Well I made eight of the upside-down apple pies, and because I had to trim the dough I ended up with a plastic baggie full of scraps.  What was I to do with them?  Now I try really hard to keep my weight down, but inside me I am a girl who LOVES food.  So I lay in bed on Christmas Eve thinking, what can I do with those scraps and here is what I came up with.

I took 1 1/2 apples, peeled and cored and then I put them in my little chopper.  If you don’t have a chopper you can dice them up small with a knife.  I put the apples in the bowl with a squirt of lemon, a handful of brown sugar, a sprinkle of cinnamon and a sprinkle of nutmeg.

Then I took the pastry scraps and rolled them out; I took a bowl and set it over the pastry and traced around the bowl with a knife.  I spread a little bit of butter on the dough, then added some of the apple mixture and folded the dough in half and pinched the edges.  Bake it at 4oo degrees for 15 to 20 minutes until the pastry becomes golden brown.

After you take the pastry out of the oven, take about two tablespoons of confectioner’s sugar and add a few drops of water to it to make an icing.  Ice the pastry and serve it warm.  Chet liked it with a big glass of milk.

I have to admit the combination of the butter and brown sugar makes a “Caramel” flavor, which is the same with the upside-down apple pie. 

Here’s what it looked like:

I figured since today is Christmas, I would take a break from my traditional rantings and ravings and give you a favorite recipe of mine that is very easy and absolutely delicious.  It is Upside-Down Apple Pie.  Here’s what you need:

2-9 inch pie shells (I cheat and use Pillsbury but if anyone has a great pie crust recipe I’d be glad to try it!), 1/2 stick butter, 1/2 cup pecan halves, 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, 4 or 5 large apples (peeled, cored and sliced), 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup white sugar, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, a pinch of salt.

Pre-heat the over to 4oo degrees. 

Place the apples in a large bowl and sprinkle with the lemon juice.

In a small bowl combine the flour, white sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.  Mix well.  Toss the mixture over the apples, coating them thoroughly.

Spread the butter as evenly as you can on the bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie plate.  Press the pecans, rounded sound down into the butter layer.  Pat the brown sugar evenly over the nuts and then place one of the pie shells over the brown sugar, pecan layer.

Spread the apple mixture in the pie plate.  Cover with the second pastry shell.  Crimp edges of the pastry and make steam vents in the top.

Bake for 50 minutes.  Let it cool for about one minute, then gently slide a knife around the pie plate between the plate and shell. Place a serving plate over the pie pan and invert the pie.  My original recipe says five minutes of cooling, but sometimes the pie stuck so I started flipping it quickly.

It should look like this and get you compliments galore!  Happy eating!!

Imagine traveling to your vacation home and finding that your locks had been changed and your belongings removed.  Think it couldn’t happen, think again.  That is exactly what happened to Mimi Ash when she visited her mountain retreat in Truckee, California.  They took all of her belongings including her pictures and her husband’s ashes.  Could this be the work or robbers? In a sense yes; the culprit in this instance was her mortgage holder, Bank of America.

Scenarios like these are happening all over the country, in some instances the consumer is behind in their payments and the banks illegally foreclose, but there have been instances when the property has been paid in full and the bank has still gone in, changed the locks, removed belongings and shut off electricity.

According to the National Association of Consumer Advocates “Every day, smaller wrongs happen to people trying to save their homes: being charged the wrong amount of money, being wrongly denied a loan modification, being asked to hand over documents four or five times.”  I know this for a fact, because it has happened to me.  We were denied a loan modification by Chase Bank.  I have all of the documentation and I plan on writing a book about my experiences.

The gist of it is that the banks earn an enormous amount of profit by loaning money and they want to have “bad” loans so they can off-set the money they earned.  In my opinion most of the banks out there are not much better than a petty thief that picks your pocket on the street.   The bailout of 2 years ago established that while some of these banks were crying “poor mouth”  they took the TARP money and used it to pay bonuses to a lot of executives who make enormous salaries to begin with. And yes, you can argue that they have no responsiblity to help you with your finances, but the bottom line is they have a responsibility to be human beings.