A Most Delicious Baked Apple Dessert!

With a big nod to my friend Julie Fenn, who brought these to a potluck recently!

Really super simple, too...tart apples are best, I think.  I'd love to have found Jonathans, but Braeburns were good too.

Core your apples and enlarge the holes somewhat so you have room for stuffing them...

Mix raisins with cinnamon (and any other spice that suits your fancy) and stuff the holes in the apples.

Add a drizzle of maple syrup or honey or a tsp. of brown or raw sugar--you can substitute Xylitol or Splenda if you MUST, but it won't be quite the same...

Top with a spoonful of butter--the real thing.  We use Kerrygold unsalted butter from Ireland, it's delicious and they treat their cows much better, without hormones, etc.

I used a pinch of Joseph's pumpkin pie spice on top of the butter, then baked at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes, more or less.  (Test for doneness by poking with a knife or fork, they should be soft.)

Let cool a bit and top with cream if you wish...spoon any juices from the pan over the apples, it's luscious.  I don't miss crust or pastry in the least!

And these are wonderful warm or cold...

Mexican Meatloaf!

So there's a story to this one...but for now, I'll just share the recipe which is DELICIOUS....obviously, I couldn't wait to take the photo of the uncut loaf!

1 1/2 lb. ground turkey or burger or ground pork (we almost always use turkey for this...it originally came from a diet group  I belonged to, and I don't mind something besides red meat...honestly, you can't tell the difference.)

1 8 oz. can tomato sauce (I just used fire roasted diced tomatoes, since that's what we had...) (or Nomato sauce if you're doing autoimmune protocol--nightshades can cause problems.)

1/2 to 1 C. crushed tortilla chips (unless you're doing REALLY Primal/Paleo, which I did...so I used chia seed or coconut flour instead, about 1/4 cup (less if you're using coconut flour, it sucks up moisture!).  Corn doesn't have actual gluten, and in chip form, it reduces some of the ill effects while increasing available B vitamins, who knew??  Next time I may opt for the tortilla chips but aim for the healthiest I can find...*)

1 small can diced green chilis  (Again, if you did AIP and discovered nightshades were an issue, you might want skip these...it makes me very sad, though.)

1 egg

1/2 cup diced onion

(and sometimes we throw in other vegetables if we have them on hand...)

1 T. good chili powder (Joseph makes his own) (or skip it if nightshade spices are a problem)
1/2 t. cumin (or more, I like cumin)
1/2 t. taco spice (or more, also optional)
1 t. salt

Mix 1/2 the tomato sauce, tomatoes, or Nomato sauce and other ingredients until well blended, then pack into a loaf pan.  Bake at 375 degrees for 1 hour.

Pour the rest of the sauce over the loaf and bake 5 more minutes, then let stand 10 minutes before slicing.  (You may want to try bit of salsa verde...YUM.)

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So.  The funny story?  My first husband, God rest him, LOVED this stuff, and used to request it perhaps once a week.  LOVED it.

...until I told him it was ground turkey.  Then he refused to ever eat it again!

The other story attached is that I enjoyed it as well, and shared the recipe with my sis, in Nevada.  She really loved it, as did my brother in law.

Years later I was hungry for it and couldn't find my copy of the recipe, so she sent it to me again.  In our big kitchen cleanout recently, I went through all my loose recipes, and there it was, in her handwriting...so I felt like we just had a really great dinner with the whole family.

By the way, Joseph loved it too.  And he knows it's turkey.
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* Note, via Mark Sisson's Mark's Daily Apple blog on tortilla chips--NOT that they're primal, or a great food source, or even a GOOD food source, but as an occasional indulgence:

"Corn tortillas are probably the best way to consume corn. By their very definition, corn tortillas are subjected to nixtamalization, an ancient form of corn processing that reduces antinutrients like phytic acid, unlocks B-vitamins like niacin, and fights back against mycotoxins. It also increases the available protein content of the corn while increasing the bioavailability of the calcium. In other words, it makes a fairly nutritionally-poor food a bit more nutritious – not all that important for those reading those, who likely have access to a wide range of nutrient-dense foods, but vital for populations who relied on corn for a large portion of their food intake. For us, it makes corn tortillas less problematic."