” Apple Pie & Crystal Shoes “

Once upon a time, in a boot-shaped wasteland, there was a girl perplexed by the fact that although they were inept and a bad example for little girls, the princesses of fairy tales always defeated the villains. […] This perplexed girl, growing up, had become more and more team-villains and she wanted alternative versions in which characters like Maleficent, Ursula, Jafar or Grimilde finally got the victory […] Desperate, the perplexed girl thought there was no hope, until one day her team-villains friend invited her to start a new TV series in which the Evil Queen had defeated the Heroes by blocking them in a city without time and without reminiscence, making them live like regular mortals in which she was the only one with the The Dark One  aware of the truth.

For three seasons Once Upon A Time was a real relief, because despite the Villains were punctually defeated, the Heroes deserved the victory: Snow White was a hunter, thief, fugitive able to protect herself and the weaker who repeatedly finds herself to save Prince; Aurora fights alongside Mulan to defeat Evil and help Philip; and, for the first time perhaps, the TV series dug into the life of the bad guys and it was assumed that they had consciously decided the path of evil, without all the cliché: bad-by-chance or bad-but-not-really bad or bad-for-choices of others.

 

 

 

The Dark One could have rejected the powers and live “forever happy and content” next to his son, but he chooses power! The Evil Queen begins to use black magic to take revenge for an offence but she gets so much pleasure out ofit that she forgets the final goal. Peter Pan was finally considered on the side of the villains as I had always predicted: an evil child and manipulator who does not want others to grow up because he would lose control!

 

In short, everything proceeded in the right direction, and the perplexed girl who lived in the boot, prepared the apple pie * in honour of Grimilde, here transformed into Regina, and became more and more interested in the intrigues of the new version of fairy tales, in which ( SPOILER) Little Red Hood was the Wolf and the Beast’s Rumpelstiltskin and the only way to break the curse is that Emma – the daughter of Snow White and Charming (finally we know what happens next “and they lived happily ever after” … apparently even the Heroes are exactly like the rest of humanity) – grown on Earth without magic and without faith, begin to believe in fairy tales and in Love.

 

 

 

… it is still a product derived from Disney so it could not be the stronger Power, don’t you think?

 

Therefore, in spite of the defeat of her beloved Villains and the increasingly complex parental relationship between the characters and Love as a supreme weapon, the girl really began to believe that there was light at the end of the tunnel of good and senseless bravery.
 Three wonderful seasons.
Then the decline.

 

 

As always, the real supreme weapon is Money, and to grow it the authors and producers have started to put in the history really everything and more up to excess and even this fable is over.

The perplexed girl is even more perplexed, and even if she continues to watch it a little for sensitivity, partly because hope is the last to die, she advises the people of the boot to look up to the episode 3×11, strictly in the original language for two reasons: Robert Carlyle and because in the dubbed version they managed to use the less suitable voices for every single character!

 

 
Spring is the perfect season for this magical and suggestive TV series that makes us all come back children and for a while makes us believe that with a lot of effort, a lot of strength, a bit of luck and a dusting of faith, we can really find our “happy ending”.

 

* Apple Pie Cubes
(the recipe is from my dear friend Anna)

 Ingredients (for 6 people)
-120g of sugar.
-160g of flour.
-0.5 Lt of milk.
-1 kg of apples
-4 eggs
-30g of butter
-1 glass of grappa
-1 Lemon
-Salt to taste.  

Method:

Graphuc by: Veronica

We start by peeling the apples and cutting them in half, remove the core and then cut into thin slices.In a bowl we pour the grappa and then the apples leaving them in marinade and mixing them from time to time.In another bowl we shell the eggs, add the grated lemon peel, 100g of sugar, the flour and a pinch of salt.We mix well the ingredients and then add the milk a little at a time, in such a way as to work well the dough that should be smooth and homogeneous.Once you get a dough, we mix the marinated apples, continuing to mix and then mix well.In a bowl of about 30×25 cm, lined with baking paper, pour our dough, using it all the way with a spatula.Finally, cut the butter into small pieces and place it on the surface of the cake, sprinkle with the remaining sugar and bake for about an hour at 200 °.Serve the warm cake after cutting it into cubes accompanied by balls of vanilla ice cream.