i don’t do pumpkin
Pumpkin. Oh pumpkin.
This time of year pumpkin = blogger food-gasisms.
I don’t do pumpkin.
Sorry I’m not sorry.
But…wait..don’t go! I can give you a delicious non-pumpkin muffin that is perfect for this of year.
Really!
Still there?
Probably not.
Ah, well. What’d you gonna do?
Carrot Raisin Muffins
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
1/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce
1/3 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 cup carrot, peeled and shredded
1/2 cup raisins Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 14 muffin cups, or line with paper muffin liners.
Combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in a bowl.
Whisk together yogurt, unsweetened applesauce, honey, vanilla extract and orange juice in a separate bowl. Gently fold in carrots into the yogurt mixture. Stir yogurt mixture into the flour mixture until just combined. Gently fold in raisins into batter.
Scoop batter into prepared muffin cups until nearly full. Bake in oven until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 11 to 13 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on wire rack.
Serves 12 jumbo muffins
Do you like pumpkin?
i’m weird & i know it.
So I think I am weird.
Or rather I have some weird quirks.
I obviously totally thought my quirks were normal until I married Keith and he didn’t do any of the following things.
On second thought, maybe I’m totally normal and Keith is the weird one.
I like that so much better.
Anyway, here are my weird [or totally normal] quirks:
- Whenever I wake up from sleeping no matter what time it is I always try to guess the time on the clock before looking at it.
- Going right along with that, if I wake up in the middle of the night needing to go the bathroom if it is past 3:00am I just roll over and go back to sleep but anything under 3:00am and I get up to go. [I should mention that I have a bladder of steel]
- I am a half eater. Like 99% of the time I only eat half of whatever the item is and I leave the other half in the box/package. This used to drive my brother crazy when we were growing up. He would reach into the package and find 1/2 a poptart or 1/2 a cereal bar. He would get so mad. Obviously I didn’t outgrow it.
- I can chew gum and food at the same time, not mix the two, and then swallow the food and not the gum. Such a talent! Ha!
- One of my favorite things is raw zucchini and ketchup. Don’t ask. I recognize that this one is weird.
- I have a very active imagination and if I can’t fall asleep at night I will run a full made-up movie in my head (starring myself) until I eventually nod off.
- I have a weird thing about anyone touching my neck. I can’t handle it so don’t try.
- I actually hate pumpkin. Blog blasphemy I know. But I went throw a pumpkin stage a few years ago when I would eat it almost every night for dessert mixed with Kashi GoLean Crunch. This lasted for about a year. I can’t look at either of those products now without turning green.
I’ll stop myself here before I lose all the friends I have. Ha!
Tell me one really weird quirk about yourself. I want to laugh today!
Sometimes I surprise myself
I don’t really like to create my own recipes.
I would much rather follow someone else’s directions. I prefer for them to do the hard work. Test and retest until they find the perfect recipe to share with the world.
Better you than me, my friend.
But every so often I surprise myself.
On Sunday , Keith wanted granola bars to go with our 9 hour football watching marathon. I looked at us and surveyed the situation. We were both in PJ’s, glasses and personally I am not even sure I had brushed my teeth that morning.
Don’t judge!
Neither of us were going anywhere to buy granola bars.
So I looked around in my pantry desperately for something [anything] that I could haphazardly throw together in hopes that it could loosely resemble a granola bar.
Out of my pantry I pulled: oats, chocolate chips, sunflower seeds, walnuts, nonfat evaporated milk and almond butter.
Totally doable. no?
I melted, stirred, mixed, pressed and baked. And viola, 30minutes later we had granola bars. I grandly presented my creation to Keith and he said I’ll try one later.
Humpf.
Well I will eat his, mine and yours. They’re good people. They’re good.
Raid-The-Pantry Granola Bars
3 cups oats
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/3 cup chopped walnut pieces
1/3 cup raw sunflower seeds
1 cup almond butter
1 cup nonfat evaporated milk
Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Set aside.
Over medium heat melt almond butter and evaporated milk together. Stirring constantly until liquid. Pour into oats mixture and mix quickly [this will be like making rice crispie treats] it will be tough but keep stirring until everything is well coated.
Then press into a greased 9 x 13 glass a pan. Make sure you evenly spread and press the granola mixture.
Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Let cool completely before cutting or else bars will totally fall apart.
Makes 15 bars.
Eventually Keith came to his senses because it’s Tuesday and I had one bar on Sunday remember? One.
Any guesses on how many we have left?
For all of you who mentally guessed zero you would be right. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Zero as in none are left.
The lesson here?
When my man wants a granola bar he really means he wants 14 of them.
let me tell you a story
Once upon a time, there was a little Daddy’s girl who grew up watching football. It was a serious game this little girl realized. She would watch her father yell at the television and then a few minutes later jump up and let out a loud cheer. The little girl would imitate her father.
“What were you thinking?” her Daddy would scream throwing his hands up into the air.
“Yeah, what were you thinking?!” would come a much higher pitched version; hands on hips. Indignant at whatever had upset her father.
She learned to play football with the little boys in her neighborhood and was always ready to tackle whomever got in her way.
As the girl got older she realized what football meant in the South and specifically what football meant in Texas. She lived in a state where most high schools had stadiums that cost more than some other state’s college stadiums. Football was a way of life in Texas. Football was king.
An aerial view of my high school’s outdoor sports complex
The little girl grew up and went to Texas A&M University where football and football tradition was not to be taken lightly. If she thought high school football was big she got a taste of Texas college ball. Games were sold out months in advance. 100,000 + fans were packed into the stadium to watch. Cheers were learned, yell leaders were followed and millions of dollars was spent and earned.
Post college, this little girl, got married to her Prince Charming. He also loved football but was more of a NFL professional football lover. Though some of the rules were slightly different the little girl embraced her husband’s pro football obsession until they were no longer sure whose obsession it was. The little girl started taking notice of a particular team because of a particular coach and before she knew it she had found a team all her own to live and die by come Sunday.
So imagine this girl’s dismay when for the 2011 season her college team started out ranked number 8 and is now number 21 and her beloved Colts have started the season 0-5.
In my fantasies I would wrap this little fairy tale up by stating that my college team goes to the NCAA Championship game and The Colts become the first team in history to play in a Superbowl in their own host city. But sometimes life aint a fairy tale.
The End.
What Kelly Said 