Let's get cooking!

I love a bargain. Especially at the grocery store. But did I mention I am old? So I am easily fooled.

I was wandering the produce department, hoping to find anything I could justify buying, when I stumbled across the reduced produce shelf. There were lots of treasures today, including bags of bananas in varying degrees of ripeness. I was tempted, but couldn’t muster the energy for banana bread.

I noticed a lone bag which was filled with a variety of apples for the bargain price of 99 cents. I always love the psychology of pricing. For a dollar I would not have bought it but for 99 cents... I’ll risk it. I imagined I would have plenty of time to decide what to do with apples, after all they last forever.

I went home and two hours later I unpacked my apples to enjoy my bargain. Have you ever heard the saying, “One bad apple spoils the barrel?” Well there was one bad apple. It had started to turn brown, and now all of the apples seemed to be starting to have spots. Not a lot, but I knew I had to do something soon. Since I had only one frozen pie shell, the apples became a gallette, or free form tart. I especially like gallettes because I can’t usually do pie crusts that are pretty, but I can do rustic. The recipe also was pretty free form. I’m sharing because I think it turned out pretty in a rustic kind of way.

Apple Gallette

1-9 inch pie crust

4 cups apples, peeled and finely sliced

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon ginger

2 Tablespoons flour

2 Tablespoons butter

Heat oven to 375 degrees

Unroll pie crust and place it in the bottom of a 9-inch pie pan.

Combine apples, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and flour. Pour apples in pie crust and fold up side crust around apples. Dot top with butter.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or until apples are tender and crust is browned.