Brisk days and crisp apples... What could be better than an Amish County Apple Crisp? I'm spending a week in the middle of Amish country, in an old farmhouse on 180 acres of even older farmland. The house is located on a picturesque ridge, and as I look out the huge living room window, I can see almost all the way across the valley to the Cumberland Valley Presbyterian Church on the other side. It's stunning, and it's not even in Lancaster County. In fact, it's not in Pennsylvania at all. It's in Missouri. That's okay. There are so many similarities that it still feels like home. I can take my boys to watch their Amish counterparts milk their cows (and then we buy a gallon or two). We share the road with buggies. I run into women in Walmart whose aprons are held together with straight pins instead of buttons, and who wear black bonnets instead of face masks. We shop at their shops (except on Sundays and Thursdays) and get our chain saw fixed at their store. And the other day my boys were invited to pick black walnuts up from under their tree. Then we had the black walnuts hulled. Then we sold the hulled walnuts for a little bit of money. ($16.00 for 100 pounds of hulled black walnuts.) It's cold here. I'm wearing four layers of clothes and my husband is building a fire in the woodstove while my youngest boys look on in awe. My older boys are all outside working the farm, enjoying the break from homeschooling. (They're still learning...probably even more than normal, so I'm not sweating the small stuff.) And tonight we have tickets to a real rodeo. In our family, I'm the only one who has ever been to a rodeo, so this is exciting stuff! My boys can't wait. Bronco bustin' and Bull Ridin', here we come! But one of the best things about being here in the fall (besides the breathtaking landscape colors) is the apple crisps. We bought a huge sack of Jonagold Apples from the nearby Amish bakery the other day, and now we are working our way through them. They aren't great for eating, but they are fabulous in pies and crisps. And since we are already feeding pumpkin pie to our ravenous workcrew of teenage boys, we are using the apples for crisps. It's fast. It's delicious. It's (mostly) healthy. It's an all-around win! And here's the recipe so you can make your own Amish County Autumn Apple Crisp. Autumn Apple Crisp Recipe4 cups sliced cooking apples (Jonagold is great!) 1 Tbsp lemon juice 1/3 cup flour 1 cup oats (uncooked) 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/2 tsp. salt 1 tsp cinnamon 1/3 cup melted butter Directions: Peel (if you want) and slice apples thinly. Scatter evenly over the bottom of a 9x9 inch greased baking dish. Sprinkle with lemon juice. Combine dry ingredients; add melted butter; and mix until moist. Sprinkle on top of the apples. Bake at 375 for about 30 minutes. If you are baking for a hard-workin', hard-eatin' crew like I am, you will want to double this and bake it in a 9x13 pan. Or if you are baking for people who like apple crisp. Or if you are baking. In fact, doubling this recipe is almost always a good idea. Don't worry. It won't last long! In other news, The Just Molly Series Book #3: Just One Life just hit the bookshelves. Check it out when you have time. And if you want to wait until I do a sale day, sign up below to receive an email about it. You will also get Just An Unfortunate Misunderstanding (a short story) free.
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Laura Leigh is a missionary wife and mom of six. In her travels, she’s cuddled lion cubs in Africa, assisted in impromptu snake surgery in Cambodia, and boated down an underground river in the Philippines. She writes clean, wholesome Christian fiction.
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