Long weekend, pt. 1

Friday morning, I decided to head up to Raleigh to visit a Real Mall, i.e. one whose most top-of-the-line store is NOT American Eagle. So Lily and I made the hour-and-twenty-minute drive. She was really good in the car, so we stopped at the play area first so she could run around a little bit and climb on stuff.

Giddyup!!!!

Even though we only went to a few stores, by the time we did that, and grabbed some lunch, it was already past Lily's nap time. She'd used up a lot of energy running between and through all the clothing racks and repeatedly picking of the Red Phone in JCrew. She slept the whole way home, the poor tired peanut.

We ended up with a few new things - I got some jeans at Gap (I'm not a huge fan of Gap in general but I LOVE their jeans, they fit great for the most part and are reasonably priced). And a JCrew bag always seems to find it's way home with me when I visit a mall that has one.... maybe it's a good thing the mall in Fayetteville kind of sucks!!

We also couldn't leave the Disney Store empty-handed. Once I pried Lily away from the princess dresses, we checked out all the stuffed animals in the back. I told her she could pick one of the small ones, and she chose Woody!! I think that's a pretty good pick. She even remembers his quotes from the movie - she picked him up and said "you're my favorite deputy!"

Lily's dad picked her up that afternoon to spend that night and the next morning with her, so Dave and I got to have a relaxing date night! The next morning, we decided to make french toast with sautéed apples. Sounds pretty good, huh??

Dave got going on the french toast..... (way to go, Dave!)....while I made the apples. (I should probably warn you at this point that this blog will be in part a food blog. Because I really love food. For real.)

So I've never made apples like this before, and the easiness was in very low proportion to their deliciousness. I used some apples that I had around, Granny Smiths from an apple crisp venture earlier in the week and two Stark Delicious apples from the prior week's CSA delivery.

Melt some butter. Mmmm, butter.

And throw in the chopped apples. I added a vanilla bean, because I have a ton of them from a bulk order I got online. Cook them for 8 minutes or until they're almost tender, then you just add some water with a little cornstarch whisked in, some brown sugar, and cinnamon.

Let it bubble away for a couple of minutes and it coalesces into the perfect autumn-y accompaniment to almost anything!!

And voila - whole wheat french toast with sautéed apples!! And bacon, which went just great with the sweet apples. Can you smell it?