Last Meal of the Day: Apple crisp, leftovers & asparagus

John comes home tonight from his DC trip, I decided to just heat up leftovers from last night and make some asparagus. I had some leftover peppers I wanted to use up so I tried to find a recipe to incorporate the asparagus and peppers and found this:

Ingredients: (adapted from all recipes)

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 bunch fresh asparagus, trimmed

1 red onion, sliced

1 bell pepper, sliced (any color, I used yellow)

salt to taste

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon walnuts

1. Melt the butter with the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat; add the asparagus and red onion in the mixture, season with salt, and cook until the onion begins to soften, about 5 minutes. Stir the bell pepper into the mixture and continue cooking until the onions begin to caramelize, another 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add the vinegar and walnuts; toss to combine.

I was craving something sweet so I decided to make some apple crisp from some apples John's grandmother gave us when we visited on Leah's birthday. I used carrots n cake recipe for the apple crisp because it was quick and easy.

Ingredients:

3-4 medium apples (almost any kind will work)
1 cup all-purpose flour*
1 cup sugar
1 stick of butter, softened
Cinnamon and nutmeg to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350* F. Haphazardly slice apples into small pieces. (I used Macoun, Macs, and Fuji.) You don’t need to worry about how the apple pieces look. The different size pieces “fit together” nicely once all of the ingredients bake together. This recipe is great for less-than-perfect apples– you can just cut off the rotten part and use the rest of the apple. You can also peel the apples, if you’d like, but I prefer to leave the skins on for this recipe.

2. Next, sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg all over the apples. Feel free to add as much or as little as you’d like. I try to cover the entire top layer of apple slices with both spices.

3. Combine flour and sugar (and a little more cinnamon and nutmeg, if you want) in a small bowl. Next, using a fork, combine butter with flour and sugar. (Make sure the butter is really soft.) The mixture will begin to look lumpy. Make sure that the majority of the dry ingredients have combined with the butter.

4. Cover apple slices with flour-sugar-butter mixture. Spread evenly over top layer and fill in all around the apple slices.

5. Bake for 30-40 minutes until top becomes slightly “crisp” and apples are soft. Your house will smell AMAZING at this point!