Dorm Room Apple Cobbler

As a student living on campus, there isn't much room for creativity when it comes to cooking, unless you live in the apartment style dorms and have your own kitchen. I do not have my own kitchen, a means for getting to and from the grocery store, or even much storage room. This is fine, because I have a meal plan and can eat all the mediocre food I want with a swipe of my ID card. Unfortunately, even those of us with meal plans still occasionally have a need for cooking/baking. My need happens to come in the form of my boyfriend and his imminent birthday. How will I overcome the undesirable circumstances of dorm life in order to make him the most delicious birthday treat of his young life? By creating the recipe for Dorm Room Apple Cobbler, of course!

Note: This recipe is based off of what I personally have in my dorm room. Some of these ingredients will need to be bought if you, unlike me, do not own them already.

Dorm Room Apple Cobbler  
Equipment-

•  one deep baking dish, preferably 9 in.
•  a sharp knife 
•  one medium bowl for mixing; ask the nice people at the front desk
•  one wooden spoon, for mixing, ladling and licking when you are finished. Again, see front desk.
• measuring cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. As a college student living in a dorm, I'm sure you don't have these. Either eyeball it (let's be honest, it's cobbler. You're basically just throwing a bunch of delicious ingredients together and calling it baking) or ask the people at the front desk and pray you get lucky.
• one oven mitt or heavy towel for taking the pan out of the oven.
• friends to share the finished product with. If you don't have friends, you can substitute with the gym after you have eaten the whole cobbler by yourself.

Ingredients-    

    Apple Filling:

• about 5-7 apples, which you can steal from Suwannee/Fresh. Try to get the green ones.
• 3/4 cup sugar. If you don't have enough sugar to accommodate both the filling and the topping, try substituting with brown sugar. It pears nicely with the apples. (See what I did there?)
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• dash of nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup water (Use bottled if you can, but if you use tap, filter it first. Tallahassee water is some nasty sh*t)
• 1 tablespoon butter. Don't have room in your fridge or your wallet to buy four whole sticks of butter at Publix? Use Suwannee/Fresh for that, too.

        Topping:

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar (real sugar for this one)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder. Do NOT use baking soda. For both our sakes.
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 egg

            OR (if you don't have eggs and don't feel like buying a whole carton for one recipe)

• 1 1/2 tablespoon water
• 1 1/2 tablespoon oil
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Apparently this mixture mimics the texture that the egg was going to give the batter. Plus, you don't have 11 unused eggs in your tiny little dorm fridge now.

Directions-

      Prep:

• Walk down to the kitchen on your floor of the dorm. If it is in use, proceed to closest floor and try to use their kitchen. If the people occupying the kitchen are using it as a study room, use the oven and counter space anyways while giving them pointed, dirty looks. 
• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. 
• While the oven is preheating, wash, peel and slice the apples. Don't worry about getting all the peel off, nobody cares about that. 
• Lightly butter your 9in. dish. If your hands are clean, which they are since you just washed those apples, your fingers will work fine for the buttering process. 
• In medium bowl, combine the thinly sliced apples, sugar, flour, cinnamon, salt, vanilla, and water in the quantities given. Put this mixture into your buttered dish.
• Dot the apples with the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter and set aside for the moment.
• Using the medium bowl once again, combine all of the ingredients for the topping and beat until smooth using that wooden spoon. 
• Drop the batter over the filling, evenly spacing it. The batter will spread as it bakes, so don't worry if it doesn't seem like there's enough. 

      Baking:

• The oven should be heated by now, so open it, making sure to blast those studiers with searingly hot air (seriously, there are plenty of study rooms that aren't kitchens, get out!), and put your little dish of appley goodness inside. 
• Bake for 30-40 minutes or until the apples are tender and the crust is golden brown. 
• Using the heavy towel or oven mitt, remove the cobbler from the oven, let cool for a moment and then serve.

Serves 6-8 (or one very lonely, hungry college student)

I have a feeling that I am going to be adapting many recipes like this for next semester. Anyways, have fun and enjoy!

Don't Blink

Sometimes, I feel like Lucy from Fifty First Dates. Not because I have short-term memory loss or because I relive the same day over and over, but because like Lucy at the end of the movie, sometimes I wake up and have no idea where I am.

Don't worry. This isn't an entry about how I drink too much and then black out and wake up in some stranger's house. I just feel like the story of my life unfolds so quickly that I forget where I left my bookmark the night before when I went to sleep.

Of course, when I open my eyes in the morning, I am happy with where I am. This place that I find myself in, this momentary blip on my lifeline, is a good place. But still, it is unsettling to know that life passes by so quickly.

I feel like the last time I blinked, I was a little girl playing outside with my sister, and the next time I blink, I will be in my thirties watching two of my own children play outside.

The only protection against the raging current of life, which seeks to sweep us off our feet and carry us away at breakneck speed is to find an anchor. That anchor is living in the moment. This moment that we have right now, we can never have it again. We can visit it, in memory, but we cannot swim back upstream to that exact spot once we have left it behind. Cherish the moment and the people who inhabit it with you.

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

So, let me preface this with a little anecdote about my morning. Yesterday, my laptop decided that it basically hated me and every time I turned it on, it sounded like a low-powered lawnmower. Unfortunately, it didn't cut grass, so this new feature was useless and pretty annoying. After listening to it for a while, I surmised that the sound was coming from the fan, so even though the computer itself was still functioning, if the fan wasn't working properly, it would quickly overheat and that leads to even more exciting problems.

When I discovered all of this, it was already 4:45 and the IT Service people were about to close up shop for the day, so I had to wait until this morning to bring my little baby down to their building. When I brought it in, they gave me a bunch of papers with a lot of words on them that basically say "We maintain the right to charge you lots of money for this repair and to take our own sweet time doing it." What was I supposed to do? I handed over the laptop and said a tearful goodbye, knowing that we would not be reunited for "at least five business days". As today is Friday, that meant an entire week of regular days.

After leaving my laptop in the capable hands of those more computer-savvy than I, I walked back to my dorm and decided I needed a nap. About thirty minutes after I had fallen asleep, the IT guy called me and said that the laptop was ready for me to pickup, it turns out there was just a little bit of dust in the fan so they cleaned it up for me free of charge. I never knew that a few specks of dust could sound like a handful of sizable pebbles. Anyways, I was thrilled, because I didn't have to pay any money and now my computer runs smoothly and quietly. If I close my eyes, it's as if I am sitting at a Mac.

So that story had a happy ending, but what I really want to talk about though, is the dream I had after I got of the phone with IT (because yes, I wanted to finish my nap).

In the dream, my mom and my stepdad were sending my little brother to college. Now, my baby brother is bright, but mind you, he's only thirteen. Besides, he already gets into enough trouble just in middle school, so why would they send him off to college where they can't keep an eye on him? Ah, that's where I come in. Instead of sending Jakob to UC Davis so that he could still live at home, under their noses for the majority of his day, they decided to send him to FSU. It's logical, because they could just set him up in the same dorm as his big sister and bam! built in babysitter.

Of course, none of this makes any sense, but it was a dream, so bear with me. Jakob is pretty upset by the whole situation. He's just a kid and he doesn't want to live so far away from his family and friends. In an effort to cheer him up, I tell him that I will help him unpack and settle in. While I am helping him carry his bags up the stairs, I tell him that whenever he feels lonely or homesick, he can always come see me, because I will be right down the hall. He said, "But Meghan, boys aren't allowed in the girls rooms, are they?" I thought for a moment. "That's not really true. There are some foggy, 'cohabitation' rules that no one really follows, but don't worry. You're my brother, so it won't even be a problem. If you're feeling sad or just want to hang out with someone other than your room mate, just come over and we'll lay out some sleeping bags and pillows and blankets on the floor and have a sleepover."

Maybe I shouldn't have used the word cohabitation in front of my little brother, but this was just a dream. Anyways, we finally get to his room and there's a little white board hung on the door that has his name and his room mate's name on it, but Jakob's name is spelled wrong, so I let him rewrite it before opening the door. This is the best part of the dream: the room was all the way at the end of the hall, kind of in a corner, and it was huge! It looked like someone had converted a three or four person suite into a double. Not only was there a bunch of space, but there was also two bathroom sinks and a long counter in front of a wall of mirrors, there was a kitchen sink, complete with garbage disposal, a bunch of cupboards and storage space, a stove, an oven, a private bathroom with a tub and this weird machine set into the wall that peeled, diced, or shaped  fruit into fancy shapes (I want that machine to be real).

Clearly this room was being wasted on boys. Why didn't this magical room exist for girls? It looked like a studio apartment, except nicer. I ran out into the hallway and looked at the room number. "Okay, I told myself. I am going to remember this room number so that I can change my room assignment for next semester."

Of course, on waking up I realized that no such room exists at FSU, or anywhere. A dream is a wish your heart makes, a horrible, unresolvable wish that will only lead to heartbreak.

That fruit machine was the sh*t. Seriously. I want one.