barefoot

The Recipe Project: Zucchini Muffins

This recipe I printed from simplyrecipes.com last year, maybe, or the year before. It was folded in half and stuck in the basket.
Apparently I liked it, because I wrote, "good!" right on it. That's how I roll.

I started to make the recipe just how it's written.  I had good intentions. But...I changed it. Because that is also how I roll.

So, I had one zucchini from my garden. (It has not been a great year for the garden, let me tell you.) I cut off the yucky part and peeled off some of the skin.  I like the color that ends up in the muffin when you leave the zucchini skin on.

I figured that I would not have enough zucchini for the recipe, so I decided to add bananna to it.  I decided this because I had a bunch of over-ripe banannas hanging on the bananna stand in the kitchen, and I wanted to get rid of them.

So, I shredded my zucchini and mashed up 2 banannas.

Then, I mixed my wet ingredients in one bowl, and my dry in the other, according to the directions. (See, I can follow them...partly)

 
Oh, wait. I omitted the nutmeg.  I don't like nutmeg.  So, I guess I can't follow directions at all.

I also don't like to put walnuts, raisins, or any other chunky fruit or nuts in my muffins. (Unless it's blueberries. The rules do not apply to blueberries.)

Because of the bananna (I guess), I ended up with 12 muffins (filled to the top of the pan) plus a small loaf.

They turned out really good. Moist and not too bananna-y.  Because I am Super-Mom (and forgot to buy a real cake mix), Eli got a muffin for his birthday cake.

 

Here is the recipe, the second one to get the seal of approval for the binder.

Zucchini Muffins

 3 cups grated fresh zucchini

2/3 cup melted unsalted butter

1 1/3 cup sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 teaspoons baking soda

pinch salt

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons cinnamon

Optional Ingredients:

2 mashed bananas

½ teaspoon nutmeg

1 cup walnuts

1 cup rasins or dried cranberries

applesauce

blueberries

chocolate chips

*****

 Preheat the oven to 350. 

In a large bowl, combine sugar, eggs, and vanilla.

Stir in zucchini (and banana or applesauce, if using), then melted butter.

Sprinkle baking soda and salt over zucchini mixture and mix in.

 In a separate bowl, mix together flour and cinnamon (and nutmeg, if using).

Stir dry ingredients into zucchini mixture. (Stir in walnuts, raisins, cranberries,  blueberries or chocolate chips if using)

 Grease muffin pan with non-stick spray.  Fill each cup completely. 

 Bake until muffins are golden brown, and the tops are springy to the touch, about 25-30 minutes.

 After 5 minutes, remove muffins from pan and allow to cool completely before storing.

 Or, eat warm, with a little butter and a cup of coffee.

 

The recipe is mostly copied from the one I printed from Simply Recipes, but I added some stuff and editorialized a little (I know, big shocker.)

The Recipe Project: Swedish Pancakes

Ok, it's been what? 3 weeks? And I've offically tried 3 recipes for this project. I know, I'm an over achiever.

I started with this recipe, written on the back of a letter from my favorite missionaries, Jill and Tony:

It was, by the way, folded up and shoved into my little black box. 

Then, I made it, exactly as it is written.  It's my mom's recipe, so the measurements are in deciliters (dL), sorry.  For those of you who do not like the metric system, a dL is just under 1/2 cup, according to my measuring cup.

I mixed all the ingredients in a pitcher till it's nice and frothy. (Don't ask me why a pitcher, it's my mother's fault.)
See the little bubbles?

Then I scooped a ladle-ful of batter into my well-oiled, trusty cast iron frying pan. (I spray with non-cook spray before the first, and between each pancake.)

 

You have to put in the ladle of batter, then pick up the pan and kind of swirl it around, so you get a nice thin layer of batter covering the entire bottom of the pan.  It's a little tricky to get the heat and the non-stick-ness of the pan just right. You may have to sacrifice the first couple of pancakes before it gets just right. (It's ok, those are the taste-test ones for the cook.)

Fry on one side until you see the little bubbles, like this:

Then flip, and fry just a moment on the second side.  Then, remove to a plate, and repeat until all the batter is gone.  Soon you will have a beautiful stack of pancakes.

Then, you eat them.  When I was a kid, we topped ours with strawberries, cool whip, butter, syrup, peanut butter, plain granulated sugar, and/or jelly. (I don't reccomend doing all of the above at the same time, but you can.) Then we rolled them, and cut them into little round bites.  They were quickly devoured.

 

Everyone loves them.

On the off chance that there are some left over (I actually make one extra person's worth), store them in the frige. They are good cold or reheated in the microwave.

Here is the actual recipe that will have the first spot in the coveted3-ring binder of deliciousness:

 

Mom’s Swedish Pancakes

 Ingredients (per person): 

1 egg

1 dL flour

2 dL milk or water

 ½ dL sugar per 4 people

½ tsp salt per 4 people

 Mix ingredients together thoroughly.  Ladle batter into hot greased frying pan. Swirl mixture around in pan so bottom is evenly coated by a thin layer of batter. Fry until just bubbly, then flip. Repeat until batter is gone.

 Serve hot with choice of toppings:

        Fruit (sliced strawberries, blueberries, canned peaches, etc)

       Jam

       Cool Whip

       Peanut Butter

       Butter

       Sugar

       Syrup

Enjoy!!

the first week of school, a new tattoo and the recipe project

We started school this week, Calah in 2nd grade and Sariah in Pre-K.  We are using a packaged curriculum for Calah from My Father's World.  This has already made my life at least 8 million times easier than last year.  For Sariah, I had this giant box of pre-school-ish stuff that I had been saving from back when I thought I would write my own curriculum. Oh, what a silly goose I am! 

 
 
Here's Calah with her spelling book

 
Sariah, with her hair in her face, but at least she's not sticking out her tongue. 

...and the Boy Wonder, looking shockingly like his father after I've just mentioned the latest remodeling project I would like to start.

It's gone pretty well so far, but the lesson plans start you out gently, and ease you in, plus we haven't started piano, dance or awana yet. (Ah, Awana, the bain of my existance. Will it even happen this year? No body knows for sure because NO churches update their websites. But I digress...) So, we'll see how it goes once we're in full swing.

This week I got a new tattoo, or rather, a continuation of an old one.  I had a swirl of a bible verse on the inside of  my left forearm.  Now i have two more verses and some flowery-viney things in between. It's pretty sweet.

 
 
It hasn't peeled yet, so the colors still look very dark, but you can see it's going to start any time now. (bleh, it's the grossest part.)

I have decided to embark on a new project I am calling "The Recipe Project". This has been something i've been putting off for some time now, and will eventually make my life less complicated. Or at least that's the plan.  These projects have a way of making my life more complicated, somehow. But it needs to be done, so what the hay.

The plan goes something like this:

I will update my current filing "system", in favor of an organized, page protected 3-ring binder. (Pause a moment to consider the sheer wonderfulness of it. Mmmmm....three ring binder....)

 
Here is part of the filing "system". I call it the "basket o'crap" approach to organization.  It's possible I could get a book deal for that. Here's another part of the "system", the "broken file box":

 
Like the little picture I taped to the top? I thought it was pretty.

In the process of organizing the recipes, I will cook each one to decide if it is worthy of a spot in the page-protected bliss that will be my cook book.

At the moment I have approximately 4,000 recipes in about 15 places all over the house.  In the lean-to off the kitchen, on my computer, in a basket, in a file box, on the book shelf, in another basket...you get the picture.

The first recipe I'm testing is Swedish Pancakes.  It's kind of cheating because I use this recipe all the time, and I already know that everyone will eat it.  But, I have 6 kids to feed today instead of just 3 so we're going with a proven winner.

Even though I use it all the time, it's still written on a little piece of scrap paper and shoved into the basket...or maybe the filebox, I'm never quite sure where the recipes will end up after I use them.