1. Debbie signed up to bring a cake or something similar to celebrate a Pinehurst Elementary School staff member's Sept 8th birthday. Debbie asked me to help her out by baking Morning Glory Muffins. I was happy to help out and, while I don't bake much, it's a blast when I assemble the ingredients and bake these muffins.
Morning Glory Muffins are loaded!
I grated carrots, apples, and zucchini. To answer the recipe's call for applesauce, I used the last of the star anise and date applesauce I made last week and stretched it with about an added half a cup of store bought. I cracked eggs and measured out all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, coconut flakes, vegetable oil, sugar, vanilla extract, crushed pineapple, and chopped pecans. The dry ingredients went in one bowl. The wet ingredients in another. The grated stuff had its own bowl. First I combined the wet and the grated ingredients and then added them to the dry ones and PRESTO! with some effort I combined them all and spooned the batter into muffin liners.
I baked forty muffins. Three dozen went to Pinehurst and we kept four at home.
The project wore me out, but it was a most satisfying fatigue.
2. Debbie arrived home at the end of her third straight day of things going pretty well at school. We both decided we did not want to go out for food and live music at The Beanery, but neither of us had a lot of energy for cooking dinner either.
Fortunately, I had purchased a loaf of bread earlier today along with lunchmeat and cheese and fortunately our next door neighbor, Jane, had given us a bag of tomatoes.
Debbie said she'd be happy with a tomato sandwich and some tortilla chips.
I said I'd be happy with a turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich and chips.
We kept it simple and tasty and, as a bonus, having already taken care of all the dishes I used to bake the muffins, our decision to eat sandwiches meant no more cooking, no more cleanup!
3. If you work New York Times crossword puzzles, you know that Thursday's puzzle is always, well, unusual. Sometimes I enjoy the whimsical nature of Thursday's puzzle, sometimes the whimsy and cleverness annoy me, and, at least once, I've thrown up my hands and given up. Today's puzzle didn't have any rebuses or weird geometry. It had a theme -- generally speaking, having to do with technology -- and the clues for the theme words were, indeed, whimsical, if not silly.
I figured out the theme and eventually I completed the puzzle and was, to be honest, relieved that it would be another week before an unpredictable and maybe even goofy Thursday puzzle would roll around again.
(I'll just add that it's possible I'm a spoil sport about Thursday's puzzles. Every day, each NYTimes crossword online is accompanied by an article reviewing the puzzle -- and every time I've read the review of a Thursday puzzle, the reviewer was tickled by whatever the puzzle within the Thursday puzzle was. Maybe one day I'll find delight in these Thursday puzzles -- but, for now, well, I feel low grade dread when Thursday comes around, but I'm committed to giving these Thursday puzzles my best shot week after week.)
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