Apples and Cinnamon

Don’t you hate those days where you just can’t seem to shake off a bad feeling? 

Something keeps nagging at you…but you can’t figure out what.

You keep playing over the parts of the bad dream from last night.

You create absurd scenarios in your head and wonder what would happen if they ever came to be.

I am not a depressed person, but everyone has a bad day every now and then.  One of the best things you can do to perk yourself up is to have some comfort food.

What is your favorite comfort food?  I am definitely a macaroni and cheese girl.  One of my other favorite things is hot apple cider with cinnamon sticks.  In fact, apple cinnamon is just one of my favorite flavors. 

Which is why I made a bagel version.  Sweet apples+spicy cinnamon=delicious bagels. 

What makes them even better is the cinnamon walnut cream cheese I made to enhance their delightfulness.  It totally worked.  (Making new cream cheese flavors is so fun!) 

 

Nothing hits the spot on a bad day like a delicious toasted bagel with cream cheese.  Especially with some hot apple cider on the side.  

Apple Cinnamon Bagels

Note: The apple and applesauce provide enough liquid for the recipe.

5/8  cup applesauce

medium apple, cut up into tiny pieces

1 T vegetable oil

2 T honey  

1 t salt

5/8 cup whole wheat flour

2 3/4 cup bread flour

2 1/2 t active dry yeast

1 t cinnamon

1. Mix all ingredients together.  Knead and let rise an hour.

2. Shape dough into six bagels. ( Roll dough into balls and poke a hole in the middle.)  Let rise 30 min. During this time prepare your pot of boiling water.

3. Boil the bagels.  About 1 min per side.  Preheat oven to 400 F.

4. Bake 25-30 min.

5. Smother with cream cheese and enjoy!

Lists

Lists.  So. Many. Lists.

In order to graduate, get married, and move to a foreign country within the space of three months, it is absolutely essential to use lists in order to maintain a state of sanity. 

Believe me, I know.  From experience.

Reflecting back on that busy summer of 2010, the two craziest weeks were the week leading up to the wedding and the week arriving back from our honeymoon.  Which was the same week Karl left for Japan.

During that week, Karl and I had four days in which to get him packed and ready to fly to Japan. 

Yikes.

One of the things we had to take care of was getting our international driving permits.  I don’t know how it is in other countries, but in Japan a US drivers license means next to nothing.  This is because they are issued per each state-not the country itself. 

But what about this international driving permit?   

A word about that: First, if you need to purchase an international drivers permit, do not go to the DMV.  You will only waste your time standing in line.  Triple A issues the permits.  You need to provide a passport-sized photo and pay $15.00.   They make the permit for you right on the spot.  It takes only a few minutes.  Easy.

But…they are unfortunately not the complete solution to legally driving in Japan.  They are valid for only one year.  After that, assuming you want to continue driving, you have to start from the bottom up with Japanese drivers ed. 

Yay.

I have been lead to believe by numerous people that earning your Japanese drivers license is one of the most difficult and annoying things one can attempt to do.  The primary reason for this is the scoring system and requirements: In order to pass the test and receive your license, you MUST get a perfect score. 

That’s right.  100%.  Perfect. A+.  Plus, the test administrators tend to be very picky.  Naturally.

*Correction*  (9/27/11) I was apparently misinformed about the test scoring requirements-there is a margin of error.  I am not sure what score is passing. 

We are fortunate enough to not need a car.  So we are choosing to ignore the whole thing.  Karl did try getting his scooter license once…but it was too much of a pain.

Here’s to biking, walking and public transportation. 

And saving money.