Nothing is more American than an Apple pie and a smile

So a couple of weeks ago I was teaching some outdoor cooking classes at SMU for adult boy scout leaders.  One class was "outdoor cooking A to Z" and the other class was "Dutch Oven cooking."  I had my good friend Russ help me out with these classes since I had 45 people signed up, and having that much food, fire, and hands in the kitchen needs lots of assistants.  My friend Russ is a little different than everyone else in the fact that he prefers apple pie over cobbler when camping. Since he was helping me I thought I would make sure we had ingredients for an apple pie.

Look at this amazing golden brown crust on this pie.  The great thing about making an apple pie in a class environment is that it shows the students how easy it was to make a great pie from simple ingredients.  My favorite is to show kids how to make an apple pie and they are just amazed that it has so few ingredients but tastes so good.

Here are the gooey good insides.  I bought one 3.5lbs bag of delicious red apples for 1.59, one five pound bag of sugar (The sugar was also for other items and I took half the bag home) for 1.79, cinnamon spice from my house, and a ready made pie crust for 2.19, and finally a little butter which was .69 cents for a tub.  Bake until the crust turns golden and call it good.  Make this with any novice kid and they will be amazed what they can do with a little sugar and spice.  I remember one boy came back from a campout and ran to his dad and let him know that the gooey insides of an apple pie is just regular sugar.

Now you can make a fancier pie and also get fancier with the crust but for those out there that want to start simple and work you way up the cooking ladder this is a great first step.  Plus you don't need a recipe just eye ball everything.  With diabetes you can easily replace the sugar with splenda and use a low carb crust or replace the crust with some sort of oatmeal mixture.  We had seven dutch ovens cooking at one time.  That was alot of fun.