You might need light sweaters and extra calories this weekend if you are going to walk around Chestertown and enjoy the spectacle that is Downrigging Weekend. Your mother was right, and breakfast is still the most important meal of the day, so start it off with something tasty. Keep the pencil shavings and twigs for during the week, and gobble up some hearty apple-sultana cinnamon swirls.
Halloween is over, and you have managed to avoid eating too much chocolate, for which we in the Spy Test Kitchen salute you. I gave out more Snickers bars this year than I inhaled, for once. I think I am still conditioned by my otherwise pleasant childhood. My mother was the strange one on the block who handed out boxes of raisins. Can you imagine the shame? While Mom was imposing her sensible vision of order on the neighborhood, I was dancing from house to house, scarfing up as much exotic candy as I could get. Other households doled out wonderful candy bars unfamiliar in our house: Baby Ruths, Butterfingers, $10,000 bars, Dark Hersey bars, Clark bars, and Three Musketeers. Such loot! And I lived in a home where boxes of Sun-Maid raisins were the Halloween treat. My mother should have just handed out toothbrushes. If she were still alive, she probably would be enthusiastically giving out bags of organic kale chips to all the little ghosts and alligators and Hermione Grangers who would have come knocking on her door.
I do not mean to disparage raisins completely, but every once in a while, it seems perfectly reasonable to enjoy a kid holiday; something extraordinary and special. But Halloween was yesterday. And now it is November. It’s time to sail forward on the healthy and homebaked path to righteousness and good health. And to enjoy the Schooner Sultana and downrigging. https://downrigging.org There will be tall ships and blue grass music, and all that Chestertown has to offer.
I cannot find sultanas in our grocery store, so I substituted golden raisins, but you can use raisins, golden raisins, sultanas or currents in these recipes. https://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-difference-between-raisins-sultanas-and-currants-223285 Do not substitute those leftover Snickers bars. Pass them this way.
Your kitchen will smell wonderful and autumnal while you are baking apples, raisins and cinnamon. This is excellent preparation for Thanksgiving, which is just around the corner. https://www.pbs.org/food/recipes/apple-sultana-cinnamon-swirls/ Mary Berry will approve, and if you do a good job, you might even get to stay in the bakeoff tent for another week.
I just love the mechanics of rolling and cutting the dough for these cinnamon rolls. I scarred my children with store-bought Pillsbury cinnamon rolls that popped out of a canister. These are much more delicious, and haven’t been hermetically sealed and are not doused in preservatives. https://www.recipegirl.com/no-yeast-apple-cinnamon-rolls-with-maple-icing/ Mom might approve.
Of course, Food52 always has good ideas: https://food52.com/recipes/24943-grandma-bercher-s-cinnamon-rolls Have a couple of cinnamon rolls, don your sweater, and take to the Chestertown streets. Watch out for the geese.
“We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea – whether it is to sail or to watch it – we are going back from whence we came.”
-John F. Kennedy
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