Category Archives: Ozarks

Easy as Apple Pie

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Apple stilllife

I’m hungry for an apple pie and this recipe from Southern Living Magazine (Sept 2011) makes a great one.

Its almost like apple dumplings but not!

And the iron skillet is essential to the pie.

Try it and let me know how it turns out!

Making an apple pie has never been so easy. Simply toss apples, cinnamon, and brown sugar, and spoon over a refrigerated pie crust in the cast-iron skillet. Top with the other crust and bake.

Ingredients
4 pounds apples (whatever you have apple-wise)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 (14.1-oz.) package refrigerated piecrusts

How to Make It
Step 1
Preheat oven to 350º. Peel apples, and cut into 1/2-inch-thick wedges. Toss apples with cinnamon and 3/4 cup granulated sugar.

Step 2
Melt butter in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet over medium heat; add brown sugar, and cook, stirring constantly, 1 to 2 minutes or until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, and place 1 piecrust in skillet over brown sugar mixture. Spoon apple mixture over piecrust, and top with remaining piecrust. Cut 4 or 5 slits in top for steam to escape.

Step 3
Bake at 350º for 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly, shielding with aluminum foil during last 10 minutes to prevent excessive browning, if necessary. Cool on a wire rack 30 minutes before serving

woodsmoke and autumn prayers

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Rainy Day - Table Rock Lake

Thudding of heavy rain
against the tin roof
deep as thunder,
as the chill arrives carried
on the back of the north wind
and the wings of geese
fleeing south.

Black winged clouds
dark as ravens eyes,
chase the day away west
and down the ridge
into dark hollows and deep ferned rests
of wildings and heavy furred souls.

Scent of woodsmoke
curls up from unseen hearths
where bright fires catch the last of the sun,
warming benches and tidy rooms
hidden from all but wide eyed owls
roosting til moonrise.

I watch the clouds spill over the ridge
and into my kitchen
deepening the dark of autumn,
my dusk and evening prayers.

This is what silence sounds like

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This is what silence sounds like

A silence of six minutes and twenty seconds

A silence that pours across a million faces

A silence that washes a million faces with tears

A silence that cascades across the hard-hearted land

A silence that spills from wounds and hearts

A silence that washes away the last of the argument

A silence that pours forth like justice

A silence that sounds like courage

A silence that sounds like

Change.

A Jubilee Old Time Gospel Meeting

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The lesson was on the rapture
and something I have been considering for a while.
It might be the only way to get out of this mess
Just leaving it all behind, rising in the air.

He preached on Paul and the Thessalonians-
A saint I have had words with all my life.
His zeal, a little zealous but he could spin a tale
of end times and deadlines and rising in the air.

The air was warm and thick, too warm
for an early April evening,
and one could be hearing trumpets, if you listened real good
and the Dixie Melody Boys started singing
and they all began to rise
and those flowered dresses and plaid shirts
all got left behind
rising in the air.

the seas I dreamed

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bob boat 3 2016

I find myself
strangely in a home
I never dreamed nor wanted.
Its a feebled reach from the water
to the seas I dreamed.

A small beautiful vessel
where I found you perched,
its white bow striped blue,
the color of your eyes.
I saw the horizon and knew how it would feel
not to remain as we were
but different.

The possibility of here and stay
or go
and the choice was made
with the tenderness
of how the key was held and the lock
no longer needed.

Because I had dreamed how it would be
to drift in that moonlit ocean,
alone.

Then you were there at my shoulder,
tiller in hand,
steering us toward home.

its the first day of autumn

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fall - flowers2

and the coolness in the air is more figment than
real
mixed with heat rising from parched pavement
and aching ground.

It is quiet-
only an occasional lilt from passing birds
and laconic buzzing
from red wasps
busy at the old board bench.

I lean against the hickory,
it bark worn gray from seasons changing,
readying yellow to overtake the dried green
of its saw toothed leaves
in preparation of shedding it all
for a long winters dreaming.

I leave ex votos, tamata, milagros
wedged in the folds of the hickory’s skin,
bits of tin in the shape of my grief
and lost years.
An altar good enough for most deities
and the angels that linger
in autumn woods
on the first day
of my fall.