AUTUMN SALAD WITH SUMMER FIGS

I made three new recipes tonight for dinner. This was a truly monumental task for me, because while I am not the greatest or most avid cook, and rarely do I make more than one new dish per month, if even that, I did this during and while recuperating from a triple grandchild marathon. ... I have no problem whatsoever with creating run-on sentences, however.

This is Brandi poised to get a fork full of the delicious Autumn Salad. I scribbled down the recipe a few years ago from Texas Provencial Kitchen on PBS. I guess it is called Autumn Salad because of the Granny Smith apples in it. But it has figs too, which are being picked now in South Texas. No figs in autumn. This was a big hit with Chuck, Shabree and I. We all had seconds or thirds. It is an odd combination - one that seems strange to your taste buds at first, but then grows on you. REALLY grows on you. It's something we'll be craving tomorrow. The other recipes were good too - Faux Fried Mushrooms (recipe from my online friend, Fidget) and a Baked Chicken Breast dish with a soup, white wine and sour cream sauce.

Zach spent the night last night, and he and Shabree were up until 2am. They slept late this morning, but not as late as I would have liked. We went to Beeville around noon and got some groceries and then went through the drive-through window at Jalisco Taqueria to get orchatas and a licuado. We'd gone to Goodwill too, but didn't find anything we needed. Chuck brought Mathieu over to join the fray when we got back.

AUTUMN SALAD

Mixed Field Greens
6 Slices Bacon, Fried, Crumbled
1/2 C. Chopped Pecans
3 Granny Smith Apples
White Wine
Quartered Figs, about 2 per person

Fry bacon. Add pecans and fry a little. Remove from pan. Add apple slices to pan and fry slightly. Remove. Deglaze pan with with a little white wine, and reduce a little. Pour over salad. Add figs and toss.

The changes I made were these:
I removed a little of the bacon grease from the pan before adding the wine and reducing. And since the figs were kind of small, I added about 3 per person and halved them instead of quartering them. The apples, I cut in fourths, cored and then sliced them across - the short way.

This was delicious! We'll be having it again - several times every 'fig season'.