SK week 4 | Corniest Corn Muffins

It's been below zero for most of the week, and there's just more of the same coming. So we're making all the warm comfort food to deal with it. I made chili this week and these fantastic corn muffins to go with it!

(Here's the Smitten Kitchen post).

Here you go!

You'll need:
1 cup flour (I used gluten-free flour)
1 cup yellow cornmeal
6 tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
3 tablespoons oil
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 cup corn kernels (I used frozen, but fresh or canned are fine too)

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Grease a muffin tin or line with cupcake liners.

Measure your dry ingredients...

And whisk them together.

Then whisk together the buttermilk, melted butter, oil, egg, and yolk until well blended.

Add that mixture to your dry ingredients.

Gently stir that all together.

Add the corn.

And fold it in.

Divide the batter into your prepared muffin tin.
Bake for 15-18 minutes.

Yum! They'll start to get golden on top. Cool for a bit in the pan, then remove and cool completely on a wire rack. (Even better, serve them warm).

I like chili just fine, but I'm really mostly about the extras--lots of toppings and good cornbread. :)

Final verdict: we all loved them! They translated to gluten free beautifully and the actual corn in them was really good. Can't wait to make them again.

Happy weekend, friends! Stay warm! :)

Winter Top 5

Happy winter! It's definitely winter here, as we're recovering from a below-zero weekend and woke up to an inch or so of the fluffiest snow ever this morning. I'm enjoying the hibernating, the fireplace, and the coziness. Happy hygge. :)

If you need some help to get you through these long, cold months, here you go. :)

1) Tank's Good News

@tanksgoodnews is a new Instagram account (and website) dedicated to sharing only good news stories. It's delightful and refreshing. He's also starting a podcast based on the idea, although I haven't had a chance to listen yet.

2) The Upside

My social media feeds were inundated with ads for this movie a couple weeks ago, so Dan and I escaped last weekend to see it. There was a time in my life when all January/February movie-watching was dedicated to only those nominated for Oscars. My how times change. :) This movie was so good! Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart are an unlikely pairing, but they work so well together. Laugh out loud, but also very touching.

3) Cookie dough energy bites

I follow Pinch of Yum, and she posted these a couple weeks ago so I made them on a whim, and I love them. They're easier than baking cookies, and they keep well in the fridge. Here's the recipe if you want to try them. (I use sunbutter instead of peanut butter and skip the chia seeds because they just get stuck in my teeth and drive me nuts).

4) Podcasts
Do you ever have someone recommend a podcast, only to look it up and realize you have a million episodes to choose from, and you don't know where to start? These are all podcasts I've recommended in the past, but I'm recommending specific episodes in case you need some guidance. :)

To be honest, Jen's podcast is not one that I listen to every week. Mostly because her episodes are long (over an hour) and that just isn't always convenient. But here are two recent ones I enjoyed:
The Popcast's Knox McCoy and Jamie Golden: Binge-Watching with Our TV Soulmates (11/13/18)
Give Yourself the Gift of Done: Jon Acuff (1/15/19)
On deck for me is her interview with Hillary McBride from 1/8/19, which I heard amazing things about.

This one is a weekly favorite for me because her episodes are practical and a reasonable length. :) If you need somewhere to start, I'd highly recommend episode #46 (The Lazy Genius Loses Weight) and episode #81 (The Lazy Genius and Healthy Eating). Spoiler alert: they're not what you think. ;) So in the midst of New Year's resolutions that may or may not be working for you, I'd highly recommend Kendra's view on things.

This is another easy one to fit in with her short episodes, but I'm going to recommend episode #66: Don't Let the Ending Define the Whole Story. It's beautiful. (Also, Emily is releasing a BOOK! It's called The Next Right Thing and it comes out in April. You can preorder it here).

5) Books!

I joked with my friend that this book title perfectly describes an Enneagram 5. :) Anne Bogel's I'd Rather Be Reading highlights everything we love about books and why we can't imagine life without them. It was a very enjoyable read.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones follows an African American couple after the husband is wrongly accused of a crime and incarcerated. Fascinating and thought-provoking.

I've enjoyed everything I've read by Rachel Held Evans, and Inspired was no different. The book itself was inspired by her own questions about the Bible, and she walks us through various types of writing found there, as well as what God is trying to teach us through it.

Knox McCoy is one of the hosts of two of my favorite podcasts, The Popcast and The Bible Binge, and The Wondering Years is his memoir. It's hilarious and heartwarming and I loved it so much.

The Overstory by Richard Powers details the lives of nine individuals and how they all come together around trees. Sounds weird, but it's fascinating and beautiful. Their stories run deep and it was fun to piece them all together.

And finally, I'll Be There For You: The One About Friends by Kelsey Miller. I'm a die-hard Friends fan, and Kelsey had some backstories and behind-the-scenes that I hadn't even heard before. It was so great! And it made me want to watch the series all over again. (I haven't yet, but do you know what I love watching? Friends bloopers videos on Facebook. Don't even start, because it's so hard to stop. Or do, because it will be the funniest thing you've watched all day). :)

Hope you're all surviving the winter and holding on to the promise that spring WILL come!

SK week 3 | Melting Potatoes

I love potatoes. I could eat potatoes everyday and not get tired of them. So I was very excited to try Melting Potatoes for this week's Smitten Kitchen recipe!

(Click here for the Smitten Kitchen post.)

Okay here's what you need:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 pounds yukon gold potatoes
1 cup chicken broth
3-5 garlic cloves

Turn your oven on to 500 degrees. Peel and slice up the potatoes.

Mix the melted butter with the salt and pepper...

And toss the potatoes around in that until they're coated.

Arrange them on a sheet pan and pour the remaining butter mixture over the top. Throw this in your HOT oven for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, smash and peel your garlic.

After 15 minutes, flip the potatoes. (Hey, look! My fancy new spatula!) Return to oven for another 15 minutes.

After that 15 minutes, throw in the garlic and pour over the cup of chicken broth. Roast for one last 15 minutes.

A note. The liquid combined with the 500-degree oven made for a very smoky kitchen main floor. We had the hood fan on and two windows open, and it was still pretty bad. You've been warned. :)

Beautiful potatoes. Worth the smoke.

We had them with pork tenderloin and some roasted broccoli and cauliflower. It was all delicious.

Final verdict: Definite win! The three of us who actually ate them loved them. They'd be amazing with pot roast, or even as a breakfast potato with some eggs and sausage. Yum. :)

Happy Friday, friends!

SK week 2 | The Crispy Egg

Dan has been in Florida all week. The other morning he sent me this.

So obviously, I sent him this and said "You're mean!"

Anyway, when Dan is gone I don't cook much in the way of "normal" meals. There's a lot of "Hey, maybe there are some leftovers in the fridge!" and "Hey, let's grab Chipotle!" and "Hey, how about eggs and toast!"

Which leads me to this weeks Smitten Kitchen recipe: The Crispy Egg. I've seen her post it numerous times and just haven't tried it until this week. When I make eggs for all of us, it's generally scrambled or hard-boiled, as those are the most crowd-pleasing around here. But if I'm making an egg for myself, I prefer a nice over-easy with a somewhat runny yolk. So I was excited to try a different approach to the fried egg. :)

(Here's Smitten Kitchen's post for it)

Obviously no out-of-the-ordinary ingredients this week, but I did buy that spiffy little fish spatula for it! It's a long overdue purchase, as my over-easy egg frying usually leaves me with broken yolks, bad words, and a sad lunch. There are a bunch on Amazon--mine was about $6.

So you need a pan--either cast iron or stainless steel (I don't know why not non-stick--I'm just following Deb on this one), a fancy spatula, an egg, and oil or cooking fat of your choice.

Heat your pan of choice on high for one full minute. Then add a "glug" (I don't have the specific measurement for glug, but follow your heart) of your oil and let THAT heat for another 30 seconds. I actually did time these two pre-heats because I wanted to do this right. :)

Super hot oil:

Now drop your egg in and GET THE HECK AWAY FROM YOUR PAN. I cracked it into a bowl first so I didn't have to fumble with egg shells while simultaneously being burned with splattering oil.

But for real, it will sound mad. Just stand back and let it be.

"This is your brain on drugs." (Where my 90s kids at?)

So the egg whites are going to be super bubbly and mine eventually curled over my yolk.

I also spooned some of the hot oil over the top to finish cooking the egg white. It was really taking everything in me not to flip it, so this helped me.

I had it on toast, because I like toast with my runny egg yolk. However, this yolk wasn't runny at all, which was a bummer. I should have either skipped the spoon-basting or started it earlier, as I think that was the culprit.

Final verdict: Eh. I was underwhelmed. It was my own fault for overcooking it. The crispiness was nice, but honestly not enough for me to want to try again. And for sure not enough to make it worth scrubbing my stainless steel pan for as long as I had to. ;)

BUT I do have a fancy new egg flipper for when I next make a perfectly runny over-easy egg! So all is not lost. :)

Slow down

I love when my kids fall asleep out of the blue. I mean, I also love when they fall asleep when they're supposed to, but I think it's so cute to discover that they've just konked out.

Jack and daddy. :)

Leah, mouthful of blanket. :)

And yesterday, this one.

He actually fell asleep on the couch, and I was going to take advantage of the impromptu naptime to lie down myself. I'd had a hard time falling asleep the night before and an early wake-up call to get Dan to a friend's house to get to the airport, so I was definitely fighting the afternoon tiredness. After a few minutes, he had woken up and he came to find me. He crawled up and snuggled right in, falling back to sleep immediately. I read and he slept, and then the kids got home from school and we got on with our afternoon.

I feel so aware of the very short amount of time I have left with this kid at home. In eight quick months, he'll be heading off to kindergarten, and for the first time in 13 years, I won't have any kids left at home. What in the world?

We were chatting about kids last night and somehow the topic of Jack's graduation party came up. I mean, it's still 5 years away, but at the same time, IT'S ONLY FIVE YEARS AWAY! The now-taller-than-I, nearly-teenaged man-child will be graduating from freaking high school. I swear I was just pregnant with him. Just potty trained him. Just drove him to kindergarten.

I know I'm in good company in wishing the world would just SLOW THE HECK DOWN. These kids are with us for so few years in the grand scheme of things. We blink and years fly by. And while I do love each new stage that comes, and I very much look forward to having teenagers, I think there's still something that I mourn when I realize the little kids years are so fleeting. No more naps, diapers, board books, infant carseats.

So obviously I have to share this gem with you. Nichole Nordeman released it a few years ago and it went viral. As it should have--I don't know a mom anywhere who can't resonate with this message. :)

SK week 1 | Chocolate Chunk Granola Bars

Okay, nothing super fancy for week 1. Although this recipe did fit the bill for ingredients I've never bought before with both the millet (I looked for it on Amazon in case I couldn't find it in the store, and the first couple listings were sprays of millet for pet bird cages--alas, Cub did end up having it) and the Sunbutter (I think peanut butter would work just fine, but I wasn't sure I wanted that flavor, so I sprung for the Sunbutter).

(Here's the Smitten Kitchen listing if you want to check it out)

Without further ado, Chocolate Chunk Granola Bars

Cast of Characters:
1 1/4 cup rolled oats (if you're making these for GF people, make sure your oats are GF)

1/4 cup rolled oats, finely ground, or oat flour (I just ground some in the food processor super quick)

3/4 cup unsweetened coconut

1/3 cup uncooked millet (not the birdseed kind....)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (optional--I skipped it)

1 cup chopped dried fruit (I used craisins)

1 cup chopped dark chocolate or chocolate chips (I used a dark chocolate bar in the photo, but I ended up chopping some dark chocolate chips...I'd probably just use mini chocolate chips in the future)

1/4 cup sunflower seed butter

1/4 cup olive oil or coconut oil, warmed until liquified (I used coconut oil)

1/4 cup maple syrup, honey, or golden syrup (I used maple syrup)

Heat oven to 350 and line an 8x8 pan with parchment (you want to make a sling--see photos farther down). 

Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl. Sneak a chocolate chunk. Or a piece of millet if you're feeling birdish. 

Mix it all up.

Combine your three wet ingredients and whisk until smooth. Add to dry ingredients. 

And stir until it's all evenly coated.

Dump it into your lined pan (see? sling) and use another sheet of parchment to press it down really well. 

Pop it into your preheated oven and bake for 25-30 minutes.

The edges will start to lightly brown. Now these are going to smell so heavenly right out of the oven, but you need to be patient. If you try to cut them now, it will be a big crumbly, chocolatey mess. I let the pan cool for a bit and then popped it in the fridge for about 20 minutes before I attempted cutting them. 

Use the sling to remove it, then cut into bars (16 total worked well).

Final verdict: Overall, a win. I think I like them the most of the four of us who tried them, but no one DISliked them. Leah would have preferred that I skipped the craisins. ;)

I'll definitely make them again, but I may try a tiny bit more liquid, as they are a little crumbly. (Or maybe honey would have been more binding than the syrup). But they've been great for breakfast this week!