Vegan Apple Crostata (On Reading "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand And . . . Knitting Until The Cows Come Home)

I subscribe to a "few" monthly magazines. Our post office likes to deliver (dump) them in the mailbox all at once. It overwhelms me when this happens. I have a suspended animation moment and place them on a book shelf in the living room where they are "stored" until I can decipher the order with which I will read them. Food magazines are usually first, then garden, then knitting (unless it's snowing outside, then the order is changed to: knitting, food, garden).

To me, this time of year for cooking is the In Between time. It's very challenging. My enthusiasm for the tomato has peaked, as has my love of the salad. There is always room, however, for a new dessert. Good thing I paid attention to this month's Bon Appetit. (Which truthfully, BA is a far, far cry from the lovely Gourmet magazine. Sigh. I miss Gourmet.) And for the veggie heads out there, I won't even comment on the content of our choices in food magazines. Lacking comes to mind.

Restaurant requests is one of my favorite parts in BA. Someone requested the recipe for the Apple Crostata served in Cape Elizabeth, Maine at a restaurant called Sea Glass. Sea Glass! I LOVE that color (that's the very color I painted my kitchen!)--it must be fate! 

This crostata leapt at me. It's not quite apple season yet. But to me, the apple never goes out of season. (My favorite are the Fuji. Dr. Thyme loves Honeycrisps.) So on a slightly warm afternoon, I decided I needed to make an apple dessert and went to work making this. According to Dr. T., was by far one of his most favorite sort-of-but-not-quite apple pie desserts EVER. I tend to agree. I mean, for me, I'd even go so far as to say I may never bake another pie in a pie pan again. The crust on this thing was perfect--flaky, non-mushy, delightfully balanced between sweet and salty--like eating the apples baked on the best shortbread cookie ever! A link to the recipe can be found here. Trust me, you will love it! (*I used two Granny Smith apples and three Fujis for mine.)

On the knitting front (winter is rapidly approaching!--but I never really turn off the knitting--it just slows to a trickle during summer)--I am in the midst of trying to finish this sweater: Amiga. I am going to modify this with a longer, bell-shaped sleeve because I figured by the time I finish knitting this, cool weather will be upon us and I will want to wear it then. I am also going to modify the picked up stiches around the collar and front and make them have a "ruffly" edge. I love the color! It will be sunshine-y and just what I need once the dark, gloomy days of fall arrive (and that monster called Seasonal Affective Disorder descends--but we'll not go there now). Making the sleeves longer and a bit wider is taking me some extra time. Well, it's taking me a lot of extra time. I have stockinette fatigue. The saving grace of working in the round on the same damn thing for HOURS is that I can practically do it in my sleep. So as we catch up on TV and whatnot--my hands are busy working the sleeve action on this. I suddenly (and only for the briefest of moments) wished I were like four feet tall. But then the moment passes and I am grateful I'm tall again and get back to the sleeves-for-the-longest-arms-ever-sweater!  

And finally, on my nightstand is Laura Hillenbrand's book, Unbroken. I requested it from my library. You might have noticed this book on the bestseller lists for a while now. And rightly so. She wrote Seabiscuit. I loved, loved, loved that book. And subsequently purchased the photographed coffee table book for my collection. Unbroken is a novel of our time even though it is a novel of a time most of us never witnessed, only read or heard about--whether from a WWII veteran or Tom Brokaw (I'm referring to his Greatest Generation project). I believe you must have some idea of where we come from to understand where we are going. Maybe that comes from having very little history of my own to trace back to (long story, but I have many unanswered questions in my past). I believe in the power of people and their stories. Laura is one of the best storytellers of my generation. I am learning things about that war that were never mentioned in my history classes. The book is fascinating and hard to put down. 

Last night Dr. Thyme and I watched George W. Bush: The 9/11 Interview on National Geographic Channel. (Speaking of history.) This interview moved me to my core. I got teary-eyed. I had chills. Again, everyone's story matters. We sat still, in silence and watched, uninterrupted, the ex-president give one of the most candid interviews to date--a moment-by-moment replay of that Tuesday afternoon in September: where he was, what he thought, how the gravity of the moment affected him and discussing the decisions he made thereafter. A most powerful and painful interview. But one that should not be missed if for no other reason in that it is a moment from our time that will forever impact the future of where we go.