Chewing becomes a chore, made worse if hand problems make it trickier to use a knife to cut things into bite size pieces.
Simple pleasures aren’t always so simple anymore.
Take apples. Maybe the idea of holding one in your hand while you take a bite through the skin & savour the wonderful scent & feel the juices run – well maybe best just leave it as a memory. Of course you can always cut it into slices, peel off that tricky skin – using a fruit knife was always the politely genteel way of eating an apple at table.
And you can still make apple sauce, apple pie, apple crumble, Eve’s pudding … Or buy a dish ready made.
On Saturday I had what I don’t suppose is an original idea, when the weather turned so cold, wet & blustery as to make the idea of crunching through crispy juicy apples for dessert less attractive than it had earlier seemed, but nor did I want to faff about cooking a pudding.
The brainwave was to cut the apples in slices, spread them on a sheet of foil & put them in the oven as the main course finished cooking, leaving them in there for about 15 minutes as the oven cooled.
It worked brilliantly; the slices were still juicy, but warm & just nicely soft (even the skins). And the perfume in the air just added to the pleasure.
Reminds me of another tip: should you ever need just a small amount of apple sauce, say to go with pork chops, visit the baby food shelf in the supermarket. Make sure you choose a pure apple puree, not something with added rice or thickener or flavour.
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An apple a day
Cut the fat. Don't cut it out
An apple a day
Cut the fat. Don't cut it out
