Another Cloudy Sunrise

Found this in my drafts. It's from June. Forgot to post it. Oops.

Whenever my old friend RAD is in town for some family business (or monkey business),
he'll call and see if I want to get up before the crack of dawn and go take pictures of the sunrise.
10 years ago, I would have told him to take a hike, but as I become older and more decrepit,
it's getting easier to get up early. Huh?

We've done this before when it was cloudy and not particularly colorful,
although there's nothing like a deserted beach all to yourself.
And son of a gun, we had an encore of cloudy. The pictures were completely uninteresting.
Even the sea oats were bare and dead looking. I think this is the best of the bunch.

Anyway, he made some whiny noises about broken promises of muffins
the last time he was here, so I dragged out the bowls & muffin tins & my finest groceries.
Had to shut him up about it (just kidding RAD).
No, really, it was my pleasure.

First were some peanut butter, banana & chocolate chip muffins.
I had some nice bananas,


some nice whole wheat flour,


and chocolate chips.


They turned out very well, considering. At least he said they were good.

I also decided to make some cheesecake muffins . . .


. . . with a dollop of strawberry jam in the center.


I think I liked those the best.

Gotta Use The Black Bananas

Last night I looked in my kitchen and saw a grocery bag I forgot to unpack.
Typical.
But finding a bunch of overripe bananas means only one thing . . .

I've posted about these before.

Today, I made one minor change and one delicious change.
Change #1 - I used 2 parts white whole wheat flour & and 1 part buckwheat flour
Change #2 - added chocolate chips with the toffee chips (ooooh)

Before some of you squawk at me, white whole wheat flour is 100% whole grain.
Don't let the word "white" fool you.
It's NOT white flour (which is evil).
It's ground from white wheat, which has less tannins in the bran than red wheat.
This produces a pale flour with a milder flavor.

When they came out of the oven, BS made piggy snort noises so I would bring him one.

Me: Scale of 1-10?
BS: So far it's a 10.

Keep in mind that last time I made these, he gave them "at least an 8, maybe a 9".
This time I got a 10.

*pause for happy chewing*

Me: 100% whole grain
BS (in his cheesiest commercial endorsement voice): They're good and good for you!
Me: You want another one?
BS: Yah, maybe 2. Breakfast of champions man.

So, yeah, chocolate makes everything better.



Wait, you really can't tell that 2 of those are a Christmas tree & a gingerbread boy.
I have some festive holiday shapes.
Yay!

I have to give them a flip and expose their dark underbellies so you can see.



Hmmm, now they look very brown.
Well, crap.
They still taste good.

Lessons learned: those non-stick pans brown more than stainless steel.

The Good & The Ugly

I was thinking that the best way to start the morning would be to whip us up some frooty shakes. In goes the frozen fruit, in goes the yogurt, in goes some juice, and in goes . . . . what is this? There are 3 soft, over-ripened, no-longer-yellow, squishy things on my counter. Really, I would have been totally grossed out with one of those in my frooty frosty.

You know what that means, don't you? Even though mooshing them in the blender had the 'ick' factor, baking with soft squishy bananas is a good thing. BS asked for banana pancakes, but he ain't getting them. I am a cruel & inconsiderate mother, with no consideration whatsoever for his wants & needs. So I am making banana muffins instead. Maybe banana chocolate chip muffins? Oh my.

BS: Banana muffins!? Ooh, that's even better.
Me: Don't ever second-guess the wisdom of my superior intellect!
BS *rolls eyes*: WhatEVER!

I wanted to cut down on the gluten so the muffins would be more tender, so I used a combination of 100% white whole wheat flour (higher in gluten) and some brown rice & buckwheat flours (zero gluten). I've never used that combination before, so we'll see how they taste.

The Players:
3 squishy bananas
2 eggs
the last of the vanilla yogurt in the carton (~1/3 cup)
scant 1/3 cup white sugar (evil stuff, I know)
1/3 cup brown sugar
big ol' splash of vanilla
1/2 stick melted butter, cooled
couple Tbsp safflower oil
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup each brown rice flour & buckwheat flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder (there is a total of 1 1/2 cups flour)
1/2 tsp baking soda (because of the yogurt)
scant 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips

Mush the bananas & beat in eggs, yogurt, sugars, melted butter & oil. Whisk well.
Combine the dry stuff & add to the wet.
Whisk (gently) until combined.
Stir in chocolate chips . . .

Wait, where the he!! are my chocolate chips? I coulda sworn I had some, right there on the top shelf of the cupboard next to the stove where they belong. Whaaaa? Where did they go?

Hmmm.
Drums fingers.
Really wanted the chocolate chips.
What else is up there?
Heath Bar bits?
Hmmm, that has possibilities.

. . . so, instead of chocolate chips, half the bag of toffee bits went in.

I really liked the results. The brown sugar added to the 'toffeeness' of the flavor. The combination of flours was fine - the buckwheat flour didn't overpower the flavor. The Heath Bar crumbles lent some crunchy bits, which is always good.

Very, very nice. Out of a perfect 10, BS gave them "at least an 8, maybe a 9".

Sorry, no money shot of a nice warm muffin, split open, with steam gently wafting over a pat of melting butter. They were so good, we were snarfing & gulping like piggies & I . . . sigh . . . forgot.

BUT, here's my gripe. Whoever designs muffin tins has got to be someone who hates muffins and wants the makers of muffins to either burn themselves getting them out of the oven or smash them grabbing the pan? Look at this and tell me how either of these mishaps won't happen:

Why don't they put handles on these suckers? Or a bigger edge that you can grab on to?

Then, there was that half bag of toffee bits looking at me. It would be wasteful and irresponsible of me not to use them, right? And its little toffee voice was whispering "I love chocolate" every time I passed by.

Oh, okay, toffee bits. Don't get your knickers in twist. You can get it on with the chocolate in the form of chocolate toffee mini-muffins.

The Players:
1 egg
1/4 - 1/3 cup vanilla yogurt
about 1/3 stick butter melted with 1 oz unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup sugar
not quite 2/3 cup white whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
about 1/4 tsp salt
1/2 bag toffee bits

These were outstandingly delicious. Moist, chocolate-y, toffee-y, buttery. What's not to love, right?

Now, just go on ahead and ignore that entire thing. Here's why:
1) That was too much baking powder for the amount of flour I used. I didn't follow my own rules. BAD KATHY!
2) The proportions were way off.
3) The planets were not aligned and my moon was in someone else's house.
4) I dunno.

When they came out of the oven - smelling heavenly I might add - they immediately imploded, most likely because of the excess of baking powder:

And what do you think of the money shot of a couple warm ones on my plate?

Hmmm, something seems a little . . . off.

They are ugly.

They stubbornly refused to leave their warm wells in one piece, so I got a pile o' moist, blissful chocolate pieces & crumbs. I know taste is important, but a muffin, by its very nature, should be, oh, I don't know, muffin shaped? So, don't make these if appearance is a critical factor for you.
Or ease of eating.
Or neatness.
Or anything else.

Muffin - FAIL!
But a mighty tasty fail.

Follow-up on our smörgåsbord of choices

A few posts back, I rambled on about one of signs of the impending downfall of our society - namely, too many choices. Well, one of my faithful readers (I think I am up to 8 now - whoo-hoo!), the ever-alert Xmaskatie (that would be her internet alias), sent me this little jewel from today's (2-22-09) News & Observer, a newspaper in the Raleigh/Durham, NC area.

Tucked into an inside page of Tuesday's N&O was a tidbit of good news for husbands occasionally instructed to "stop by the grocery store on the way home and pick up a few things."

The item noted that because of the ailing economy, food manufacturers are cutting back on the varieties of foods they're supplying supermarkets. Hallelujah!

Most men are as uncomfortable as bulls in china shops in today's supermarkets as they hurriedly grab the items on their list. To many of us, peanut butter is peanut butter and canned tomatoes are canned tomatoes.

Alas, that's not the case for our wives.

How many times have I dumped the "few things" on the kitchen counter, only to hear a deep sigh and a plaintive "Honey, why did you buy this can of zesty jalapeño, garlic, olive oil, green pepper and onion diced tomatoes? I had no idea you liked jalapeño, garlic, olive oil, green pepper and onion diced tomatoes. I usually use just plain petite diced tomatoes in the soup."

On Tuesday I stopped by the supermarket and counted 'em. Yep, eight varieties of Del Monte canned tomatoes in look-alike cans.

The peanut butter shelves aren't much better, with six varieties of Jif including Creamy, Reduced Fat Creamy, Extra Crunchy and Reduced Fat Crunchy.

Life is complicated enough without eight varieties of canned tomatoes from one company. The current state of the economy may dramatically reduce our choices in many areas, forcing us back to the basics. And that ain't all bad.

If you would like to read it yourself, here is the link.

http://www.indojin.com/shop-online/catalog/images/delmonte-diced-tomato.jpg

Warning, next is the obligatory cooking portion of the post:

I feel validated by that editorial. So now, what I deserve on this cold, gray, drizzly Sunday is the freshly baked banana whole wheat/oatmeal muffin that is just now coming out of my oven, spread with real butter and drizzled with honey, accompanied of course by a cup of hot cocoa.

I can't tell you how I made them, because I was making it up as I went along and now I can't remember what I put in them. I'm getting old. The memory, she deserts me.

I seem to remember lots of vanilla; I like vanilla. And I remember having to use ordinary honey, having run out of my delicious Texas honey. Darn. But let me tell you, between the last sentence and this one, that muffin was gone in about 2 seconds.

I'm not very good at the money shots yet.

Ooh, BS put peanut butter on his. Rats, now I might have to have another. Actually, that's not true. He put peanut butter on an entire mini-loaf (I ran out of muffin pans) and consumed the whole thing in just over the 2 seconds it took me to eat one muffin. When he read this, his comment, as he was licking the knife, was "That's right, and those burps taste delicious too."