Apple Crisp!

Fall has officially begun. And having grown up in the north (and despite having lived on the southeast coast for the past 6 years), I am programmed to crave fall things beginning around the 3rd week of September. Foods like apple cider, candy corn, pumpkin-flavored things and apple crisp. Especially apple crisp.

Almost exactly a year ago, I discovered a fantastic Apple Crisp Recipe on AllRecipes.com. I chose this recipe over all the others simply because it had almost 1000 reviews, which have now turned into over 2000. However, the posted recipe needed some tweaking. One reviewer suggested halving the amount of water in the recipe, which was certainly a wise way to go.

However, I felt there was yet more tweaking to be done. Less sugar, more cinnamon. Always more cinnamon. There may yet be more tweaking to be done (perhaps some apple cider in place of the water, necessitating a further reduction in sugar, or perhaps the cider's alcoholic cousin?) but this is the current iteration of my apple crisp. For those of you who work with me, this is not the apple crisp I brought to work last week. This is the new, improved version, which will likely not make it through the weekend and into lab. Sorry!

Venison Spaghetti Sauce

Tonight's dinner: Venison spaghetti! This is one of my favorite fast, easy meals that makes lots of leftovers for later. I know, you're probably all thinking "Venison? Isn't that bambi? Eeeewwww!" But what can I say? My dad is a hunter and I grew up eating venison several times a week for dinner. Venison steaks, venison burgers, and a family favorite: venison burrito night. Even when my sister was mostly vegetarian, she would eat venison. Venison has many merits: first of all, it's an extremely lean meat, which means that if you love red meat but can't have all the fat deer meat is for you. Also, it's much better for the environment than beef (if you worry about these things); cattle farming is harsh on our atmosphere and our soils, whereas many areas (at least in the United States) are largely overpopulated with deer. In a way, hunting them is more humane than allowing the deer to starve or waste away from diseases from living in close quarters with few resources. Finally, because venison generally comes from the wild, you are far less likely to be consuming the nasty hormones and chemicals present in commercially-farmed meats. Again, this is just some information for those of you who care about it. I just like the flavor, and it's what I'm used to and I have a fairly reliable free source from my dad.

If all of that still hasn't convinced you that venison is the cure for world hunger and that we should all start eating it daily, well, you can just substitute ground beef or ground turkey in this recipe. Which is really less of a recipe and more of a guideline. When improving spaghetti sauce, I just sort of dump in whatever I can find, to taste. But here's the general list of ingredients that went in tonight: