Reduced-Guilt Apple Crisp

Juicy Apple Crisp Apples never let you down: You can get them year-round, and you can use just about any variety in this quintessential always-works dessert. With this kind of dependability, who needs chocolate?

1/2 cup regular oats
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 tablespoon thawed apple juice concentrate
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
8 cups sliced peeled Granny Smith apple (about 2 pounds) (Sue used macintosh)
1/4 cup thawed apple juice concentrate, undiluted
2 tablespoons water
3/4 cup vanilla light ice cream

Preheat oven to 425°.

Combine first 6 ingredients; set aside.

Combine the granulated sugar, cornstarch, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, and salt.

Place the apple slices in an 11 x 7-inch baking dish, and sprinkle with the cornstarch mixture.

Pour 1/4 cup juice concentrate and water over the apple mixture.
Top with the oat mixture.

Bake at 425° for 25 minutes or until bubbly and golden brown. Let stand for 15 minutes. Serve with ice cream.

Yield: 6 servings (serving size: 1 cup apple crisp and 2 tablespoons ice cream)

CALORIES 258 (16% from fat); FAT 4.6g (sat 2.4g,mono 1.2g,poly 0.5g); IRON 1.2mg; CHOLESTEROL 10mg; CALCIUM 56mg; CARBOHYDRATE 55.2g; SODIUM 101mg; PROTEIN 2.2g; FIBER 3.4g

Cooking Light, JANUARY 2001

Sue's notes: I put extra topping on. I didn't have concentrate juice, or cider, or anything, so I used the juice from a can of peaches (pear juice). That worked great. We didn't have ice cream either, but we'll get some.

original post:
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=printerFriendly&recipe_id=222976

Thanksgiving 2008

We enjoyed our annual gathering in New Hampshire. We had lots of Computer Fun.

Turkey
Blintzes--The Video
Community Cooking
Very Many Computers
Animoto and Photoshop ... (For everything else... there's mastercard!)





Sandy, we hope you enjoyed the day!

Near Enemies

Near Enemies

The near enemies are qualities that arise in the mind and masquerade as genuine spiritual realization, when in fact they are only an imitation, serving to separate us from true feeling rather than connecting us to it. . . .

The near enemy of loving-kindness is attachment. . . . At first, attachment may feel like love, but as it grows it becomes more clearly the opposite, characterized by clinging, controlling and fear.

The near enemy of compassion is pity, and this also separates us. Pity feels sorry for "that poor person over here," as if he were somehow different from us. . . .

The near enemy of sympathetic joy (the joy in the happiness of others) is comparison, which looks to see if we have more of, the same as, or less than another. . . .

The near enemy of equanimity is indifference. True equanimity is balance in the midst of experience, whereas indifference is withdrawal and not caring, based on fear. . . .

If we do not recognize and understand the near enemies, they will deaden our spiritual practice. The compartments they make cannot shield us for long from the pain and unpredictability of life, but they will surely stifle the joy and open connectedness of true relationships.

- Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart

Dharamsala Recipe Blog

Thanks to the Global-Lab Trekkers for this link to a blog of recipes from India.

Follow the links, and you might even find chai!

http://www.aambrosia.typepad.com/

Grandma Karash's Raisin Bread

Great Grandmother Theresa Karash's Raisin Bread

Ingredients:

yeast

1 1/2 cup milk

sugar

1/8 lb butter

5 1/2 cups flour

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

salt

1 box of raisins

Kitchen stuff:

saucepan

big bowl

two loaf pans

Directions, as recorded by Sandra Karash...

Start yeast in a little water with 1 tsp sugar.

Warm 1 1/2 cup milk in pan on stove.

Add 1/8 lb butter (1/2 stick) to milk in pan.

Heat until butter melts.

Put 2 cups flour in big bowl.

Add yeast and water to flour.

Add milk and butter to flour.

Stir to moisten all the flour.

Let 3 eggs come to room temperature.

Beat the 3 eggs with egg beater, and add 1 tsp vanilla.

Add 1 tsp salt to dough in big bowl.

Add 1 cup sugar to dough.

Add egg mixture to dough.

Mix in by hand. (There must be a better way!)

Add 3 1/2 cups sifted flour.

Mix by hand (again!) until dough doesn't stick to hand as much.

Add 1 box of raisins, which have been plumped over steam.

Grease two loaf pans well!

Put dough into pans, filling 1/3 full.

Cover with warm lid. Let rise until 2/3 full.

Put dough into warm oven for 15 minutes until it fills pan.

Bake until toothpick comes out clean, about 45 minutes: Bake at 250 about 25 minutes, then raise heat to 275 for 20-25 minutes more until it is brown.

Take bread out and place on soft surface (pillow) after removing from pan.

Grandma Karash's Blintzes

Grandma Karash's Blintzes

Pancakes:
4 eggs
3 cups flour
4 cups milk
1 t. salt (teaspoon?)

Filling:
32 oz. cottage cheese (I remember that we were supposed to get "dry cottage cheese") [Sue notes that 'I currently use low fat ricotta, and drain it briefly in a strainer.]
2 eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 t. salt
butter for the pan

Steps:
- Take chill off milk, mix 2 c. milk with eggs
- slowly add flour to liquid (and salt!)
- gradually add rest of milk...
- cook pancakes crepe style !!

- mix filing ingredients after straining cottage cheese (just excess liquid)
- place in center of pancake by tablespoonfull
- fold up, then saute in butter
- bake 1/2 hour in 350° oven

Chai with Prerna

Today's recipe

For 1 cup:

1/3 cup water and 2/3 cup 1% milk (If using skim milk, just use 1 cup skim milk)

boil on stove in pot with

1 tsp Taj Mahal Tea Powder per cup (or 2 tea bags per cup. they are weaker)

Add the following spices while boiling

1 clove (crushed up) per cup

2 pinches cardamom powder

1 small slice of fresh ginger (2 slices if you LOVE ginger)

OR... instead of all the spices, use 2 pinches of tea masala

Boil that til you get the right color. (whick is kind of a nice tan. Think Carribbean for about 3 days with proper sunscreen.)

Strain into your cup using a nifty tea strainer.

Add sugar to taste.

Watch for the book "Chai with Prerna"... coming soon.

:-)

Blog Transformation

This blog is adding a new dimension: recipes. Whoa!

My life has been plagued by this problem for years... I cook something I like, then I want to make it again, and...

• which web site was it on?
• which cookbook was it in?
• did i make changes?
• omg. I am in New Hampshire, and I don't have that book!
• isn't it on a card in the pantry in Boxboro?

I am solving ALL of those problems with one single word: BLOG!

So, I'm entering recipes into the blog now. Whoppee!

• Family recipes
• Indian recipes
• Vegetarian recipes
  
• Crock-pot (not crackpot), aka 'slow cooker' recipes
• Anything I might want to make again somewhere else

Welcome to the newest department of the blog:

Sues Stews!

masala dosa

Ingredients Needed:

Dosa batter for dosas

Potato Masala (serves for 4)

Potatoes - 250 gms
Onions - 3 big
Salt to taste
Water - 1 cup
Oil - 2 tsp

For seasoning
Mustard seeds - 1/4 tsp
Urud Dal - 1/2 tsp
Bengal Gram - 1 tsp
Cashew Nuts - 5 whole broken to 4 pieces.
Green chillies - 4-5 depending on the variety
Ginger - 1"
Curry leaves few
Coriander leaves for garnish

Method to prepare:

Cook potatoes in pressure cooker till its soft. Peel skin and let it cool

Chop onions into juliennes. Heat a kadai with oil. Once its hot, add all the seasoning ingredients except coriander. Sauté well. Once its splutters, add onions. Add salt and simmer and let it fry for 2 mins. When you find the onions turning translucent, smash the potatoes with palm and crumble it to the oil. This way you will have few big chunks and few mashed potatoes.

Keep sautéing and cook on high flame for 2 mins.Ensure it doesn't get burnt. Then simmer and add water. Adjust salt and let it cook for 5 mins. Finally garnish with chopped coriander..

Note: Extra onions add more taste to this masala. And also should not add too much of water since this is going to on top of a Dosa!

 

[from:  http://cooking4allseasons.blogspot.com/2008/01/masala-dosa-101-dosa-varieties.html]

Running Commentary

A . . . great distraction at times are so-called "running commentary" thoughts such as, "Now I am not thinking of anything," "Things are going very well now," "This is dreadful; my mind just won't stay still" and the like . . . . All such thoughts should simply be noted as "Thinking," and, as Huang Po says, just "dropped like a piece of rotten wood." "Dropped," notice, not thrown down. A piece of rotten wood is not doing anything to irritate you, but is just of no use, so there is no point in hanging on to it. . . . Nor is there any need to try to retrace the links in a chain of associated thoughts, nor to try to ascertain what it was that first started the chain. Any such impulse should itself be noted simply as "Thinking," and the mind should revert to the breathing. However badly things have just been going, one should take up again at the only place one can--where one is--and go on from there.

--Bhikkhu Mangalo, The Practice of Recollection

Blah

Glurg is tired. He wants a new island. Glurg has been waiting a long time for a bus that is not coming. Because there is no public transit on Glurg's Island.

Glurg's cousin, Blurg, is busy. Oh so busy with this and that, and nothing really. But lots of it, and so Blurg doesn't notice that she has no transit.

Glurg is going to figure out how to find a new island. Glurg is tired.

Self-Discipline = Patience?

Self-Discipline

Discipline is a difficult word for most of us. It conjures up images of somebody standing over you with a stick, telling you that you're wrong. But self-discipline is different. It's the skill of seeing through the hollow shouting of your own impulses and piercing their secret. They have no power over you. It's all a show, a deception. Your urges scream and bluster at you; they cajole; they coax; they threaten; but they really carry no stick at all. You give in out of habit. You give in because you never really bother to look beyond the threat. It is all empty back there. There is only one way to learn this lesson, though. The words on this page won't do it. But look within and watch the stuff coming up--restlessness, anxiety, impatience, pain--just watch it come up and don't get involved. Much to your surprise, it will simply go away. It rises, it passes away. As simple as that. There is another word for self-discipline. It is patience.

--Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English

 

I will try this today to ward off chocolate cravings, and cookie ambushes, and kheer obsessions.

Buddhavision - in 3D

Buddhavision
See everybody as the Buddha. When you are stuck in a traffic jam on the Los Angeles freeway, can you look at all the other drivers, particularly the ones who are weaving in and out of lanes, and see them as the Buddha? In a work situation, if you have a particularly cantankerous boss who you think is a complete idiot, can you look at that person as the Buddha? As a manager, can you see the person who is working for you as the Buddha?

--Gerry Shishin Wick Sensei, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review Summer 1996
from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

Finding the truth...

What Happens to Most Pieces of Truth

One day Mara, the Buddhist god of ignorance and evil, was traveling through the villages of India with his attendants. He saw a man doing walking meditation whose face was lit up in wonder. The man had just discovered something on the ground in front of him. Mara's attendants asked what that was and Mara replied, "A piece of truth." "Doesn't this bother you when someone finds a piece of the truth, O evil one?" his attendants asked. "No," Mara replied. "Right after this they usually make a belief out of it."


-Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield, in Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart
from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

Quotecard Postcard #15

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, in Irving Good, The Scientist Speculates (1962)
           US (Hungarian-born) biochemist (1893 - 1986)

Practice... makes practice...

Practice can be stated very simply. It is moving from a life of hurting myself and others to a life of not hurting myself and others. That seems so simple--except when we substitute for real practice some idea that we should be different or better than we are, or that our lives should be different from the way they are. When we substitute our ideas about what should be (such notions as "I should not be angry or confused or unwilling") for our life as it truly is, then we're off base and our practice is barren.

-- Charlotte Joko Beck

Words you don't want to hear... or do you?

"It's probably not cancer."

When your doctor says this to you....

Well, it's not entirely comforting. You came in for a routine check up, the usual advice about fiber, exercise, and weight management. And you get "It's probably not cancer".

Now you weren't even thinking about mortality. Your To Do List is immense, and you don't really have time to consider the possibility that you might be derailed with a series of traumas and treatments, or even demise. No way. You've got places to go, parcels to mail, correspondence long overdue.

So "It's probably not cancer", and you're off to the lab. Some extra poking and prodding. Stay tuned for results. In a week. Or so.

What goes on in the mind in that week. "It's PROBABLY not cancer." No need to worry actually. But it COULD be. And who even knew it was a maybe?? Hmmm. What if it WAS cancer. What would I do? Would I be fretting about this deadline? or would I be off playing frisbee with my kids? or walking in the woods (with or without them?)? Or just sitting on the beach and watching the immensity of the ocean?

And if I wouldn't be doing this if it WAS cancer.... then why am I doing it if it ISN'T?

Hmmm. Pondering whether I am celebrating this day as the treasure it is. Pondering whether I'd rather be ..... (everyone can complete that sentence!)

So. Those comforting (?) words bring life to full stop again. It COULD be cancer. The end COULD be near. This day IS a treasure. My kids ARE glorious, and every minute with them (laughter and tears) is precious.

And I am thankful for those words that detour my mind. I am grateful for a moment of full stop. Look around. Celebrate. Pause. Breathe.

A week later.... "It's just a minor condition called (complicated and incomprehansible latin name with many syllables)." Aaahh. Fine. That's great. I have a lot on my To Do List, and really don't have time for any kind of traumas and treatments. I've got a deadline to meet.

Happiness

The Right to Happiness

Whether people are beautiful and friendly or unattractive and disruptive, ultimately they are human beings, just like oneself. Like oneself, they want happiness and do not want suffering. Furthermore, their right to overcome suffering and be happy is equal to one's own.... When you recognize that all beings are equal in both their desire for happiness and their right to obtain it, you automatically feel empathy and closeness for them. Through accustoming your mind to this sense of universal altruism, you develop a feeling of responsibility for others: the wish to help them actively overcome their problems. Nor is this wish selective; it applies equally to all.

--The Dalai Lama, Compassion and the Individual

You decide...

"What happens to us in life is for God to decide. Whether to be happy or not—that is our choice."

The above is a quote from the novel Enlightenment for Idiots. Here is a review from Tricycle magazine. If you read it, leave a comment!

 

An unplanned pregnancy, a rocky romance, an unsatisfying job, and a milestone birthday: Amanda, the intrepid twenty-nine-year-old heroine of ENLIGHTENMENT FOR IDIOTS (Random House, 2008, $24.00 cloth, 384 pp.), has got a lot on her plate even before a spiritual pilgrimage gets thrown into the mix. When Amanda receives an assignment to write a travel guide for aspiring awakened ones, she finds herself in India, looking for love—and gurus—in all the wrong places. Written by Tricycle contributing editor and yoga teacher Anne Cushman, Enlightenment for Idiots traces, with witty flair, Amanda's encounters with heartbreak, culture shock, yoga, and a kooky traveling companion named Devi Das. The novel's warmhearted spirit is captured in the advice Amanda receives from a friendly waiter: "What happens to us in life is for God to decide. Whether to be happy or not—that is our choice."

What's the difference between heaven and hell?

A Visit to Heaven and Hell

I once heard a story about a visit to heaven and hell. In bothplaces the visitor saw many people seated at a table on whichmany delicious foods were laid out. In both places chopsticks over a meter long were tied to their right hands, while their left hands weretied to their chairs. In hell, however much they stretched out theirarms, the chopsticks were too long for them to get food into theirmouths. They grew impatient and got their hands andchopsticks tangled with one another's. The delicacies werescattered here and there. In heaven, on the other hand, people happily used the longchopsticks to pick out someone else's favorite food and feed it tohim, and in turn they were being fed by others. They all enjoyedtheir meal in harmony. --Shundo Aoyama, Zen Seeds