muffinland

And so my adventures in Muffinland continue, and believe me when I say that I have nothing new to add to the subject of muffins. They remain my go-to baking item in the kitchen. You really cannot mess them up. Mix the liquids, mix the solids, mix the two together and spoon into tins. Nothing to mess up. Promise.

That being said, there are muffins and there are muffins. If you are unsatisfied with the descriptive nature of the previous sentence, let me elaborate. There are muffins that sound good and taste fine, but really, it’s just a lot of flour, eggs, milk, butter and sugar. A day later it’s a bit dry, still sweet so you can take care of that tooth, but your memory is uninspired, and that muffin goes into “forget about this” box in your brain. It’s a So-So Muffin

And then there are muffins. These ones sound good, taste good, still taste good the day after. These muffins are full of flavours and texture; you don’t bite into one and think, flour, you think, Moist! Surprise! I Want More! You want more because this muffin has crunch and squish and colour and a variety of flavours that dance on your tongue. Maybe it has some pieces of fruit or nuts mixed into it, and of course it is tender and stays tender for a few days. This is the Awesome Muffin.

I am no baking expert, but I’ve come up with a little system for myself as a way of determining whether a muffin will be a So-So or the Awesome from looking at ingredients. Yoghurt – Greek yoghurt – especially goes a long way in making a muffin moist for days and buttermilk as well. I realize now after making these muffins that milk is the weakest link in the muffin-making process. The other thing that the Awesome Muffin needs are ingredients that give it texture and complex flavours – fruit, nuts, anything that will burst in the mouth or crunch against the teeth, and more flavour than vanilla essence.

These muffins – Coffee Coffee Cake Muffins by Joy the Baker – are good, but definitely go into the So-So Muffin category for me. The highlight is definitely the brown butter taste, and that was fabulous. I ate the batter by the spoonful; it was that delicious, but I actually liked the batter better than the muffin. Batter better. Say that one a few times fast. I put heaps of espresso in the coffee part of the batter, and it was still lost in the muffin (the coffee taste was faint but could have been stronger).

• Coffee Coffee Cake Muffins   (by Joy the Baker)  Head over to her site for the recipe. It’s a good muffin, just not great. I wonder how it would change if yoghurt was substituted for the milk. I personally thought the topping was ok but a bit time consuming. I put more time into these muffins than I did into this one and this one, and the other two are significantly better than this coffee cake one. Still everyone who ate it liked this muffin, and I liked it as well, and it would be a nice addition to a brunch table.

ponder anew

Small One and I had one of our music and dancing mornings. These are requirements for me on days when I am feeling particularly susceptible to losing the day ahead of me. How is it for you? Because I can win or lose a day within the first hours of living it, within the first set of mind choices, within the first glimpse of heart attitudes, and there are days that from the outset are going to be tougher to win, and I have to draw deeper, pray harder, grit teeth and bear up underneath what is coming.

Today it is my wicked cold and the sad, swollen, teeth-pregnant gums of my almost-one-year-old that threatened to undo me as it undid me all weekend long. So this morning, Small One and I began our day by with our Praise Baby playlist on Grooveshark. He loves music, as I suppose all babies do, but his favourite thing of all is when I pick him up and dance with him to the music.

We started with “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,” and we spin and turn on our wood floors while the baby xylophone sounds come out of the laptop and children sing Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation, oh my soul praise him for he is thy health and salvation. I hold Small One up and swing him around, and his mouth is open in a giant smile, his eyes widen with joy. He is flying, and I am a ballerina who doesn’t know how but is free to swing and turn and stumble across our white woolen rug as it slips under my feet. When I pull him back into my arms, he turns his face toward mine, mouth wide open and plants one of his “kisses” on my cheek – an open-mouthed bite.

This song is one of my favourites, and has its place in the soundtrack of life memories. Husband and I exited our wedding ceremony to this version; no xylophones and children’s voices here, only robust strings and orchestral arrangements. We were on our way to live the greatest adventure of our lives, people were clapping and cheering, we beamed and the music ricocheted off  the wood and stained glass. Praise to the Lord who o’er all things so wondrously reigneth, shelters thee under his wings and so gently sustaineth? Has thou not seen, how thy desires have been, granted in what He ordaineth? 

Then there was the time I was standing in the back of a cold, grey chapel as people filled the room dressed in black, with my father-in-law’s body in a casket in the front and from the keyboard came the familiar tune as “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” went through the room. No singing this time, just the melody, as all sat in silence, and I stood watching with Small One in his pram. Ponder anew, what the almighty can do, if with his love he befriend thee. It was a German hymn, I discovered today, published in the 1600s.

Three moments, different from each other in every way, and it gives a brief history of the whirlwind that the past two years have been. Extreme highs, extreme lows. Yes, life is the same for us as it is for all, the ebb and flow of up and down, but the song has not changed because the Songwriter stays the same. 

It is the afternoon now, and Small One is napping. I am feeling warm with fever, my face still stuffed and body feeling broken, but I am still listening to this song in my heart and willing my perspective to change. Meditate on this today, my soul, and listen to the song that plays from the beginning of time through the narrative of the world and in the corner of human hearts. Surely his goodness and mercy here daily attend thee. 

So be it. Amen.

running through my head – mother’s day edition (sort of)

This week…

1. I made the above photo for breakfast, and I wondered to myself why a) why can’t asparagus be in season all year around? and b) why can’t I get up early enough to make breakfast like this every day? (It’s toast with a grilled tomato and asparagus and a soft-boiled egg – put the asparagus and egg into boiling water for just under four minutes.)

2. The web erupted in fury about TIME magazine’s breastfeeding cover, and TIME magazine’s editors erupted in glee as they watched their magazine sales and page views climb.

3.  We looked through the photos of Small One in his first days of life, and it was basically like stabbing my heart with a knife and twisting it round and round and round. I told Husband I wanted that day back, and he said it wasn’t going to happen. Germans are really matter-of-fact in that way.

4. When I woke up on Mother’s Day, my first thoughts were that I wanted to celebrate my son, not be celebrated myself. I still feel that way, like he’s the one who deserves the attention because he’s the one who made me a mother and who makes me a mother every day.

5. It is worth mentioning though that I see Small One’s birthday – in a week – as my birth day and am sincerely hoping for a cake of my own and presents. Lots of presents.

6. Mother’s Day is different in every place I’ve lived in. It’s huge in the Philippines with our churches having sermons dedicated to mommies and decor in all the malls that were related to the day. In the US it’s all about giving mom the day off to get manicures and pedicures, jewelry and other day-offy things. Australians were also serious about mother’s day, but I remember it was very brunch and lunch oriented. Switzerland is by far the most laid back of all the places I’ve lived in. There was a bit of decor in some places, but hardly anything. Flowers are the thing here, I think, to get the mommies.

Have a great weekend everyone.

bones

Honesty is one of my aims with this blog, and now I am going to divulge one of my eating secrets. I love bones. Chicken bones, beef bones, pork bones, lamb bones, basically any kind of meat bone is one of my favourite parts of the meat-eating experience.

For those of you who just wrinkled your nose with disgust, I promise, meat bones are packed with delicious flavours, and oh the texture. So so so good. The crunch of the cartilage and ligaments on the ends of chicken legs make legs my favourite part of the chicken, and you haven’t lived until you have tasted the marrow inside the chicken bones of my mother’s chicken curry. My whole family will sit around the table splitting, gnawing, scraping and sucking bone marrow out of every single one of our chicken bones. It is a sight to behold.

To be even more honest with you, my love for bones makes eating out  difficult because I don’t pick bones apart when I’m out in public. But oh I am driven mad when I look at the bones covered in tasty bits of muscle, ligament and cartilage screaming my name. (Before you think that there’s something wrong with me, there are legitimate recipes and uses for bone marrow like this Roasted Bone Marrow with Parsley Salad from A Cozy Kitchen.)

Another one of the bone parts that I love are the bits of marrow and fat in lamb and veal bones, and you can bet that I went to town on my little piece of bone in last night’s osso bucco. Husband kindly gave me his as well.

Osso bucco is an Italian dish, and I can’t remember the first time I had it. Typically made with veal, the pork variety is also lovely. It’s a great winter warmer, and because it is still wintry here in Geneva, it worked last night. We ate it with a basic polenta. This dish is easy to make, and the only thing that takes time is chopping the onions, carrots and celery. Other than that it falls in into the category of “great results for little effort,” definitely my favourite category.

• Veal Osso Bucco   (from Taste)   I followed the recipe closely but doubled the wine quantity, and it tasted great. I personally thought it needed more liquid before it went into the oven. We didn’t have zucchini, so I skipped that, but I’m sure it would be very tasty with it as well.

the balance of gratitude

The weather indicator on our Macbook says that it is currently nine degrees outside with an expected high of 12 for the day. Nine degrees celsius is 48 degrees Farenheit, just so we’re clear, and as far as I’m concerned a totally unacceptable temperature for the middle of May. I want to complain about this, one could say I am already complaining, but perhaps one does not realize the great heights of complaining I could scale when it comes to this topic. I grew up in the tropics! Australian summers were scorchers! Do you know how many “summer” days there are in Geneva? Do you know how long the winter is in Geneva?

Two years ago I started reading Ann Voskamp’s blog, and when I say that reading it it changed my life, I mean those words quite literally. My first year in Geneva was probably the most difficult year of my life, and the practice of writing down daily what I was thankful for was one of the only ways I was able to maintain my sanity and as Ann Voskamp says, choose joy. Every day I had a choice; I could look at what was difficult or I could choose to look for joy.

Bitterness can seduce with its cold embrace and empty promise of control, and it is dismantled by gratitude. Choosing joy meant looking for it in the corners of our apartment, the kicking feet in my uterus, Husband’s thoughtfulness, runny egg yolks and tuna sandwiches and so many other little things. I discovered that if I looked closely, I found a myriad of things for which I could be thankful.

But in this second year, a year that has been more even, joyful and joy-filled, purposeful and harmonious, I have needed to be honest and realistic about what is difficult, and this is where I think I am learning to find the balance of gratitude. Not swimming in a sea of negativity, but acknowledging what is difficult and facing it. We cannot ignore the painful ways life twists and turns around it, and gratitude can be a sinister, albeit lovely, way of doing that.

Unresolved pain not faced today are unresolved issues that return in the future to haunt us. 

The practice of gratitude cannot blind us from the places in our lives that need attention and it cannot be the only practice or discipline we embrace. I am finding that the pairing of the practice of honesty with the practice of gratitude has led to a tenuous balance in my life, and I like it.

I like giving myself the freedom to be unhappy about the cold May weather in Geneva while also recognizing the beauty of the snow on the Jura mountain this morning and the lush greenery everywhere that came because of an exceptionally rainy spring. Both are true, both are real. The ability to be honest about what I am thinking and feeling releases me to be see the reasons I have to be thankful.

• Enchiladas    (from The Pioneer Woman)   I made this dish for many people, so it took me a lot of time to make it. Time consuming, yes, but it is also ridiculously tasty, so I would say it was worth it. That being said, most meals I cook take a fraction of the amount of time this one involved, and with a whole lot less clean up (there were so many pots and pans involved with this recipe).
• To my knowledge there’s no way to get enchilada sauce in Geneva, so I made my own, improvising from this recipe, I used a jar of tomato passata and added tomato pasted to it and didn’t add much stock. But I used all of the spices the recipe recommended and the amount of chili powder that suits our taste buds.
• About the enchilada recipe from PW, she said to fry the tortillas in some oil, and I did that expecting that it was going to take the enchiladas into some sort of gastronomical stratosphere, which in hindsight was probably too high of an expectation for corn tortillas to fulfill. It did taste lovely, but I can’t say that the work of frying corn tortillas (and the resulting film of oil on my kitchen floor) was worth it. Not frying the tortillas and simply dipping them in the enchilada sauce before putting in the filling, would cut back on some cooking time, not to mention clean up time.
• For the meat, I usually add more than what the recipe recommends. Here’s my standard procedure with mince meat – fry onions and garlic, add meat to the mixture and cook, add Sri Lankan curry powders and some chili powder, and done.
• This was a tasty dish. I loved having olives and spring onions stuffing the enchilada and not just the meat mixture. We ate it with some pico de gallo and guacamole, and I would recommend that as well. The warmth of the enchilada and the melting cheese respond well to fresh and cold condiments.
• I should also note that I am thankful for these enchiladas and for Texmexican food in general and the ability to make it even though I am far away from Texmex country.