Bonus Lazy Wednesday Post: Apple Crisp Thingy!

Preheat your oven to 350* or thereabouts. Ten degrees either way won't matter.

Peel, if you feel like it, and core two apples (if they're big) or three (if they're small). I use a mixture of 2/3 Honeycrisp to 1/3 Granny Smith, if you're being particular.

Slice them thickly or chop them into chunks, whichever takes less energy.

Open a bottle of wine or beer. Take a swig.

Set the chopped apples aside in a pie pan.

Take a big bowl, or maybe just a big-ish bowl, out of the cabinet, or you can use a roasting pan, or whatever. No biggie.

Mix roughly a cup of rolled oats (not steel cut or instant) with a half-cup of flour in that bowl/pan/whatever.

Add about a third of a cup of brown sugar.

Sprinkle on some nutmeg and cinnamon. Maybe toss in some salt if you can be bothered.

Take another swig.

In the microwave, or with the power of your mind, melt about a quarter cup of butter. Sometimes I use more--way more, like a half-cup. Anyway, melt away.

When the butter's done melting, and you've maybe had a few Fritos and perhaps a slice of leftover pizza and put on your sweatpants, dump that stuff into your flour/oat mixture and stir like crazy for as long as you can stand it, or until the ingredients are pretty much mixed.

Take another swig. Consider the genesis of Fritos. Be thankful for them.

Now dump that flour/oat stuff atop your apples, making at least some effort to get it mostly even across and around the apples.

Pop that bad boy in the oven for 40 minutes or thereabouts, or until the apples are tender. If you can't be bothered to fish a knife out of a drawer, just look for little bubbles of apple-y juices around the edge.

Top with cream or ice cream or just eat it on its own.

Apply to face.

Special bonus post: Cooking with Auntie Jo

Now that I'm in an internship, I've been cut back in hours. Being unwilling to eat things like ramen and generic Cheerios, I've decided to cook what I can from what's lying around (with the occasional foraging trip). It's Live Like A Student Time, but not really, because my college cafeteria had pretty good food, and it was all paid for, so maybe it's not at all like that.


Auntie Jo's What's On Sale Pretty Damn Good Black Bean Chili

three cans plain black beans (3/$1, sitting in cabinet)
one 28-oz can whole tomatoes (99 cents; the diced ones were 30 cents more)
about a half a bag of frozen corn I just had lying around
one medium onion, ditto
two poblano peppers (the big budget breaker at $1.29)
an appropriate amount of both cumin and chili pepper (at least two tablespoons of each. I have no idea what this costs per use, because I buy both in bulk from the Indian grocery)
however much cayenne pepper you want, if you want it.

Chop the onion and poblano pepper coarsely. Heat up a little oil in a pan large enough to hold two half-grown cats. Toss onion and peppers into the oil.

Saute over low heat until the onions are softening and the poblanos are an unnaturally bright green. (Do not be alarmed. They will not stay this color.)

Drain the tomato juice into a suitable container and chop up the tomatoes. Or use diced ones. Or just dump the whole can into the pan (once the onions have softened a bit) and use a potato masher or big fork or knife to squish them around and break them up.

Drain the beans into a colander and rinse them under cold running water until all the soaplike bubbles are gone. (This is an important step, as it will prevent you from making a huge pot of Auntie Jo's Gas Giant Black Bean Chili.) Dump said beans into the pot.

Dump in a half bag of corn, or maybe some carrots you've chopped up, or perhaps even a little squash (ew).

Dump in the appropriate amounts of chili and cumin. I tend to use about a two-part chili to three-part cumin ratio (Beloved Sis is garking right now), but then, I like lots of cumin.

Sprinkle on, or toss on, or shovel in, cayenne. Here again I am in the shovel-in school. Your mileage may vary.

Bring the whole kaboodle to a simmer and allow to continue to simmer for anywhere from 45 minutes (the absolute minimum) to five hours (about as long as you can go without scorching the mix or turning it into a solid). If you're simmering longer, add a little extra water now and then, and stir to keep from sticking.

Serve with cheese if you have it, sour cream if you've got that, or nothing. See? Pretty! And tasty! And filling and cheap!

Makes enough to serve one hungry nurse three meals and two hungry liberal Christians one meal each.

Come on. You know you want it.

Auntie Jo's Most Kick-Ass Carrot Cake

(adapted from The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown)

Preheat oven to 350* and grease and flour two 8" cake pans.

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar (light is better than dark)

4 eggs

1/3 cup neutral-flavored vegetable oil

1 cup melted butter

Mix all of these ingredients together.

2 cups unbleached white flour, or wheat flour, or a combination

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

2 teaspoons nutmeg

Mix all of these ingredients together in a different bowl.

4 cups shredded carrots (don't use preshredded carrots. You want them moist.)

2 cups chopped walnuts (if you're chopping them yourself, try for a nice variation in texture, from almost-powder to big chunks)

A cup of raisins or pineapple if your tastes run that way, which mine don't, which means that you're a commie pinko who can't appreciate good carrot cake.

Mix the flour and spice mixture into the egg/sugar/oil mixture. Fold in the carrots and nuts. Pour the resulting batter into your greased, floured pans, trying hard to make sure the same amount gets into each pan.

Bake for at least 35 minutes. The cakes are done when a knife or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool for ten minutes on top of the stove, or on racks, then turn the cakes out onto a wire rack.

Allow to cool completely, and frost with

Totally Yowza Italian Cream-Cheese Frosting, courtesy of my pal from Italy

Allow to stand at room temperature until just barely soft

2 sticks of butter

Cream in a mixer with

2 cartons of cream cheese (full-fat, please; none of this fat-free crap)

Add two teaspoons, or more, of vanilla. I prefer more. Usually I just stand there and stare into space while pouring in the vanilla, but then, I'm a balls-out kind of girl.

Pour in powdered sugar until the frosting reaches the desired sweetness and spreading consistency. This will probably amount to most of a bag of sugar, but then, my coworkers like a lot of frosting with their carrot cake.

Frost the cake, using tons between the layers. The cake is naturally pretty crumbly and only borderline sweet, so don't be afraid to go heavy on the frosting. It also weighs a ton once it's finished. Be sure you have a good cake carrier to tote it around in.

Apply, as Nigella Lawson says, to face. Fall over in a food coma. Pretend you just got a serving of vegetables.