Apples, Pears and Grapes. OH MY!

This weekend started with rolling my car out of the garage and then dragging it out. EEEEKKKK!  The hubby assured me that he was being nicer than the tow guys, which I am sure is 100% true. Now the car is stuck at a weird angle in the driveway. We hope to have that issue rectified this week --- but, who knows.

Then I started a homemade tomato sauce from my French cuisine book a la Julia Child. I have slightly more tomatoes than I can handle, but, not enough to can or do anything long  lasting with them. I gave some of them to two of my friends to lessen the load. Anyway, back to the Julia recipe. After about 3-4 hours simmering in the crock pot, it was deeeeeelicious!!!!! Miss J knows her stuff!!  The picture doesn't do it justice and the fact that it's half gone.....

While the tomato sauce cooked, I made some apple and pear crisp.  Let me say it was the BEST crisp I have EVER had. I think it has to do with the recipe being very heavy on the butter. I even cut half a stick of butter OUT of the recipe. The recipe came from an Ina Garten ~ Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. Her name should be Ina "Butter" Garten, because she sureeeeeeeeeeeeeee loves her butter. On a side note: she is a chef, I appreciate, since I know she likes and eats her food.

After I finished making the crisp, the hubby, had the brilliant idea of picking some of the concord grapes, that grew nicely this year AND then making a pie.  I found a fairly simple recipe from a set lovely cookbooks, that my BFF gave me.  It was "fairly" simple because there was some "work" involved with said grapes. In case you don't know, Concord grapes have seeds and you don't want seeds in your pie!!  I immediately nominated the hubby for the job of squeezing each little grape and saving the skins. Which he did!! I said I would help if he did that part. Come to find out the most annoying part was actually getting the seeds out of the pulp, after it was boiled (the hubby did that part, too.) We sat over the pulp for a good while, picking them out, once we found a sieve that sort of worked. Once that task was done we baked the bottom part and I proceeded to make the topping and the pie crust leaves, to make it look pretty.  After the crumb topping was added and baked, again, we stuck it in the fridge overnight, since it is a pie you eat cold.  The hubby got it out after lunch and gave everyone a piece.  We were all a little bit apprehensive since the grapes were sweet, but, a teensy bit tart.  Let me just say it was deeeeeeeeeelicious!! Success!! Not  that I want to hurry up and make it over and over, since the whole grape process can be quite tedious.  Maybe once a year or twice, if I'm feeling really ambitious?!?! And the hubby is willing to squeeze hundreds of little grapes.  Here's a picture of it's deliciousness:

Hopefully this week proves to be productive. I have a birthday party to plan for, but, thankfully it's "only" family showing up, so I don't have to over clean or anything. YAY ME!! 

Till next time....