Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Let's Make Cast Iron Skillet Apple Crisp

Welcome to Thinking Out Loud Thursday! I'm still thinking about how delicious our dessert was last weekend so I thought I'd share the recipe with you today. Let's make cast iron skillet apple crisp!

Recently I've seen so many people posting pictures of their families apple picking. It's that time of year and even though we are probably not going to make it out to the fields to pick our own apples, I still had a craving for their flavor. So last weekend I pulled out our cast iron skillet and whipped up this apple crisp ~

Here's What You Need

Filling

6 medium apples (I used Granny Smith and Gala)

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup brown sugar (packed)

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

Topping

1-1/4 cups old fashioned oats

2 tablespoons flour

5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

Ground cinnamon to sprinkle on top

Here's What You Do

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

After washing the apples, peel and core them. Cut them into bite-size pieces and add to a mixing bowl.

Put a 10" cast iron skillet on the stove and melt 3 tablespoons of butter in the skillet. When the butter is melted, whisk in 1/2 cup brown sugar, 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon and 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt.

Pour the butter mixture into the mixing bowl with the apples and toss until the apples are coated.

Return the apple mixture back into the skillet and turn the heat to medium. While stirring, cook for about 5 minutes. The apples will begin to soften. Remove the skillet from the heat, keeping the apples inside.

Now it's time to make the topping. Cut 5 tablespoons of butter into small pieces. Mix the old-fashioned oats, flour, brown sugar, and salt together in a bowl. Add the pieces of butter and mix until crumbly. Feel free to use your hands to mix this up!

Spread the topping over the apples, sprinkle with cinnamon and place it in the oven.

Bake for 35-40 minutes. The apples will be tender and the topping will have a nice crunch to it.

We served the apple crisp with a generous scoop of ice cream. We used vanilla ice cream, but I was thinking it would also be scrumptious with a big scoop of cinnamon ice cream! What a perfect fall dessert. Hope you enjoy it as much as we need!

Now it's your turn - what are you thinking out loud about today? Link up and share!

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop - September 30, 2020

Welcome to the Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop! September is in our rearview mirror. Let's welcome October in with a bang! The link-ups today are sure to give you a boost. Before we start our main event, let's take a look at our features from last week's party!

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Embracing Fall Home Tour

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Pumpkin Face Decoration

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Monday, September 28, 2020

Let's Make Slow Cooker Olive Garden Chicken Pasta

Last week I went on the hunt in Pinterest for a new recipe to make. The winner was this Slow Cooker Olive Garden Chicken Pasta!

Here's What You Need

2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts

16 oz. Olive Garden Italian Dressing (can be made with other Italian dressings)

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese (divided)

1/4 tsp. black pepper

8 oz. cream cheese

16 oz. penne pasta

(Not pictured is the chicken because raw chicken just looks gross in a picture.)

Here's What You Do

Add the chicken breasts to the slow cooker. I cut mine in half because they were pretty large.

Pour the Olive Garden Italian dressing over the top.

Sprinkle 1/4 cup of the grated parmesan cheese and pepper the mixture.

Cut your cream cheese into several pieces and place it on top.

Cook on HIGH for 4 hours or LOW for 5-6 hours.

When the cooking time is complete, shred the chicken and place it back in the crockpot. Cook the pasta on the stovetop as directed on the package. Drain the pasta and add it to the crockpot with the chicken mixture and stir to combine.

Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup parmesan cheese over the top.

We served this dish on Saturday night when our son and daughter-in-law came over and it got a thumbs up from everyone. The flavor was rich and creamy and definitely earned a place in our recipe rotation. To make it even better, this was such an easy recipe to make! Hope your family enjoys it as much as we did!

Click HERE for the printable recipe.

Weekending - September 25, 2020

It's hard to believe that we just had the last weekend in September for 2020. This is such a great time of year. I hate to see it go by so quickly. Let's rewind and reflect on how we spent our weekend ~

The highlights from the last few days include two new recipes. They were both winners and I'm going to be sharing them with you later this week. I think you're going to love them too!

Cast Iron Skillet Apple Crisp

Olive Garden Chicken Pasta

My favorite little pumpkin patch, Backroads Pumpkin Patch, had some pumpkins out this weekend and I couldn't wait to bring some home.

Saturday night our son and daughter-in-law came over for dinner. We tried the Olive Garden Chicken Pasta and it got thumbs up from everyone! The Cast Iron Apple Crisp was dessert and everyone loved it too! The best part was dessert was served outside around the firepit. Love fall evenings!

I also finished my book club book -

This is one of those books I would probably never have read it if hadn't been the book club selection - and I would have really missed out. What an eye-opening book! Have you read it? If not, put it on your list. Here's the summary from Amazon ~

In her debut novel Etaf Rum tells the story of three generations of Palestinian-American women struggling to express their individual desires within the confines of their Arab culture in the wake of shocking intimate violence in their community—a story of culture and honor, secrets and betrayals, love and violence. Set in an America at once foreign to many and staggeringly close at hand, A Woman Is No Man is an intimate glimpse into a controlling and closed cultural world, and a universal tale about family and the ways silence and shame can destroy those we have sworn to protect.

"Where I come from, we’ve learned to silence ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence will save us. Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of—dangerous, the ultimate shame.”

Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law Fareeda and strange new husband Adam, a pressure that intensifies as she begins to have children—four daughters instead of the sons Fareeda tells Isra she must bear.

Brooklyn, 2008. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra’s oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda’s insistence, though her only desire is to go to college. Deya can’t help but wonder if her options would have been different had her parents survived the car crash that killed them when Deya was only eight. But her grandmother is firm on the matter: the only way to secure a worthy future for Deya is through marriage to the right man.

But fate has a will of its own, and soon Deya will find herself on an unexpected path that leads her to shocking truths about her family—knowledge that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, the past, and her own future.

Hope your week is off to a good start. I'm excited to share the posts I have planned for you this week, so please drop back in.

Thursday, September 24, 2020

Five on Friday - September 25, 2020

Whoop, whoop - it's Friday! I'm so ready for the weekend. How about you? Are you ready for the last weekend in September? I'm thankful that you're starting off the weekend by stopping by to catch my five. So with no further ado, let's get to it ~

1. Hallmark Countdown to Christmas
Hallmark announced their Countdown to Christmas movies for this year and I can't wait! It's nice with all the cancellations and postponements this year, Hallmark is coming through with new happy-ending movies. Not even a pandemic can keep them down! The fun begins October 24!

2. International Observe the Moon Night

Once a year NASA hosts the International Observe the Moon Night and it's happening this Saturday, September 26. It's a time to come together with fellow Moon enthusiasts and curious people worldwide. The timing is based around when the Moon is around first quarter when there's excellent viewing opportunities. There's a live event on Facebook that begins Saturday at 6:30 CST. We are going to be tuning in!

3. The Return

Nicholas Sparks has a new novel coming out on Tuesday. Who doesn't love a good Nicholas Sparks' novel? Here's the summary from Amazon ~

Trevor Benson never intended to move back to New Bern, North Carolina. But when a mortar blast outside the hospital where he worked sent him home from Afghanistan with devastating injuries, the dilapidated cabin he'd inherited from his grandfather seemed as good a place to regroup as any.

Tending to his grandfather's beloved beehives, Trevor isn't prepared to fall in love with a local . . . yet, from their very first encounter, Trevor feels a connection with deputy sheriff Natalie Masterson that he can't ignore. But even as she seems to reciprocate his feelings, she remains frustratingly distant, making Trevor wonder what she's hiding.

Further complicating his stay in New Bern is the presence of a sullen teenage girl, Callie, who lives in the trailer park down the road. Trevor hopes Callie can shed light on the mysterious circumstances of his grandfather's death, but she offers few clues -- until a crisis triggers a race to uncover the true nature of Callie's past, one more intertwined with the elderly man's passing than Trevor could ever have imagined.

In his quest to unravel Natalie and Callie's secrets, Trevor will learn the true meaning of love and forgiveness . . . and that in life, to move forward, we must often return to the place where it all began.

4. Trader Joe's Pumpkin Rolls

They're back! Trader Joe's has seasonal pumpkin rolls that are delicious and they are currently in their stores. We had some last year and my only regret is I didn't buy enough to last all year long. I'm making a special trip there this weekend and stocking up.

5. In the good ole' days....

Now let's get this weekend started! We have great weather on the way, then the bottom falls out. It's supposed to be in the 80s today through Sunday, then the high on Monday is 60. I'll be spending time this weekend trying to find some warms clothes to wear to work next week. Pop in next week to see what else we were up to this weekend!

Linking up with:

Erika at Little Bit of Everything

Simply Sweet Home

Friday Favorites Linky Party - September 25, 2020

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Saying Goodbye to RBG

Hello there! Welcome to Thinking Out Loud Thursday where I share something that's on my mind and invite you to link up below to do the same.

Today I'm thinking about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Putting all politics aside, RBG was one of the great legal minds of our time. She was wise and witty, powerful and humble. She was a champion for women and a role model to so many.

She will be the first woman to lie in repose at the U.S. Supreme Court and the first woman to lie in state at the U.S. capital.

We loved the movie On the Basis of Sex, which was based on her early life and cases. Actress Felicity Jones plays RBG and portrays her spirit and spunk from 1956 when she was a first-year Harvard Law School student. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a watch!

I love a good quote and she has so many. Here's a few of my favorites ~

And probably my favorite, which is so appropriate for the times we are living in right now ~

One of the podcasts I try to listen to daily is called Here's Something Good. In their episode on September 21, titled Ruth Bader Ginsburg, In Her Own Voice, they play an excerpt from a speech RBG gave in 2015 at the Seneca Women tribute to the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She talks about the advice she got from Justice O'Connor when being nominated to the high court. The whole episode is only 6 minutes - so worth a listen!

Rest in peace Ruth Bader Ginsburg. You fought the good fight and will remain in our history forever. Thank you so much for what you gave us!

Now it's your turn - what's on your mind today? Link up and share!

Monday, September 21, 2020

Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop - September 23, 2020

Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop

Welcome to the Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop! Hope your week is off to a great start. We have some links today that can make it even better! Before we start our main event, let's take a look at our features from last week's party!

Top Viewed

My Favorite Farmhouse Fall Decor

Very Popular

Easy Cake Mix Snickerdoodles

5 Ways to Use Rub n' Buff

Decorating a Table with American Country Antiques