Apfelstrudel

We have been eating lots of vegetables from our CSA. With a freezer full of beef, a stockpile of flour and yeast, and weekly boxes of fresh veggies arriving, I haven't been doing much routine grocery shopping. This past week I was running low on several staples and hit up the store. Plums looked good and were cheap. I also bought the first bunch of bananas we'd had in several weeks.

Ohhhhh, fruit! I love fruit! I had forgotten how sweet and wonderful it is!

We were given a half bushel of awesome Macintoshes. We started with one of Mom's apple pies, and then a regular apple pie. We managed the next day to make a gallon of applesauce but, because the virus had a hold on me and Maggie, we didn't manage to can it or freeze it. That's okay: with the germies invading throats here, ready-to-eat applesauce in the fridge is providing some great (and easy-to-swallow) nutrition. We also made a strudel,

partially in deference to the word "strudel" being used so frequently in Maggie's Hogan's Heroes episodes, and partially because it's been many years since I made one, and I didn't figure the younger kids knew what a strudel was.

Today Philip was in need of an Apple Betty and asked for a recipe. Recipe??? For Apple Betty? Uhhhh.... I should probably figure that out. I tried to tell him the general concept that I carry around in my head for Apple Betty. But that is definitely one of my wing-it, do-it-by-feel sorta recipes.

Maggie loved the apple strudel. She wants to have it again. It's not like it's super-hard or anything. But after having made the strudels with Andrew, I am realizing again just why we have the cliche "Easy as Pie." The pie and the Betty are so much easier than the strudel. It's probably been a decade since I made the last strudel, and it may well be another decade before Maggie tastes it again. Isn't it a shame how much abuse she must endure?