On Sunday, I did a little experimenting. I started with a plain muffin recipe and then in each muffin i added different special ingredients or a combination of them.

The special ingredients were dried cranberries, cherries, bananas, chocolate chips. I think I like the ones with cherries in them the best. But, the banana and chocolate chip one is delish too!

I got the recipes from The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook by Diana Shaw. I’ve had this cookbook for years and years, close to fourteen years! But, I’m finally really starting to love it! I think my cupboards have matured with my age, when I was younger I never had nor heard of half of the spices she uses.

Now that I’m revisiting the book, I’m finding I appreciate the little things she does. For each recipe, she includes the nutritional information, the calories per serving, the protein, carbs, ect. Another great thing, is she says how long each recipe takes to make, including total time, prep time and cooking time. All very helpful! Especially when I have a limited amount of time to make dinner. The only thing I miss are photos. I love to see what the food I might make has the potential to look like. And it’s just fun to look at food photos!

Here’s the recipe for the best bran muffins!

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups wheat bran
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
2 large egg whites
1 cup nonfat buttermilk or plain nonfat yogurt

Heat oven to 500. Combine the flour baking soda, baking powder, salt and wheat bran in a bowl. Beat together the brown sugar, molasses, egg whites and buttermilk. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Just stir till moisten. (try not to stir too much, this will make the muffins lighter and fluffier.) Here is where I added dried cranberries, you can add whatever goodness you want!
Get your muffin tin and fill each cup not quite all the way full. When you put the tin in the oven, turn the heat down to 400. She says to bake them for 35 minutes, but in my oven, it only took twenty. Each muffin has 164 calories, 8 grams of protein, one gram of fat. Enjoy! Let me know what your favorite special ingredients are!

i got larry sue a new bed. i think meowski is jealous…

i’m in sf for the weekend. going to hopefully do some embroidery! can’t decide between the jelly fish or the giraffe or the elephant… hum…

i don’t remember where i first heard about worm bins, but, on mother’s day i went to the san diego county fair with my family where my mom led us to a little table between the turkey races and the camel milking demonstration. we ending up talking to a man about worm bins. and the reality of composting became a little more attainable.

now the only thing that was holding me back was the price. worm bins can go for up to $90! way too much. you can, i’m told, make your own. you can get some of those huge tupperware storage boxes from target and drill holes in the bottom. like this or this.

BUT, guess what i just found out! los angeles residents can get a worm bin for $5! (there’s a few other composting bins you can get for a discounted price) AND! the composting educational facility (who knew!) in griffith park offers a free workshop every fourth saturday from 10am to noon. i’m going to check it out next saturday and i’ll let you know what i find. here’s the website that talks about it.

here’s some further readin’, if you’re interested.
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we made the BEST grape juice with the grapes we got last year. so this year, we wanted to make some more. and we started making it today! i think we have twice as many grapes this year, though. i filled seven pint size jars with juice today. and there’s still probably six times more grapes left over. we’re gonna have grape juice comin’ out our ears!

here’s how we made the juice. first we washed the grapes. which in itself it a long time. cause we washed them, separated them, destemed them and then washed and separated again.

then into the pot! we put just enough water to just barely cover the grapes (and in hindsight, that was just a little too much.)

while waiting for it to come to a boil, we took some weird kitchen tool that dan loves and i can never get to work for anything but this, and pushed it into the mixture to smash the grapes a bit.

then let them come just almost to a boil. i have this great strainer the straddles the sides of the kitchen sink and hovers there (you can see it in the photo of the sink above). so, i got that out and for extra straining strength, lined it with a single layer of cheese cloth. (the day got a little hectic here and i forgot to take photos of these last two steps!) put an empty pot underneath, to catch the grape juice and then slowly pour the molten hot grape concoction into the strainer contraption to strain. then back into the pot to get the juice hot so that the jars will seal. carefully, with the help of a funnel, poured the juice into pint sized jars! voila! juice!

i started with a few goals. i wanted to take out the area rug and put it back in the bedroom. i wanted to make a more permanent spot for dan and his computer. and i wanted a nursery for all my new little plants.

here’s what i came up with!