Bramley-Butternut Crumble

This crumble was inspired by a conversation with my mother.  We were discussing various fall and winter dishes that we like to make. 

This has sweet-tart, warm, full flavor.  The Bramley apples, which are a green, tart cooking apple, sweeten with baking; leaving just enough tartness to give a kick to the earthy, warm flavor of the butternut squash.

Filling:

1 Butternut Squash peeled and cut into ¼ inch slices.

2 Bramley Apples, peeled, cored, sliced into ¼ inch slices

¼ cup chopped pecans

2 Tbsp. Sweet potato flour/starch

1 ½ tsp. sugar

2 tsp. cinnamon

Sprinkling of mace

Topping:

¾ cup ground almonds

¾ cup brown rice flour

¾ cup coconut flakes or desiccated coconut

¼ cup gluten-free rolled oats (optional can be omitted if you are sensitive to oats)

¾ cup brown sugar

1 tsp. mace

1 tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. nutmeg

½ cup coconut oil (in soft solid state), or dairy free margarine

Directions:

Preheat Oven to 150°C or approx. 300°F

Prepare 9x13 glass baking dish lightly oiled (less than ¼ tsp.) with olive oil.

Place sliced squash and apples in large bowl. Sprinkle sweet potato flour, sugar cinnamon over them and mix until all pieces are coated. Place coated pieces into prepared baking dish. Sprinkle pecans over the apples an squash in the pan and then give all a very light sprinkle of mace. Set aside.

In the large bowl you just used stir all the dry ingredients together until all evenly mixed. Cut in the coconut oil or margarine with two knives until crumbly and well distributed. This will be very crumbly. Evenly distribute the mixture over the squash and apple mixture.  Place in oven for 30-45 minutes. Topping is still a good bit crumbly. Cool for about 10 minutes.

Serve warm, with coconut whipped cream or a dairy free ice “cream”. 

Bush-Craft Course

 

Just after Thanksgiving Holiday, we drove to Canterbury in Kent and took a beginning outdoor survival course for families, focusing on the children learning bush-craft. We learned Shelter, Fire, and Water are your three necessities. We learned the first two. Making shelter and making fire.

The above pictures are of us checking out shelters others had made in a previous class. 

Now we get our start.

 

There to the left is the shelter that the instructor knocked down for us to use the materials from.

Does anyone see our mistake? We made it right off. (I'll let you know at the end).

Next for the leaf litter cover. Lots and Lots of leaves and small branches.

Just about finished here, the instructor giving a few last pointers.

She had the Boy Child and Girl Child lay down inside our shelter.

Then she dumped a pot of water over the shelter...

They got dripped on a bit. 

So our mistake from the first was having our support branches sticking up too high. We weren't able to get them covered with leaves.

Then we got on to the fire making.

Well I didn't take pictures until after we had our fire going, because we were all working to make our fire; practicing with the flint and steel, lighting various types of tinder, King Alfred's Cakes (a type of fungus), dried bark and grasses, and char cloth. 

We really enjoyed ourselves.