I’ve had to learn the hard way with dessert.  I end up leaving it ’til moments before guests arrive and…surprise, surprise… instead of making dessert I’m busy assembling a bangles collage on my arm instead. This apple crisp can be made in advance,  is supa-easy, and tastes  infinity better than people expect it to taste. Shock of the century: this is an Ina recipe.

Old Fashioned Apple Crisp

Ina says to combine the crumble portion of this treat with the paddle attachment on your stand up mixer. How about your hands? How about your fucking hands can crumble a few things to go on an apple pile. But if you’re jonesin for more dishes to wash do it her way.

Seriously this dish is awesome and I almost always have the necessary ingredients on hand to make it happen.

White Trash Option:  Skip the orange/lemon zest and/or replace the fresh juice with store bought.  You suck if you do this and Ina will murder you but sometimes you need this crisp and it’s too damn cold to journey to Whole Foods for lemon zest.

It’s fucking cold and canned soup is the devil.  Make this classic:

Chicken Noodle Soup

We let Tyler Florence beat out Ina for this one.  His recipe is just so simple and clean. We roasted bone-in skin on chicken breasts for his 1 ½ cups cooked chicken. We have a pretty intense arsenal of soup recipes at this joint and will get you up to date ASAP.  This is a great one to start with- the soup is basic/delicious/comforting and you can’t mess up.  Here’s a secret.  I used to be against soup- I refused to “drink” my food. What an IDIOT.  This was the recipe that took me from Darth to Luke.  Enjoy.

This was too good.  We ate them right out of the pot we cooked it in, sitting around our kitchen island and talking about all the weird shit we’d done over the weekend (including but not limited to octopus-like dance moves followed by bowls on bowls of cheerios at 4 am- note to self: make octopus).  We served it with all the worlds bread and a simple salad with a homemade vinaigrette (things we don’t do in the Kastle: participate in self-imposed torture by purchasing salad dressing in a plastic bottle).

*White Trash Option: Don’t use the saffron.  Or close your Gilt window and buy saffron instead of another Gorjana bracelet.  Priorities.