making things

I keep wondering if it makes sense for me to have some kind of career where I cook food on a regular basis. Or, I guess, alternately, spawn a Brangelina quantity of children.

The thing is, I just really like to cook and would often just like to do it all day. It relaxes me, it helps me do my best thinking and work through the stuff in my head, it’s a creative act, it helps show people I love them, it’s a satisfactorily sensory experience between the aromas and the sounds and the colors and the textures.

But only have so many people to feed.

So I make muffins and eat way way too many of them.

 

Apple Greek Yogurt Muffins

1 T ground flax
3 T water
1 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
1 T wheat germ
½ tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup maple syrup
3 T brown sugar
1/4 c. canola oil
½ cup Greek yogurt
¼ c. milk
2 small apples, cut into tiny dice

Set aside flax and water in a large bowl; let sit until frothy. Meanwhile, combine dry ingredients (flour through baking powder).To the flax combo, add remaining wet ingredients (maple syrup through soymilk or milk). Whisk together vigorously until smooth and bubbly.

Add a third of the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and fold gently to combine. Add half the apples, then another third of the flour, then the rest of the apples, then the rest of the flour.

Bake at 350 for 14 minutes.

This was a good one. Soft and lovely on the inside.

It actually made more than a dozen muffins’ worth of batter (if you fill your muffin tins 3/4 full, as I do. If you pack ‘em and have mega muffin tops, more power to you, and you’re set.)

However, I prefer to have extra to bake into a giant muffin top. Mm. I also sprinkled it with brown sugar, just to make sure it was okay.

 

In other making stuff news, I opened up my latest issue of Cooking Light and saw this recipe for strawberry buttermilk sherbet and thought it looked quite nice.

And I had grocery store strawberries I no longer had any interest in eating straight up becaaaaaaause we had FARMER’S MARKET STRAWBERRIES that look like jewels and taste like sunshine (and we got free “I love local strawberries” pins!).

So I made the recipe (ish, by which I mean my store didn’t have full fat buttermilk so I used low fat and I didn’t have agave nectar so I used stevia and a little bit of honey)

The bright red strawberries looked lovely against the frothy white buttermilk.

And the pureed color was lovely.

  

A trip in the ice cream maker resulted in something that looked a lot more like granita than sherbet, but tasted great.

Finally, making food, or assembling food, or basically just providing people with food, is how I show them I love them and attempt to help them cope with life’s difficulties. Our poor choir director came down with bronchitis the week immediately preceding Easter (where he had to conduct the choir at ridiculous quantities of services). Then his wife got sick too.

So I made them an Easter basket! Of wellness :D

First, soup, cause you gotta have soup when you’re sick. This turned out GREAT and it was all slow cooker.

Headed out to class followed by services on good Friday, I threw in my slow cooker: 1 bay leaf, 1/4 a cup or so of chopped celery, 1/2 a cup or so chopped carrots, 1 cup lentils, and 4 cups water. Put it on auto shift and left for ten hours or so.

I arrived home and chopped up a bunch of Swiss chard and put that in. At that point it was good enough to eat, so we did, some.

But THEN, knowing I wanted to deliver our friends some soup the following morning, I added some oomph, in the form of 1 can of fire roasted tomatoes (the garlic seasoned kind), the remainder of a can of chickpeas, and a chopped up potato.

The next morning (say, 8 hours later?) I turned it off. And the potato was cooked PERFECTLY and the flavors were GREAT!

(Seasoned it with salt and pepper last; as I’ve heard salt can slow down dried bean cooking time.)

Also the ancient Greek remedy of Vick’s vapo rub. True story.

A tea variety (pomegranate white, cinnamon stick caffeinated black, and my all time favorite decaf Good Earth)

And because this is an Easter basket and there must be treats, a choco bunny:

And this fun guy, picked up at the Greek store buying Easter provisions. Like peanut brittle but made with sesame seeds and honey!

 

And now I am home on a day off, writing a whole bunch of pre-scheduled blog posts, and despite the fact that I ate roughly four peoples’ worth of Easter treats yesterday, I still want to cook something!