Who Can Resist Cinnamon Baked Apples...

Apples growing wild, Sweden

I adore the fall...  picking crisp apples from the trees to use in pies and apple butters; watching the crinkly leaves dance on the ground. I find there is something almost magical about this change in season. The blood-orange and deep red hues that clash with the wet, black soil. The wind blowing through to your core, so you feel that something is changing. Something is on its way. Something new and unpredictable. There is something in the air. The heaviness and humid weight of the summer disolves into fresh rain and stormy black skies. And there seems to be this space in time where you can decide which path to follow. As if you reach a crossroad that go with the season. And sometimes you choose to go where no trail is, and you make your own. Wondering where you end up.

And then the sweet smell of fresh baked cinnamon apples pulls you back to reality. And you know that you'll be fine. Everything is going to be alright.

The Nutrition Doctor's Cinnamon Baked Apples

Ingredients
4 apples
4 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup rum or apple juice
4 tbsp. mixed raisins and walnuts

Preparation
Preheat oven to 350°F.Create a small well in the center of apples by cutting out the stem and core and leaving the bottom intact. Transfer the apples to an 8-by-8-inch glass baking dish. Fill each well with 1 tablespoon brown sugar and 1 tbsp. of the raisin-nut mix. Sprinkle cinnamon over apples. Pour rum or apple juice around the apples, cover with foil and bake until soft, about 1 hour. Let cool before serving.

I like to serve them topped with Greek yogurt (and you want the full fat version here - the non fat is way too tart - also remember that the healthy compound CLA is found only in animal and dairy fat).

"There never has been security. No man has ever known what he would meet around the next corner; if life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor."

Eleanor Roosevelt
1884-1962, First Lady of the United States and Civil Rights Activist