Kay Wheeler Moore

Welcome to my blog

Hello. . .

The Newfangled Country Gardener is for anyone who has a garden, would like to have a garden, or who simply enjoys eating the garden-fresh way. I don't claim to be an expert; in this blog I'm simply sharing some of the experiences my husband and I have in preparing food that is home-grown.

About the author

Kay Wheeler Moore is the author of a new cookbook, Way Back in the Country Garden, that features six generations of recipes that call for ingredients that are fresh from the garden. With home gardening surging in popularity as frugal people become more resourceful, this recipe collection and the stories that accompany it ideally will inspire others to cook the garden-fresh way and to preserve their own family food stories as well. The stories in this book center around the Three Red-Haired Miller Girls (Kay's mother and aunts) who grew up in Delta County, TX, with their own backyard garden so lavish that they felt as though they were royalty after their Mama wielded her kitchen magic on all that was homegrown. Introduced in Kay's previous book, Way Back in the Country, the lively Miller Girls again draw readers into their growing-up world, in which a stringent economic era--not unlike today's tight times--saw people turn to the earth to put food on the table for their loved ones. The rollicking yarns (all with recipes attached) have love, family, and faith as common denominators and show how food evocatively bonds us to our life experiences.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Recipe links apples and storebought corn muffin mix for ease and flavor

Speaking of apples, which this blog did yesterday and has since before fall "officially" began on Wednesday, a truly incredible recipe from Family Circle magazine a few years back hit the jackpot with this flavor combination.

It uses fresh, chopped apples with a storebought corn muffin mix and adds pumpkin pie spice and chopped nuts. The resulting muffins can go a variety of directions--playing to their "corn-muffin" side, to be used with soups and stews and down-home cooking, or playing to their apple-y, spicy side, to be used as a breakfast accompaniment.

In our family we interpreted them as corn muffins and served them alongside the Easy Vegetable Soup I mentioned a few days back. Truly wonderful! The inclusion of the apple bits made the soup, with its veggies and ground turkey chunks, seem as though it was a complete meal.

Baking Apple-Corn Muffins also makes you feel virtuous because it helps you create a "from-stratch" menu item with the convenience and speed of a mix.


Apple-Corn Muffins

2 boxes (8.5 ounces each) corn muffin mix
2 eggs (I use egg substitute)
1/2 cup milk (I use skim)
2 small sweet apples (such as McIntosh, Empire, or Jonagold), peeled, cored, chopped very fine
3 tablespoons sugar (I use sugar substitute)
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Coat 12 cups of muffin pans with nonstick cooking spray. In a large bowl combine muffin mixes, eggs, milk, finely chopped apple, 2 tablespoons of the sugar, and the pumpkin pie spice. Stir until ingredients are moistened. Then divide evenly between prepared muffin cups (usually a heaping 1/3-cup batter in each cup). Sprinkle tops of muffins with remaining tablespoon sugar and the chopped nuts. Bake at 400 degrees for 18 to 20 minutes until lightly browned around edges. Slide a thin knife between muffin and pan; gently lift muffins from pan. Cool and serve.

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