, there were just strips of crust haphazardly tracing across the filling without any symmetry or plan. It was awesome, in a really sad sort of way. 🙂

we baked it setting in the middle of a pizza pan, didn’t use foil to protect the crust, and it came out perfect. I suppose if you tried it right next to another apple pie it might not taste as sweet, but on its own it tasted great and I certainly didn’t feel like I was missing anything.

notes for next time:

  1. Use more nuts
  2. A full top crust would be fine
  3. Get a peeler

-Jordan