Whatever happened to Halloween? A rant by The Domestic Deviant.

So I haven't been cooking because of the large amount of Apples I'm taking care of. However with Halloween upon us I have an important rant.

Please stop killing Halloween
Halloween use to be one of the biggest holidays for children in America. Few days holidays were as much about children having fun as Halloween. However now for whatever reason we have turned away from that. Your local news has convinced parents that it simply isn't safe for your children to participate in this tradition. Perhaps it was teaching kids not to take candy from strangers, and now in these times strangers include your own neighbors. Why did we turn away from our own neighborhood culture? Why is it that a child should call someone on his cellphone if he has forgotten his key before he knocks on his neighbor's door to wait on mom or dad to come home?  It isn't just the parents either "Safe" Trick or Treat alternatives are also culprits here. Your Church's trunk or treating event might be fun but shouldn't your church be telling you to love thy neighbor? Instead you are going to the Church because there is a good chance you don't even know your neighbor's name. Perhaps your Church taught you that Halloween in a holiday for the Devil? To which I say hogposh! How can a national holiday that people don't even get with their family be a holiday at all it's a custom and nothing more at this point!  Plus the local news has taught you your neighbors probably put razor blades or drugs in the Halloween candy.Of course your Church isn't the only one with a Trick or Treat alternative now either. Your grocery store and even your mall is probably holding one as well. It might even cost money to participate. This is ridiculous! what is so scary about going down shopping aisles to ask someone who works at the store for candy? The Store is barely decorated at all. There is nothing scary about it either. Please do your future grand kids a favor and give your child a memorable Halloween out trick or treating on their street because at this rate your grand kids might not have the option to go out at all because Halloween is dying fast.

Adventures in home canning

I have always heard how easy it is to do your own canning. I never believed it until yesterday and now I think it's fairly easy for such a pain in the ass. So as you have been reading I have been working with a lot of apples. I need to figure out a way to store these things. I am very concerned about my apples as I'm going to be going out of town to High Point North Carolina Thursday afternoon. As for tomorrow I have to take care of my ailing S.O., go buy a pillow, go to a job interview and then go to my friend's wedding reception. So I'm hoping my apples won't soften up too much while I'm out of town. So yesterday I made some applesauce in a crock pot and then attempted canning.
I didn't just attempt I succeed so as previously promised since I didn't screw it up here is how I pulled it.
I should also give a big mention to Matt who helped and most of all my Grandma who told me the basics.

Canning 
Take your jars lids and rings. Wash them all with soapy water, dry them with clean paper towels.
Put jars in boiling vat of water I used a big stock pot. Place lids in warm/simmering water. Take scalding hot jar out of the water fill it with sauce leaving about 1/2 an inch from the top. Run a butter knife around the sides to let extra air out of the applesauce. Place the warm lid on the jar and screw the ring on. Repeat until you run out of applesauce. 
(Now for the fun part) 
Put all of your filled and closed jars back into the vat of boiling water. Make sure the water is high enough to cover the top. Let the jars sit in the boiling (like crazy rolling boil) for 20 minutes. Take them out of the water and let them relax on the counter. Within a few minuted you will begin to hear the lids pop. This means you did it right!

Apple Bread

So this is the Apple Bread I mentioned before the one that I had to make a giant loaf instead of two 8 inch loafs. It is a beast. It's also delicious. It took me about an hour to bake it. Anyway it qualifies as a success so as promised here is the recipe.


Beastly Apple Bread
3 cups flour (all-purpose)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
Add these things together and ignore them. 

1/2 cup (maybe a little more) criss cross applesauce
2 medium/largeish apples
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 beaten eggs (by beaten I mean just kind of scramble them before you put them in)
1/2 tsp vanilla (I never ever use imitation because it costs more but real vanilla is amazing and you will taste a difference)
1 cup of nuts (I wanted to use Pecans but my S.O. convinced me to use walnuts)

Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350.  Add these things and then add them to the flour mix that you were ignoring. Get them to play nice and stick all together. Well grease a 9 inch bread pan. If you want you could grease up two 8 inch pans and make smaller loaves. Some of us don't have 8 inch bread pans anymore. For greasing I use Pam for baking. It smells nice because it has flour in it and I have had tremendous success with the stuff. Put your batter into the oven and bake for 45 minutes test it with a toothpick (or a bamboo skewer if you are like me). I had to bake my bread for a full hour if not a little more.  Depending on the size of your pan it might be done in 45 minutes but I will let you be the judge on that.


The secrets of removing baked goods from a pan. After you have covered your pan in grease and then baked it comes the moment of anxiety. Right now you are looking at your Beastly Apple Bread and thinking "wow it's beautiful I am awesome". Well you are but, now comes the moment of truth all of your hard work that took you an hour and a half to do could come crashing down and ruin your hard work. I'm here to make sure that doesn't happen to you.

The trick 
When you take your read out of the oven place the pan on a wire rack and leave it alone for 10 minutes. Don't touch it. Don't do anything to it! It needs sometime to cool down it's had a hard day being created and all. 
After it's had sometime to cool off place a plate on top of it. Flip it over. Pull off the pan. Now take another plate repeat the previous flip action. It's now beautiful, happy and hopefully in one piece. 

Enjoy it.

Thieving bastard loaf pan gnomes.

So after a most successful trip to beautiful Ellijay Georgia I now am the proud owner of 1/2 a bushel of Golden Mutsu apples and a peck of winesap apples. So I have begun the work of turning these apples into sortable and delicious items. Friday I went ahead and made applesauce.
Criss Cross Applesauce
4 cored, peeled, sliced Apples
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup water
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon (or however much you feel like)
Put in pan cook to death (death may take up to 45 mins)
throw in food processor or blender and turn into applesauce
I then put said apple sauce into freezer quart bags, let it cool out on the cabinet and then threw it in the freezer for future plans.

Sunday is the future!
I went ahead and came up with something to do with my piles of apples. I made some apple bread. It's actually  cooling as I type. However this is not a story of my apple bread because I don't know if it worked yet. It may have just made the house smell like apple bread but in reality be a delicious smelling awful loaf of crap.
I have finished the dough for my bread and it is now time to put said dough into the loaf pans. When it comes to my attention that the pans are not where they should be. This is no cause for worry I often misplace things in my kitchen (I have a very very small galley style kitchen). I look beneath the oven drawer. I reach my hand behind the drawer it isn't uncommon for pans to fall behind the drawer. I burn my arm on my preheated oven. I curse and move on to the cabinets of darkness where pots, pans, griddles and the never used espresso maker live . I find one glass loaf pan, it isn't mine it's my boyfriends and it's 9 inch pan. I want my 8inch pans. I fall to my knees and skid them. It hurts. I curse I make my boyfriend stop his work and help me. They are gone.

Questions flood my mind. Who would I have loaned bread pans to?
How many deal of day bread pans didn't I buy because I thought I had these beautiful 3 pans?
Where could they have gone?

I settle down and just throw enough batter for two 8 inch pans into one 9 inch pan.

Why you should read this blog and what it's all about.

Welcome to the Domestic Deviant Party on Blogger. I am as you may have guessed the domestic deviant. Here is where I will tell you all about my triumphs failures in things that would be of great interest to a late 1950's early 60's housewife. Things like how to have the perfect dinner party and what type of toothpaste covers the odor of how you might have been drinking all day while your husband was at work. Things that were important then and the things that are important to me now. I hope you will join me on my adventures in baking, cooking and the occasional sewing I try to attempt. I promise to share all of my recipes with you and any party planning I plan as well. Please enjoy yourself a nice martini put on your apron and join in with me as I put gender roles back in place and turn back the clock on the feminist movement.