An Apple a Day

Happy Monday everyone! Actually Monday is almost over, which is fantastic, because in 1 week from tomorrow I leave for Florida! But first, I thought I would share a little bit about my weekend, which involved, as you might have guessed from the title of this post, apples! (I just realized that I have ended every sentence I have written so far with an exclamation point - apparently I'm real excited about everything.)

Every fall I go apple picking at Lynd's fruit farm up in Columbus when I go home for a weekend. This fall, however, Derek has soccer games on Saturdays that he has to be in town for every weekend in September and October, and we also have out of town weddings for 3 of the 4 weekends in October, so a trip up to Columbus is not in the cards for us. This weekend, my parents came down to visit us since we can't go up and visit them. After getting stuck on I-75 (it was closed in NKY) they finally made it in Saturday afternoon. We watched the Cats beat Louisville and then went to Evan's Orchard to pic apples! I was so happy that I got to pick apples this year. And they also had pears there, so we picked lots of pears too! I should also mention that my mom went apple picking in Ohio and brought some apples down here for me because I didn't think I would get to - so now we have TONS of apples. Here is a picture of the orchard:


And here Derek and I are with our apples:


I love love love freshly picked apples, they taste 100 times better than apples you buy at the grocery store. Keeping with the apple theme, my mom and I made Caramel Apple Cream Cheese Cookie Bars. Just the name sounds delicious. The recipe is from picky-palate.com and while I didn't take photos of us making it, I will give you the recipe. Its a little involved, but totally worth it. To make is you will need:

3 tblspn melted butter
3 cups golden graham cereal, ground in food processor
1 roll pillsbury sugar cookie dough, divided into 2 equal parts
8 oz softened cream cheese
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
21 oz can apple pie filling
1.5 oz pacage Nature Valley Oats N Honey Granola Bars (2 count) crushed
9.5 oz Kraft Caramels
1/2 cup half and half

Preheat oven to 350. Combine melted butter and ground cereal into a large bowl; press into an 8x8 inch baking dish lined with foil that's been sprayed with cooking spray. Bak for 10 minutes then remove from oven. Crumble half of the cookie dough over partially baked crust.

Place cream cheese, sugar and vanilla into a mixer, beat until smooth. Pour over crumbled cookie dough layer. Bake for 25 minutes then remove from oven. Top with 3/4 of the applie pie filling. Top with remaining cookie dough, breaking off into little pieces evenly over top. Sprinkle with crushed granola bars and bake for 30-35 minutes. Let cool completely then cut into squares. Melt caramels and half and half according to package directions. Drizzle over each bar. Refrigerate leftovers.

Ok, so those are the official copyrighted directions (since they are copyrighted is it ok that I put them on my blog? I'm hoping that since I said where it came from and because only like 10 people read this I'll be ok). When we made them though, we didn't wait for the bars to cool. We had my dad and Derek who kept asking when they would be done - since it takes over an hour to make them - so we just added the carmel while they were still warm and spooned them out of the dish. I think it would be really good with vanilla ice cream. Unfortunatly I don't have a picture of the finished product either - they went fast, but I promise they are worth making!

So all in all, a great, appley weekend. My parents stayed until Sunday, and unfortunately got stuck in I-75 traffic on the way back, closed again! I am always so sad when they leave, I wish I got to see them more often. But I was also happy because I was at my friend Angie's baby shower when they left, and baby showers are very happy occasions. I'm real excited for Angie and Micah to have their first baby, I know they will make great parents! Angie got such cute things for her baby boy, now we are all anxiously awaiting his arrival =)

Hope everyone else had a fun weekend and has a great week! It's rivalry week at LCA, which means soccer, volleyball and football games against Catholic every night of the week for me. Woo hoo!