Autumn leaves

"Cooking is an art, baking is a science” has been cited in print since at least 1967 and is said to have originated in a King Arthur Flour catalogue.

Plenty of debate on that one, Uncle Ken, and I'll stay out of it, too many rabbit holes are opening up.  All baking is cooking but not all cooking is baking, and where does that leave the sandwich makers?  I'll leave it all under the big umbrella of "food prep" and leave it at that.

And please don't imply that I'm a baker.  I consider myself a knucklehead that likes to play in the kitchen like a mad scientist, with tasty results.  It can be a lot of fun.

I'm not hung up on following "the straight and narrow path of science" because of the forgiving nature of "food prep."  There are so many variables that you can make yourself crazy, such as humidity, ambient temperature, and freshness of the ingredients so you learn to be a little flexible.  I think the only time you should adhere strictly to a recipe is when you are expected to have consistent results over an extended period of time, such as in restaurants.  Otherwise, it's fine to adjust and tweak ingredients and cooking times or temperatures.  I'm sure that Mr. Beagles will agree that baking bread in the summertime is much different than in the wintertime.

So, lately I've been messing around with apples.  There was a YouTube suggestion for apple fritters and I thought that would be a swell idea; I'm always buying them from the bakery section of the Jewel and I didn't think they could be very difficult.

And they weren't, except for the deep fat frying part of it.  I've never done any deep fat frying because it seemed a little messy and possibly dangerous.  But what the hell, no time like the present to try something new.  The only thing stopping me was the lack of enough neutral oil for my dutch oven and Granny Smith apples, so off to the store I went.  The results were ugly, maybe a little under cooked, but tasted better than store-bought ones in my opinion.  The glaze was a little too thin but I'll do better the next time.  I'll call the project a success.

But there's more.  The guy that posted the video had a variation made with bacon and a bourbon glaze.  Oh, yeah; now you're talking!  Still had a couple of apples and plenty of bacon on hand but no bourbon.  A quick trip the local Kwik-E-Mart solved the bourbon problem.  Side note: did you know that you can substitute a dark liquor for vanilla in many recipes?  Anyhow those fritters were great and took to freezing very well.  Very savory, but the taste of bacon and bourbon are subtle; another win.

Okay, that was a good recipe so I decided to hit up YouTube and look at other recipes for apple fritters.  No two recipes are identical, which makes it interesting because you can get good idea of how much leeway you have with the ingredients; taking notes is a good idea.  Then I saw a recipe for cinnamon apple bread, another favorite of mine, at least the cinnamon version sold at the Jewel.  Pretty much the same ingredients as fritters but you use a bread pan and you bake it instead of fiddling around with hot oil.  Another win, even better than the fritters.

I've accumulated a lot of recipes of my own, based on recipes I've tried from different YouTube channels.  There is no one recipe for chocolate cake, cornbread, blueberry pie, or anything else.  As long as the results are edible I'm a happy camper and the process is getting easier as I move along.  It certainly isn't boring.

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As I gaze across the treetops I see that the leaves are quickly changing colors.  Are all the leaves still on the trees in Beaglesonia?  Aside from stockpiling firewood, is there a lot of pre-winter prep required?  I don't know your vehicle situation but I understand that you have to drain the gas on some items, grease them up good, check the oil and cover them up for the frozen duration.  Do you have a snowmobile?  Something like that would be very useful up north, I think.  How else can you get to public house for a little hot toddy?