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    Entries in S-M-R-T that's me! (2)

    Tuesday
    Sep272011

    Puffy Muffins

    After eating granola bars every day for breakfast for two weeks, I decided I needed to actually cook.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm all for granola, particularly in bar form which is so easy to just toss in my backpack as I run out the door to math class. Can't be late for math class. No, really, can't. Freaking class is packed and the rows are closer together than movie theatre rows, and they fill up from the edges inward. If I want to actually find a place for my ass (without having to first drag it in front of the faces of 8 people) I need to get there early.

    Muffins are quick and easy (can mix and bake in the time it takes to do a load of laundry) and freeze really well. Perfect for eating in the car on the way to school or work. And these ones use yogurt for the liquid component because I forgot I already had yogurt and bought more.

    Blueberry Muffins:

    What you need:

    • 2 cups flour
    • 1/2 cup sugar
    • 1 tsp baking powder
    • 1 tsp baking soda
    • 1/4 tsp salt
    • 1 tbsp lemon zest
    • 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
    • 2 tbsp vegetable oil
    • 1 tsp vanilla extract
    • 1 cup yogurt
    • 1 large egg, lightly beaten
    • 1 cup fresh blueberries (use fresh, if you can)

    What you gotta do:

    Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. (totally remembered to this time)

    Zest your lemon. If you don't have a lemon zester (and I don't), you've got a couple options. A vegetable peeler can work, but a small sharp knife is my preference. Mostly because I find that when I use the peeler, I take of more than just the zest. With a knife, I've got enough control that I don't end up with any of the white pith, which is extremely bitter.

    And since my brain is totally broken by math, I realized as I was zesting with my paring knife that optimal zesting occurs when the knife is coplanar to the plane tangent to the lemon's surface. That is, the slope of the plane on which the knife is cutting is the derivative of the curve of the lemon.

    See? Broken.

    For those of you whose brains don't think in terms of calculus: Hold the lemon in one hand and with the other, keep the knife flat on the lemon and do small amounts at a time.

    Chop the zest as finely as you have the patience for.

    Juice the lemon.

    Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and lemon zest in a large bowl and then make a well in the middle.

    In another bowl whisk together the lemon juice, oil, vanilla, yogurt and egg.

    Pour the wet mixture into that well in the dry mixture. Mix the mixtures. But don’t do it with a whisk. Why not? Well, because this is more of a dough than a batter and your whisk will end up looking like this.

    Use a wooden spoon or a spatula, and you'll eventually end up with a very squishy, sticky dough-like batter.

    Gently fold in 1 cup of blueberries with either the spatula or your hand.

    The strong acids in your yogurt and lemon juice start reacting pretty much instantly with the bases in your baking powder and soda, and these things start rising as you’re spooning the batter into the muffin tins.

    If you’ve got more than a cup of berries, sprinkle the last few on top of the muffins.

    And if you’re feeling totally wacky, sprinkle a forkful of sugar over top of each, too.

    Seriously, puffy. After only a few minutes.

    Bake these for 17-19 minutes or until a piece of spaghetti stuck into the biggest one comes out clean.

    Remove muffins from the pan as soon as you're done folding the laundry, and put them on a wire rack to cool. I didn't use muffin papers, so they do need to sit in the pan for a bit after they come out of the oven. If you use the papers, you can move them to the rack right away.

    Wrap them individually and put them all in a large freezer bag until you need breakfast on the go. Like tomorrow.

    What do you eat for breakfast when you have to eat in the car?

     

    Monday
    Jul252011

    math math math math blog math math math

    Math. It's all I freaking do.

    I did it for 10 hours a day both days this weekend. I survived by eating the last of the beef jerky, baby carrots, and tortilla chips with cream cheese and salsa. During the week, I'm living off of my precooked frozen meals, and tonight I had toast for dinner.

    The result is that I'm more than a little hard pressed for blog posts... (Taneasha is playing me a song on the world's smallest violin right now in her completely bare kitchen)

    I was going to do a post on how to cut up a mango to best maximize the eatability of it. But it's tough to take pictures of yourself cutting up a mango when you're cutting up a mango.

    I know this is really pushing it as "cooking" but someone else will be making dinner here for me next week, so for now, you'll have to do what I'm doing and survive off of toast. 

    Cinnamon Sugar

    • 1 tsp cinnamon
    • 1/4 c sugar
    • a jar with a good lid

    I've had my cinnamon sugar jar for ... nearly 18 years now. It's a small jar that once held premade pasta sauce. I've had it pretty much since I moved out of my mom's house, and it's travelled back and forth half way across Canada with me. My mom had a similar jar. Same one for as long as I could remember. It moved everywhere with us too, and I'm pretty sure she hid it on the day that I moved out so I couldn't take hers with me.

    Cinnamon sugar has always been a bit of a staple for me because of that jar.

    It was a fast breakfast, an all purpose snack, and it's what my mom fed us as we were starting to feel better after spending days sick on the couch watching soaps. It's a rare treat when I can get just that right mix of butter and sugar on bread that's toasted just right...

    And I know some people try to sprinkle the cinnamon on, and then the sugar, but it doesn't work. There's never that same perfect consistency and homogeneity of spice and sweet. You have to mix them together before hand.

    Measure out your cinnamon and sugar and put them in the jar.

    Shake.

    It's blurry because I'm shaking it. Sure is.

    And then...

    That perfect sandy colour.

    Toast yourself some nice whole grain bread. White bread just seems too... insubstantial for this purpose. I mean, yeah, it's nice and squishy sometimes, but cinnamon has such a strong, spicy, robust flavour that it needs something sturdy under it.

    Yes, it's a gratuitous food close up, but I really don't have much to work with here.

    Once your butter has melted, sprinkle on just the right amount of cinnamon sugar.

    I am so freaking happy with the fluke that is that picture.

    It may seem like a big pile o' sugar on toast, but it looks like more than it is, and once you spread it around the sugar starts melting into the warm butter...

    It's also great in coffee, handy to have on hand for fancying up cookies of any sort, and can turn plain old biscuits into cinnamon biscuit buns.

    But for now, this

    with a glass of OJ and a multivitamin, is dinner.

    My mom would be so proud of me.