Here's another wonderful autumn dessert: Apple Brownies. Now, before you start imagining chewy chocolate brownies with apples inside, relax! These aren't chocolate at all, but they have a wonderful brownie-like texture! You can see a picture of them at the recipe. They taste even better than they look!

My mom has made these apple brownies for years, and often gets asked for her recipe. They're a great lunchbox treat or afternoon snack. We like ours well-browned, so they're not extremely chewy, but you can bake them to whatever texture you like. If you want an easy and delicious apple dessert recipe, try Apple Brownies!

Today's apple recipe is a delicious quick apple coffee cake! I made this a couple weeks ago, and we all really enjoyed it. It's a soft, cinnamon-y quick-cake with apples on top, and it's easy to make, too! We were given some flavorful cooking apples and this was one of the things I made which used them. If you want a fast dessert or an afternoon snack, this coffee cake is great served warm or cold!

I love apples. I think most people do! They're so fun to cook with. Perfect Homemade Apple Pie is probably my favorite way to eat apples, followed by apple crisp. We also like to add fresh chopped apples to our morning oatmeal. There are so many ways to serve apples. If I had more time I'd make more apple recipes and take pictures to share with everyone! ;)

Okay friends, I need your help! I'm terribly behind in many different things, and one of them is getting my links page set up. I figured out how to do it, and I'm all excited about getting it filled out! I can't believe it's taken me so long!

I know a number of you link to this website on the sidebars of your blogs, or on your journals. If you link to me, will you please contact me with your blog or website's address so I can link back to you? Thank you so much!!

Yehoshua and Eliyahu have been plotting to escape. Click to see more of their tricks!

Life has been pretty smooth these past couple weeks. Busy, yes, but that's just always the case. If I'm not busy, I invite company over to cook for, or consult my never-ending list of huge jobs... like weeding, or cleaning the garage... But the last two weeks, we've had no doctor's visits, no emergencies, no broken bones, and no car problems.

It sure has been nice, and I sure am thankful!

I'm also thankful that my mom lives 6 miles away, and has a working washing machine... because ours decided to collapse this morning.

Today started out normally enough. I had my laundry caught up on Friday, so I wasn't buried in dirty laundry, but I did need to wash diapers and bed sheets, particularly since today was supposed to be beautiful and sunny, and tomorrow was supposed to start feeling more like Autumn.

So, I loaded in the diapers... (Read about what happened!)

Our current poll question is: How frequently do you try a new recipe? If you haven't already done so, please go vote! :)

Thank you to everyone who has been leaving recipe reviews... they're always so fun to read!

I made energy bars yesterday, and tried an idea left from Lisa_iowa in a review at the bottom of the recipe, which was to put the bars in one pan instead of two. My jelly roll pans are about 10.5" x 15", which isn't exactly huge, and so an entire recipe of energy bars was difficult to squeeze into the pan.

I might have just put it on two pans after all, except that I had gotten the bright idea to make a double batch of the energy bars, and use both sheets. I get tired of making energy bars every week or two, so I figured these extra-thick bars would be my solution! ;)

So, I pressed them in, and it worked! I did have to increase the cooking time by about 10 minutes, but they turned out wonderfully! Yay! I may just do that again! :) Thanks, Lisa! ;)

Since this is largely a cooking blog, I thought I'd mention that fresh spinach is in the news: Don't eat fresh spinach from the store, as it is suspected to have caused an outbreak of E. coli.

I guess I'll save my tasty spinach-stuffed chicken breast recipe for another time! ;)

I love onions! One of my favorite onion "dishes" is grilled vidalia onions, served with some grilled steak or chicken. Our garden onions usually keep well, stored in a dark, cool, dry location (if possible). However, sometimes they start to go bad and then I have to be creative with using them.

One thing I love to do with fresh onions (and garlic!) is to use them when I cook ahead. We like lots of chopped onion and minced garlic fried with our ground beef, and when I fry 10+ pounds of burger meat, it uses quite a few! If I have garlic or onions that are starting to wilt or spoil, I fry some meat and then put it in the freezer.

I've found that normally freezing things like green peppers, chopped onions, or garlic will leave a strong smell in your freezer and consequently in the other foods you have frozen. (Most people don't really like green pepper-flavored broccoli. ;D) However, when I use those same things to season meat as it is cooking, I can freeze it without "flavoring" my entire freezer. ;)

I'm going to take a break over the weekend from my "Fresh From The Garden" posts, but we'll continue next week with a week's worth of apple recipes!