Date Night

Thursdays are date nights in our house.

It's a tradition I've really become very thankful for over our first year of marriage. Life can be hard enough and busy enough to crowd out some important things--like spending time together--if we don't have a plan to keep each other and our relationship a priority. So yeah, Thursdays, great huh?

Tonight I'm not sure what we're going to do (most of the time the "doing" is not really as important as the just "being"), but I think I'm going to try a recipe for Rhubarb Apple Crisp. Candace brought home some extra rhubarb from the people she works for today. She had cut up what she wanted and had some left over. What do you do with rhubarb when you don't have Strawberries I wondered (Strawberry Rhubarb Pie happens to be one of my dad's favorites). but a quick trip to Epicurious.com helped solve the problem. Jonathan has a recipe (yes he is a great cook!) for a 7 layer rhubarb desert that I have heard marvelous things about, but we don't have enough to attempt that this evening.

Here's the Apple-Rhubarb Crisp recipe (in case you feel the need to try it yourself)

Topping
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/2 cup old-fashion oats
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts

Filling
1/2 pounds Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored, cut into 1/2-inch pieces (about 4 cups)
3/4 pound rhubarb, cut into 1/2-inch pieces (about 3 cups)
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt

For topping
Mix first 5 ingredients in medium bowl. Rub in butter until mixture begins to clump together. Mix in nuts. (Can be made 1 day in ahead. Chill.)
For filling
Preheat oven to 400°F. Combine apples, rhubarb, sugar, flour and vanilla extract in large bowl and toss to coat. Transfer apple mixture to 8x8x2-inch glass baking dish.Sprinkle topping evenly over fruit. Bake until fruit is tender when pierced with knife and topping is crisp, covering with foil if topping is browning too quickly, about 45 minutes. Cool 20 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.
Serves 6.

I'll try and post a picture and maybe a little review later. ;-)