Skillet Apple Pie

I *love* apple pie, and it's the season. Intuitive ingredients and equipment: apple, lemon juice, cinnamon, sugar, corn starch, butter, ready made crust, and a cast iron skillet. Peel and dice apples. In a big bowl, mix with sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice to taste. Add maybe a teaspoon of cornstarch (wet first in a separate container) to thicken. Line cast iron skillet with bottom crust, fill, pinch, vent, and stick in a 350 oven until it says 'uncle'. That's pretty much when the top crust is done. Heat transfer is proportional to mass; common sense says that when the part heated by air is done, the part heated by a couple pounds of iron is done, too. This did have a perfectly OK crust. Perfectly OK, not perfect, but it was all eaten. By me. In 24 hours.

Artichokes and Edamame

Has a nice rhythm, that. Say it: Artichokes and Edamame. Nice vegetarian dinner, too. Two layers of my bamboo steamer, set over a shallow pan of water with artichokes in the bottom, edamame, mushrooms, and ginger on the top

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Diced Brownies

This is was an attempt to thwart my child's teacher last year, who had some snack guidelines I suspect had more to do with her convenience than a concern for nutrition. Anyway, a half a brownie and some pretzels was not allowed. Putting a whole brownie at the bottom of the pretzels would have been obvious to the point of insulting. But this seemed to do the trick.