Red 'n' Hot Pie

In the middle of all the craziness, I am moving. Fun times! I will not be doing posts for a couple of weeks due to the move. I might squeeze in a cocktail, or two... I wanted to do one last baking adventure before everything ends up in boxes. I had a bag of apples that were starting to go bad. I had pie crusts in the freezer. Naturally I made an apple pie. But a normal apple pie is so boring. When I was searching for a pie last week I found this gem in the 1954 edition of Dishes Children Love published by the Culinary Arts Institute.

This cookbook has interesting recipes but I hate the way it is written. I prefer lists of ingredients and then the instructions. There is no need to mix them together!

 Here's the original recipe. Looks tasty!

I had everything except for red hots. I don't think that I every went out and bought red hots on purpose. Hot cinnamon is not my thing.

 Melting candy is fun!

 It actually took a little bit for all the candies to melt.

The apples turned so delightfully pink! I'm kinda nervous about the taste. It smells very hard sugar candy with a hint of cinnamon.

 But it look pretty!

 I suck at pie crusts so I stuck with a simple one.

Here it is baked for 10 at 450 and 15 at 350. The top crust does not look fully cooked so I stuck it in for 15 more minutes and then another 10 minutes. Basically adding up to the baking time of the regular apple pie.

Looks and smells amazing! It actually just smells like a regular cinnamon apple pie. Feel good about it now. I am taking it over to my folks for dessert and I didn't bring a back up. It better be at least okay.

Wow! What a nice pie! The candies added a nice subtle cinnamon flavor which I really enjoyed. While I used whatever apples I had on hand (I think they were slightly old Rome apples), this would probably taste even better with nice, tart apples. 

My Rating: Yum! I'll keep this recipe on hand. The pink apples are fun!

Family Rating: "Awesome!!!!" "Apple pie is my favorite pie and this was really good." 

Porcupines

 On a busy day you just want to through together something easy with ingredients you have on hand. I found this recipe in the Dishes Children Love pamphlet from 1955. It is part of a series put out by the Culinary Arts Institute from Chicago.

I'm sure having the ingredients mixed in with the directions was suppose to be helpful for kids but I found it annoying. I like to know everything I am going to need before starting the recipe.

Everything I already had in my house. Yeah!

I will play in cookie dough all day long but I hate making meatballs. I hate getting ground beef under my nails. They looked kind of sad, drowning in tomato soup.

Gotta love the old Pyrex!

They turned out kind of cute. Porcupines!

These were great meatballs! Nothing overly special but easy and tasty. Surprisingly, the rice cooked all the way through (even the one meatball I couldn't fully submerge) and the tomato soup created a delicious sauce. Just add mashed potatoes and a veggie and you have a great comfort meal.

My Rating: Yummy and easy! I would make again.

Friends and Family Rating: "Weird looking but not bad."

Tomatoes Stuffed with Rice and Cheese

Since I had to have something to go along with my 'drumstick' dinner I thought I would stay in my 1950's childhood and try some stuffed tomatoes.

I grabbed a recipe from the same cookbook.

I had to grab some tomatoes. Sadly not in season. And I'm not a big fan of canned mushrooms but I thought I'd give it a chance.

Looks like it needs more cheese.

Digging the guts out of tomatoes. Fun Times! Just gotta figure out what to do with them...

They look so pretty!! and fancy.

And smelled so good!
This recipe went together easy with ingredients you probably already have around. The tomatoes took a little bit of time but it wasn't difficult just annoying. They tasted pretty good but a little bland. Needed more cheese and they probably taste better with in-season tomatoes. I'll have to bribe a few fresh tomatoes off of my gardening friends and try these again. It was an easy base recipe that looks simple to modify.

My Rating: Not bad. Not special.

Drumsticks

Sometimes I feel like making something fancy and sometimes I like to go easy. With this crazy weather I thought I'd explore this pamphlet looking for a new comfort food.

 Comfort food is usually something from our childhood so there must be something here! I went with: Drumsticks...not made from chicken.

Very common ingreideints except for the dreaded MSG! After a bit of online research I went for it.

I was able to dig into my rather large collection of takeout chopsticks for the sticks.

My drumsticks started to fall apart as soon as I put them in the pan.

My drumsticks didn't look exactly like that.

Parsley brightened up the dish!

These came together and cooked up very easily. They are basically mini meatloaves on sticks. The sticks ended up being useless because the meat just fell off of them as they cooked. I'm guessing that the sticks were suppose to make them more interesting for kids. They tasted okay. Nothing exciting or special. Just bland. I was only able to eat 2 bites before adding toppings.

My rating: Blah. Nothing I would make again.