Cozy gluten free apple cinnamon oatmeal

Buy prepared flavoured oatmeal? This is an easy, less expensive, and healthy alternative.

While I, like many, many others, lovingly refer to this time of year as ‘pumpkin everything season,’ it’s also the time of year apples are at their finest. Every weekend I see someone on my Twitter feed or Facebook page posting photos of themselves ankle deep in an apple orchard, surrounded by full trees and bushels brimming with the sweet, crispy fruit. Well, I finally made it to an apple orchard myself, and now my fridge is overloaded with them. I went through a decent amount of them at a pretty impressive pace all on my own. My husband didn’t start reaching for any till I introduced him to the tasty apple-almond butter combo. After a while, though, a slight panic settled in when I realized I had just too many apples. So, I decided to chop some up and make an oatmeal dish that I could heat up every morning for breakfast.

(Mostly) gluten free Thanksgiving treats: How I glutened myself

Cute mini gluten free pies. Except for the ones on the left. Those are cute, but deadly.

This year, I decided it had been far too long since I had pumpkin pie, so I set out to make that. A few days before I hit the kitchen to whip it up, I visited an apple orchard. Before I knew it my fridge was bursting with apples. Ok, looks like I’m making some apple pie, too, I thought.

Since I had never made pie crust before (and my only experience with it was — occasionally — watching my mom release a string of expletives because the dough wouldn’t hold together — sorry mom!), I did some heavy duty googling.  In my search for the easiest of pie crusts, I came across images of charming little pies baked in cupcake pans. Well, I certainly had a couple of those! Just like that my pie baking feat morphed into a mini pie baking feat. And, if I do say so myself, they came out pretty darn cute!

For the crust, I used Bob’s Red Mill gluten free ‘easy as pie crust’ recipe. I doubled the recipe and added 1 tbsp of sugar, as the pie crusts I’ve always had had a hint of sweetness to them.

For the apple filling, I used Chef Michael Smith’s recipe (only I, of course, substituted the flour with all-purpose gluten free flour).

For the pumpkin filling, I used E.D. Smith’s pumpkin pie filling.

And this is how I glutened myself.

A lovely gluten free wedding cake just for me, part deux

It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since we got engaged!

Well, I can’t believe I’m writing this as it really doesn’t feel like it’s been 365 days, but this weekend my husband and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary. In the morning he surprised me with a beautiful bouquet, and then we took to our car and journeyed three hours away to Algonquin Park, which was were he had proposed to me two years ago. There, on bended knee, he asked me to marry him. On a ‘lookout point’ cliff top. In front of dozens of tourists. The ‘oooohs’ and ‘ahhhhs’ coming from our sudden audience made me tongue-tied, to say the least. So much so that I left the poor guy suspended on bended knee for far longer than I had intended. When I heard one person not too far away whisper, ‘oh my God, is she going to say no?!’ I finally snapped out of my stage fright and said, ‘Yes!’

One year after that we were walking down the aisle, and now one year after that we are marveling at the fact that it’s been a year. It almost feels funny ringing in ‘one year,’ as we’ve been together for almost a decade, but it’s fun having another milestone to celebrate.

After a year of staring at wrapped up leftover wedding cake sitting in our freezer, we finally put it in the fridge yesterday to defrost. Will it taste good? Who knows; we’re about to find out. His might taste a better, as it looks like it was wrapped up with a bit more care. Yes, we do have a ‘his and hers’ wedding cake. As I told in one of my earlier posts, he had surprised me with a maple gluten free wedding cake just for me, as I had recently discovered my gluten intolerance. So whether the cake tastes fresh or stale, this is a fun wedding tradition we’ve both been looking forward to for the past year, and it’s the perfect way to end a spectacular weekend down memory lane 🙂

Blast from the past meets present day: A piece of cake from our wedding day, one year ago today, and a bouquet to celebrate our one year.