Monday Menu: A Fall Favorite

Since I discovered using a cast-iron skillet method for making apple crisp, that’s been my go-to. Cooking the apple mixture on the stove changes everything.  The apple mixture has time to become soft and syrupy before adding the topping and baking at a higher temperature.

And this week I had a few apples I needed to use before they went bad. I think I made one of my best apple crisps.

Here’s what I added to the recipe below: caramel sauce spread liberally over the cooked apples before I added the crisp.  I also grabbed the jar of pumpkin spice and added about two teaspoons worth while cooking the apple mixture.

Monday Menu: Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate chip cookies on a glass plate

I am an avid watcher of B. Dylan Hollis’s cooking videos. If you haven’t seen one, you are missing out, and there is no way I could explain the joy they bring. I’ve added the video of this recipe at the bottom of this post.

A few days ago, one of his old ones popped up in my feed, and I knew I had to make the recipe. I made a few changes, mostly adding bacon pieces because I thought the recipe was crying out for them.

The other change I made, was to default to my traditional Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies measurement. One pound of bacon renders one-half cup bacon grease and that is the amount of butter for a half-batch of my cookies. I felt Dylan’s recipe (he is always faithful to whatever old recipe he finds) was too much flour for the amount of fat.

Here’s what I did:

Monday Menu: Crispy Pecan Fish and Shortbread Cookies

I was in the mood for shortbread cookies, and I had these cool cookie cutters – ducks and swans – so of course, the cookies had to be ducks.

Plate of round and duck shaped shortbread cookies

  1. Crispy Pecan Fish
  2. Hearty Bread
  3. Broccoli w/Garlic Wine Sauce
  4. Shortbread

Crispy Pecan Fish

  • 4-6 oz fish fillets –you’ll want a firm fish such as: red snapper, catfish, tilapia or haddock
  • ½ cup flour
  • ¼ to 1 tsp cayenne pepper
  • ½ tsp thyme, crushed
  • 1 tbsp paprika
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • ¼ cup olive oil
  • ½ cup milk
  • ¼ cup butter
  • 2/3 cup finely chopped pecans
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice

Monday Menu: Chewed Up!!

Michael Symon, Clinton Kelly and Carla Hall drining champagne on a tv set

Michael Symon, Clinton Kelly and Carla Hall

I am so very excited about this! When the Chew was on ABC during lunch hour, that’s how I spent my lunch. One of the advantages of working from a home office.

And when Carla, Symon, and Clinton said they were doing a YouTube show three days a week, I was ecstatic. My week needs this joyous thirty minutes!