Good grief!  How does Friday always seem to get away from me before I post my Friday recipe?  From now on, my wonderful assistant will be sending me a Friday morning email as a reminder not to forget! 



A while back, someone gave me an old cookbook called The Dunkard-Dutch Cookbook with nearly four hundred turn of the century Pennsylvania Dutch dishes.  What a treasure!  This book was first published in 1965, and it's fun to see how everything is just drowning in butter and lard.  Even the more current Amish cookbooks shy away from such heavy use of lard.  There are some interesting recipes in this book that I will not be trying -- i.e. baked beef heart, scrapple, pig's feet souse, head-cheese, squirrel croquettes, ox-tail soup, and fricasseed rabbit (that recipes starts out....Cut up and disjoint the rabbit). 



After much deliberation, I found an interesting recipe.  Although, I'm not sure anyone will try it.  Any takers on this one?  I've never heard of "Bird's Nest" -- have you?  It's in the desserts section of this cookbook, and I'm copying it exactly as it's written. 



Bird's Nest



Pare six or eight large applies, and remove the core by cutting from the end down into the middle, so as to leave the apple whole except where the core has been removed; place them as near together as they can stand, with the open part upward, in a deep pie dish; next make a thin batter, using one quart sweet milk, three eggs, with sufficient flour, and pour it into the dish around the apples, also filling the cavities in them; bake them in a quick oven.  Eat them with butter and sugar.



I'm not much of a baker, but what is a 'quick oven'?  And I keep giggling about "place them as near together as they can stand."  I'm picturing all these little apples saying, "Hey, not too close.  Move over!" 



Let me know if anyone tries this!  Hope everyone has a great week!