Great News + Cauliflower Tomato Bake with Basil & Parmesan

Good morning!  I hope ya’ll are doing wonderfully.  I am currently enjoying the decadence that is a chocolate croissant from Aroma Espresso Bar so obviously, I’m doing great. Sure, I have a cold and deadlines and I missed work yesterday and I’m under a bit of stress but, did I mention the chocolate croissant!? Sometimes a delicious chocolate croissant really does make it all better.

I’m going to keep this post short and sweet as I am THIS close to unveiling the new Jewhungry redesign so needed to take a break from posting new content so as not to interfere with the unveiling.  However, a few exciting things happened this week in my world o’ blogging and food and I just couldn’t NOT share, Jew know?

 

First things first, I received the most beautiful, HUGE, ruby red Le Creuset Dutch oven (see above) yesterday as a result of winning This American Bite’s Most Inspiring Recipe of 2013.  I was so dang excited when the UPS guy dropped it off that I gave him several freshly baked cookies that had just come out of the oven.  I honestly would have hugged him but I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression.  Yesterday also brought a feature of Jewhungry on My Jewish Learning’s site, The Nosher (see the full interview here).  And today brings the accompanying recipe to the interview.  Here are a few pictures to get you drooling so make sure you head on over to The Nosher for the full recipe.

See you at the Redesign Unveiling, I hope!

xo

What’s Your Kosher?

Truth

*This post originally appeared in The Times of Israel on Oct. 31, 2013

So there I was, in 2008, newly kosher and eating a meal with my vegan friend and trying to get her to understand my confusion regarding her question.  You’re a vegan.  To me, that seems difficult and requires quite a bit of discipline and creativity.  But from her lens, however, veganism was a no-brainer; something that came naturally to her.  At that point in my kosher-keeping journey, I was still craving the occasional cheeseburger so it wasn’t as natural to me as it is now.  We went back and forth on the differences and similarities of keeping both of these diets.  Eventually, the conversation naturally flowed to the challenges of starting a new diet; expense, limitations, family judgement, trying to get creative with cooking, etc., when it hit me.  Vegan is her kosher.

Kosher used to be exotic.  Having a specialized diet that required shopping at specialty grocery stores, declining dinner invitations to certain restaurants or other people’s homes due to dietary issues and budgeting to afford diet-specific items was considered strange and even too much work to consider.  But in 2013, everybody’s got their kosher.  With the rise of diets including, but not limited to, gluten-free, grain-free, vegan, paleo, strictly organic and/or only eating unpastruerized dairy products, etc., kosher just isn’t that strange anymore and I gotta say, I am a little relieved.  Heck, at this point, kosher is old news. So you can’t cook meat and milk together?  Big deal. Try going sugar-free, gluten-free and paleo.

Continuing reading at The Times of Israel

Pancakes and Problems: Things get spiced . . . vanilla chai-spiced.

Hello!  It has been AGES since my last post and if you follow this blog, you might be wondering to yourself, “Ummmm, Whit, didn’t you like, make a big deal about unveiling a new and improved, self-hosted blog?”  Yes! I sure did.  Here’s the long of the short of it:  I hired a designer via Etsy.  The designer was less than awesome.  I got my buddy, Yosef from This American Bite on the case but he’s super swamped and I’m anxious to get back to blogging, especially with Thanksgivukkah just around the corner so I made an executive decision to take a step back and hold off until after the holiday season.  Here’s hoping . . .

In the meantime, I’m back to posting and it feels so right.  Since I last posted to this blog, a lot of fun things have happened.  I was asked to become a permanent blogger for the Times of Israel (posts can be found here and here).  I also had another post over at Kveller.com (find it here), was interviewed by the Huffington Post for an article on meditation (that can be found here) and I’ve been asked to do my very first cooking demo for a synagogue here in North Miami Beach (details to follow).  I’ve also been swamped at work, took the family and went to LA for 3 days and hosted our very first Simchat Torah Wing Ding (9 lbs. of wings, 4 different kinds of flavors, and lots of hungry friends.  It’s how we Southern Jews celebrate the completion of reading the Torah).  Life has been lovely and chaotic, to say the least.

In all the time since I last posted, I’ve also been doing a lot of reading and of course, a lot of thinking.  Before I stepped off-line for a bit, I wrote a post that sparked a lot of debate/comments/criticism/assumptions.  I had been having a lot of mixed feelings and confusion over my voice as a writer as well as my place on the blogosphere.  The post (found here) was supposed to be about just that–reflections on where I fit in as a blogger as well as a space to vent some frustrations about what can happen when folks make assumptions on the choices other people make or rather, the assumption that other people even HAVE a choice.  Of course, the irony is that it was completely misread as a judgement piece on other people’s choices as well as a knock to mothers who stay at home.  It was celebrated by mama’s who work out of the home and ripped apart by mama’s who work in the home. I was accused of being ‘intense’ (as if that’s a bad thing?).  I was accused of judging people’s choices (an act of which is against everything I believe to be whole and true, both as a social worker and a human being, though I do not claim to be void of the fault of judgement from time to time).  It was rough y’all.

Lazy Sundays

I’ve been reflecting on this piece off and on since I posted it all those months ago.  I take full responsibility for my part in it’s misinterpretation and have been questioning how it was written ever since–was I inarticulate? Could I have been more clear in defining ‘privilege’ as I see it? Should I have even used that word?  And while I was trying to find clarity in the piece by owning it and moving forward, I read two blog posts from two separate bloggers that I felt brought me right back to square one.  The first was from fellow Kveller.com writer, Tamara Reese entitled, “Tell a Friend: You’re a Good Mama” (found here) and “You’re a stay-at-home mom? What do you DO all day?” by Matt Walsh (found here).  The first post was a gorgeous and emotional story about the author’s observations of new parents and how she looked at the mother, who was apologizing to folks in a restaurant for the fact that her newborn was crying, and told her “You’re a good mom”.  Tamara goes on to tell the story of how someone did that for her once and it was all she could do to not break down when she heard it; not realizing she needed to hear it so badly.   Matt Walsh on the other hand, wrote a post proclaiming his love and admiration for his wife, who works in the home as a stay-at-home-mom.  His tone was harsh (that’s OK, it’s his blog. He gets to do that) in that he supports the hell outta his wife and in making the statement that as an employee,we are all just a number.  I don’t disagree with him.  It’s harsh, but I completely agree.  I feel that daily.  But that’s beside the point.  Both of these bloggers mentioned ‘mommy wars’.  Both of these bloggers felt the need to uplift mamas.  They put themselves out there to speak on behalf of an entire population of people who, on the day-to-day basis, feel completely vulnerable and I thought to myself, well, why? Not, ‘Why do women feel vulnerable’.  I get that.  I completely get that.  But why are there ‘mommy wars’ (man, that term makes me want to vomit)?  Why do so many of us bloggers feel the need to go on a rant (me included and yes, I get the irony of this post)? Why do so many of us bloggers feel the need to support or to criticize in the name of mommyhood?  And then I wondered if it was all a vicious cycle. By blogging about parenting and our own experiences with it, in an effort to connect to like-minded parents, do we run the risk of alienating other parents who feel like they don’t fit in line to exactly what it is you’re blogging about.  Meaning, if I blog as a mom who has a full-time job outside of the home as well, is it assumed that I don’t support moms who work full-time inside the home?  Am I aligning myself I didn’t even know it?

I HIGHLY doubt that when my mom was raising two kids in the 80s and 90s she gave two poops about what style of parenting she ascribed to or whether or not she would be ridiculed if she bottle-fed or if co-slept with her baby or not.  Her network of moms were not online but in her community or within her family and when she had a question about something baby-related, she didn’t type it into ‘Google’ and have a million and one confusing and potentially alienating ‘answers’ or blogs pop up touting the benefits of this sleep method or this parenting style.  She was just trying to do the best she could and survive. Dude, that’s what we’re all trying to do, right?

They take self-portraits

I worry that, as a blogger, I might be part of the problem.  I might be putting something out there that’s causing the escalation of vulnerability do to the assumption that I know what the hell I’m doing.  I blog about my family and the trials and tribulations I go through as a parent who works outside the home because it’s an outlet but I realize that I have not been clear, and I mean CRYSTAL clear, about one thing—I am not an expert at parenting nor do I claim to be.  I studied early childhood development in social work school but I promise you this, the only thing I’m remotely close to being an expert in when it comes to parenting is parenting my own child and I’m fairly certain that I’m only about 70% expert on that.  I worry that all us bloggers, well, we might be exacerbating an already vulnerable situation—parenting.  I post pictures of my child on Instagram and those pictures are generally of her smiling and being happy.  I don’t post pictures of her when she’s awake at 2AM with a fever or when she’s having a meltdown for some reason because well, a) I don’t have that kind of time and b) I don’t want to post pictures of her in that state.  And yet, I do worry that by only posting us in the golden sunlight of Miami or hipster-ed out in our local coffee shop, I might be exacerbating that thing that might be sparking all these rants or  ‘mommy wars’—- that I’ve got it right and you should be me or that you should at least strive to be as seemingly cool, calm and collected as I am as a parent.

And thus, back to the original point and post.  Folks knee-jerk reacted to that first post.  Folks assumed because I write through one lens that I must be attacking or at least ridiculing the other.  I can’t promise I don’t have a little bit more sympathy for working moms because I can relate more and I don’t fault anyone for assuming that because it’s true and that’s OK. I think we all have junk.  I think we all have guilt; such nasty, nasty guilt, and it makes us vulnerable and it makes us feel like we have to defend our choices.  I also think we are all just trying to do what’s best for the ones we love and are trying to survive.

Sometimes we do a little better than survive 🙂

Whole Wheat Chai-Spiced Vanilla Pancakes

The players

Ingredients:

• 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
• 1-2 Tbsp honey (you can also use regular ol’ sugar)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 Tbsp (and a bit) of vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup almond milk
• 2 Tbsp coconut oil
• 1 egg
• ½  Tbsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp ground ginger
• ½ tsp cardamom
• ½ tsp ground cloves
• ½ tsp ground all spice

Hello lovers

How:

Whisk together flour, honey, baking powder, salt  and spices in a small bowl.   Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, whisk together almond milk, oil, vanilla and egg.  Add flour mixture to liquid mixture and stir just to moisten.  It’s OK if there are a few lumps.  Scoop out pancake batter using an ice scream scoop and pour out onto griddle or large frying pan.  Cook pancakes on a griddle over medium heat.  Pancakes are ready to flip once they start to bubble on top.  Serve hot with big slap of butter.

Don’t be afraid to sprinkle that glorious stack of pancakes with a dash of cinnamon.

Mommy Blogs and Meatballs: A Blogdentity Crisis

This week was an interesting one. A rollercoaster of emotions, if you will. It was the first week back at school with the kiddos so I was up at 6ish every morning and at work by 7ish, which meant I was gone before Siona was awake. I was exhausted but running on buckets of coffee and adrenaline. Though it’s my 3rd year in my job as a school counselor, this was my first time at the first week of school in my job. The first year I was still in my original position as Student Life Director and the second year I was on maternity leave. I was nervous and overwhelmed. I also took over as ‘senior’ school counselor in the Middle School, which didn’t help my anxiety. I was trying to train our new counselor while tending to the needs of my students and colleagues. And though this past week I survived on adrenaline, iced coffee and water, I thrived on being able to be there for my students; being able to be there for one of my new 6th graders who sobbed for over an hour in my office in fear of Middle School and my 8th graders who are already freaking out about high school and college.

One of the many ridiculous things I do for my students — dressing up as Effie from the Hunger Games for Color War back when I was pregnant.

While I was kicking a** and taking names in my role as school counselor, this blog wasn’t fairing so well and it was bringing me down. This summer allowed me a bit more freedom to be present for this blog, which made me really happy. I finally was able to interview my friend, Zak the Baker. I made the fried chicken recipe that had been living in my head and I finally was able to write down my own love story. It felt wonderful to have the time to do all that. But this past week brought on the realization that, once again, my free time is extremely limited. And then, on Thursday morning, I received an email in my inbox from a blog I follow (or, now, used to follow). The blogger is an incredible writer and, in my estimation, would fall into the category of ‘mommy blogger’. She writes about her adventures with her young daughters set against the back drop of Montana. Her Instagram account should be sponsored by the visitors bureau of Montana, the pictures are that incredibly beautiful. But that’s besides the point. This post was about her living her dream of quitting her job so that she could be home with her girls. As beautiful and ethereal as this post was, it also enraged me a bit. I felt badly about having these feelings of anger. And, as I like to remind my students, no one can “make” a person feel anything. Instead, we allow these feelings to occur. We give them life and this post was bringing all sorts of life to some not-so-nice feelings for me that I really needed to get to the bottom of.

I don’t know this woman in the slightest. I follow her on Instagram and read her posts but I don’t know her. I don’t know her except what she wants me and the rest of the world to know about her. And please don’t misunderstand me, she seems like a lovely person. It’s not necessarily her that I take/took issue with. I think this post came at the wrong time for me, personally. I had barely seen my daughter all week. I only saw her for an hour on Wednesday, between coming home from work and then having to go back for a parent night. One hour out of 24. And here I was, reading a post about how this woman got to leave her day job and now spends her days going on adventures with her daughters. So yes, bad timing.

She gets me.

I ended up writing a comment about how I thought her post was beautiful but that it was also difficult to read as I too dream of being at home with my daughter but I can’t. She wrote back because that’s the type of blogger she is; always wanting to be there for her readers. But what she wrote back enraged me even more. She responded with all the write buzz words/phrases, ‘walking in the path of your dreams’, ‘walking with your heart and soul’, like a new Oprah for the hipster mommy-set.

And while I appreciate the conversation, what I realized this morning, after finally getting a solid 11 hours of sleep (Gd bless Shabbat), was that not anywhere in her post or in her response did she talk about the privilege of being able to stay at home and ‘live your dreams’. And then I realized that though this blog of mine is technically a food blog, I sometimes delve into the ‘mommy blog’ world, which, I now clearly understand, is not the place for me. My sister-in-law, Caitlin, of The Joy of Caitlin, had a very sweet post published by the Huffington Post this week. She worked really hard to get it out there—posting it all over the place, and she absolutely deserved to have it posted. So I thought, why not follow her lead and try to get more stuff out there. I tried posting the only post I could find in my blog archives that I though would fit into the ‘mommy blog’ or parenting category. I took 20 minutes out of my work day on Friday to post it on various parenting/mom pages and bloggers but it just didn’t fit. Hell, one of them flagged me for spam, which I thought hilarious. But with that notification that someone thought my post was ‘spam’ came the realization of what I was doing. I was trying to fit a pentagon into a round hole. This community is not for me. I love reading my food blogs and I am so appreciative of the community of food bloggers I’ve become close to via the Kosher Connection and Instagram but the circle on mommy/parent bloggers is another realm and though a lot of them speak of light and peace, the general feeling I have is that it’s a competition of who has the most hipster dressed kids and appearance of a near-perfect life. And if you’re thinking I sound a little angry or frustrated, I am. In all my mommy/parenting blog reading, I have not once read the term ‘privilege’. Not once has one of these bloggers spoken about the privilege of staying home; the privilege of breastfeeding; the privilege of eating organic or ‘clean’. Every time one of these parent bloggers posts a meme on their Facebook page about the evils of formula or GMOs or baby cereal or the like, I wonder if they’ve ever thought about the countless moms and dads who don’t have the privilege of buying GMO-free, or organic or whose breasts didn’t quite work out as expected; much less stay at home to be with their children, and what that must feel like for that parent on the other side of their meme. Have they ever thought about privilege? Thanks to social work school, I think about it all the time. It’s a privilege I have this computer so that I can write down my thoughts. It’s a privilege that I have amazing friends and family who support me. It’s a privilege I can afford daycare and still have enough cash to pay rent and occasionally shop at Whole Foods. People don’t like thinking about privilege because they feel they have to apologize for it, but that’s not how I see it. If you can acknowledge it and not take advantage of it or acknowledge it and be self-aware enough to recognize what it means for those who don’t have it, well then, that’s a different story. That I can support.

Late-night blogging.

And so when this particular mommy blogger’s post landed in my inbox I thought if I calmly comment, maybe I’ll get over my feelings of frustration. But I didn’t. In fact, it got a little worse for me. When the blogger responded to my comment that she advocates for the ability to ‘change our minds’, I thought to myself, ‘wow, what a privilege it is to even think that that’s always an option’. I can change my mind until I’m blue in the face but the fact of the matter is that I can’t afford to stay at home with Siona. And what would I miss if I did (besides food, shelter, health insurance and the like)? I’d miss the amazing community of people I’m surrounded by at work. I’d miss learning from them and laughing with them. I’d miss the diversity of thoughts they bring to my life. Some of these people are women with children, some of them don’t have any children. Some are married and some are not. Some of these people are men. Some of these people are white, some black, some Jewish and some Catholic. Some or straight and some are gay and the majority of all these folks are humble and self-aware. And, just like in real, I crave that diversity of mind and spirit in my online world as well. So, I’m giving up on my attempt to fit into the mommy world and instead will just be whomever it is I am . . . just like in real life. I will give time to the blog and let it develop organically (no pun intended) into whatever category it fits into, if at all. I will stop following all these other mommy’s on Instgram whom I first started following way back in the depths of post-partum depression, when I needed reminding that children do eventually sleep and that parenthood can be fun. We just don’t seem to have anything in common anymore. I will stick to food and family and see what comes.

And as for the recipe? Well, these are my most favorite meatballs. They are not gluten-free, but could be. I sometimes make them with veal and sometimes a mixture of veal and ground beef but usually with ground turkey. They are kind of like Thanksgiving all rolled into a delicious ball. I hope you enjoy and I thank you for reading.

For her.

Thanksgiving Meatballs:

What

1 package of ground turkey
3 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
1/2 pint of button mushrooms, diced
1 clove of garlic, diced
Dried bread crumbs, preferrably challah, diced into small chunks (should be bigger than store-bought bread crumbs but not bigger than croutons)
1 egg
Thyme
Sea Salt
Pepper
Rubbed Sage

For the Stove Top*

Vegetable or Coconut Oil
1/4 Cup all-purpose flour

*I go back and forth between frying and baking these meatballs . . . depending on my mood. If you do decide to bake rather than fry, bake on a greased baking sheet on 375 for roughly 20 minutes

Those Colors!

Those Look Like Ping Pongs, right?

How:

Pour the olive oil in a deep frying pan with a flat surface. Let sit on medium heat for a few seconds. Saute the onions until transparent. Add the carrots and stir, sauteeing until carrots are golden. Add the garlic and continue sauteeing for another minute. Finally, add the mushrooms an saute for another minute or two. Sprinkle the mixture with a dash or salt and pepper, stir and pour into a separate bowl and set aside.

Preparing for Frying or Baking

In a large bowl, combine ground turkey with the vegetable saute mixture, bread crumbs, egg, a dash more salt, pepper, thyme and finally, the rubbed sage. Stir mixture until well-combined (I use my hands and really get into there). Meanwhile, pour your flour into a small bowl and set on the stove near your frying pan. Also, in preparation, set out a plate with a few layers of paper towels in order to soak up some of that yummy grease after frying. After setting up, roll your meatballs into balls the size of ping pongs and set on a plate.

Post-baking

Hello little friends.

Once done shaping your meatballs, place frying pan on the stove over medium-high heat and pour in enough vegetable (or frying oil of choice) oil to cover 1/2 inch of the bottom of the pan. Roll each meatball into the bowl of the all-purpose flour so that each meatball is lightly covered in a flour dusting. Place 5 – 6 meatballs in the pan for frying, making sure to cook evenly on each side, giving about 4 -5 minutes of cooking for each ball. Once done, place on paper towel for grease-soaking.

A Shabbat staple

The Great and Powerful Blog

There’s a hot topic on the parenting/mom blogs these days.  I mean, there are a lot of hot topics (Attached Parenting, for example. No one ever seems to get tired of bashing or praising that whole business).  Then of course there’s breastfeeding vs. bottle-feeding (I’ve been a part of that whole business).  However, the past several weeks the parenting blogs, heretofore known as pogs, have been aflutter about pictures. There are a few of the most popular parenting/mom blogs that seem to paint an eternally serene picture of mom/parenting life.  There always seems to be the perfect amount of snow on the ground or just the right of sunshine coming through a window.  And the food! Oy, the food! It’s healthy and interesting and made from scratch! It’s so wholesome and homemade it could make Laura Ingalls Wilder’s meal selection on the prairie look like an all-you-can-eat buffet at the local Sizzler.  And let’s not forget the children.  The children are clean and interesting and eat all that wholesome food while making origami and knitting their own sweaters.  Now, I’m not exempt from some of that. I post pictures of my daughter and more often than not she is smiling and looking happy.  I mean, who wants to look at pictures of crying children? I’m trying to attract people to this here blog not turn them away running.  I also have a goal of not wanting someone to call Child and Family Services on me based on unhappy baby pics. Yikes.

But then there’s the other side.  There are the parent/mombloggers who want you to know how much they hate Instagram and Facebook.  Please, PLEASE know that they do not post pictures of their children anywhere because they want to live in the moment.  Kveller.com recently got an influx of new followers and great publicity when a blogger of theirs posted a rant on the first category of “perfect harmony” (my words, not hers) mom bloggers.  Her post started a campaign on the site called No More Fake Book where readers can post pictures of what parenthood really looks like (I myself posted a picture of my husband with our daughter.  Both of them were in Giants jerseys only Siona was freaking out and had her classic cry face on).  It resonated with a lot of people and I enjoyed what she had to say and how she said it.  Yet, I’m still somewhere in the middle.

Here’s the thing.  I like the rosy-cheeked children and the perfectly placed raindrop on the window behind a cup of coffee in a mug handmade by the aforementioned rosy-cheeked children.  But I also like the pictures and the bloggers who are real with their parenting.  Thank you for letting us know that you had to feed your kids box mac n’ cheese cause you work full time and didn’t have time to make your own pasta for dinner.  I don’t feel so inadequate.  For reals, thank you.  And yet, it’s hard enough being a parent and sometimes I don’t want to read about someone else’s struggles with parenting.  I have a nearly 7th month old baby.  She’s my first kid and your story about how your 2 kids were up all night for 3 nights with fevers TERRIFIED me. I mean I lost sleep just thinking about how I would be able to handle that.  But then there’s that rosy-cheeked blogger mom again. I’m having a hard time digesting the fact that you’re on baby number 3 and you still manage to wear lipstick, style your hair and go out and get coffee with friends WITH your 2 week old baby.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t shower for the first 2 weeks of my kid’s life and I’m still waiting to put lipstick on again.  And here’s the inadequacy again. But here’s the thing, no one can MAKE me feel anything.  I allow that feeling to exist. I give that person/blogger/child/whomever the power to ‘make’ me feel that way.  And I know this is going to blow y’all’s minds but I, and anyone else, don’t actually have to read the blogs you don’t want to read.  I also get to pick and choose who I follow on Instagram. Nowadays you get to pick your news, your culture, your online life.  It’s all your choice (for example, if this post is pissing you off then just close your browser).

Someone’s not diggin’ on the whole ‘apple’ thing.

So because I still haven’t made dinner yet tonight I’m gonna cut to the chase—the food!  As we’re preparing for Passover (we’re staying put for the first time ever), I’m of course thinking of food.  I want to diversify and not get stuck in the matzah rut.  Listen, I like matzah . . . the first 3 days but day 4 rolls around and I’m all, “that better be a piece of cardboard you’re waving at me cause if that’s matzah I need you to get it out of my face”.  I hope to be able to cook with a lot of fresh veggies and fruits but the one item this house will not do without is Temp Tee cream cheese.  I’m not kidding.  My husband buys at least 2-3 tubs of it every Pesach.  He loves the whipped yumminess but I think it also gives him really great memories of Pesachs of yore.  Now since I’m going to try to be easy on the matzah I was thinking a great way to have a sandwich and not have to use matzah is to use apples!  Below is a recipe that’s super easy yet super delicious and I dare ya not to eat the left over Temp Tee/preserves mixture with a spoon like a delicious soup!

Apple Sandwiches with With Temp Tee Whipped Cream Cheese

What!?

1 Golden Delicious apple (or any of your choosing)3 Spoonfuls of Temp Tee Whipped Cream Cheese
2 Spoonfuls of raspberry preserves
Handful of chocolate chips
Handful of chopped walnuts

How’s That Now!?

Mix Temp Tee Whipped Cream Cheese and raspberry preserves into a small bowl.  Cut apples into 1/4 inch thick round slices. Spread Temp Tee and raspberry preserve mixture onto one slice.  Top with your choice of chocolate chips, walnuts or even dried cherries.  You can also go crazy and top it with all of the above toppings.  Lay the other slice of apple on top like a sandwich and enjoy!