The August of Muffins

There is something about August that makes me crazy. The first few days I am plunged into deep mourning over the loss of summer and wail for the rapidly looming beginning of a new school year.

piled up furniture is more fun than toys

Usually the kids snap me out of that very quickly by being pretty annoying for a couple hours; I find myself saying "thank goodness school is about to start" which kicks me in to major nesting mode hence the past two posts documenting a frenetic cleaning phase.

Although thank GOODNESS for my crazy cleaning last weekend; when the floor guys came they had to pull out the stove to use the more powerful outlet for their sander. They were able to do so without being attacked by mega dust-bunnies or crusted up kitchen grime.

This year add into the mix: having the majority of our main floor sanded and refinished. I'm thrilled with the almost-done result, but living in the remainder of the house, sleeping on an air mattress in the basement, adjusting to a chronic fume-induced sore throat is getting old.

Plus having to hang out around the house for the workers is making me a little sad; I had big plans this summer and we don't have many days left in which to do all the things. Such is life.

Underfill the muffin cups for easier freezing

I did, however, have a chance to try a few STUNNING muffin recipes from a free Muffin eBook. The peanut butter banana muffins were everything they promised to be, and more. A batch of blueberry muffins made me completely aware that I have been cheating myself by buying muffin mix. I made 2 batches, the first was a wash since I ran out of muffin papers so the poor things got stuck in the pan (don't worry, I scraped them out and we gobbled up the crumbs). I'm not even going to include the recipe here, because you owe it to humanity to download the eBook and begin making muffins like mad.

The second batch was perfect, and I slightly under-filled the cups so that I could freeze them for those rapidly approaching school year breakfasts.

For freezing: I let the muffins cool completely (I lost a few in the process thanks to the sneaking fingers of Little Frog and Mastermind), peeled off the papers and individually wrapped them in saran wrap. I flash froze them on a cookie sheet so that they wouldn't get smushed in a ziploc bag. After the flash-freeze I popped them all into the labeled ziploc bag. Because they're individually wrapped I'll be able to grab a few out of the freezer easily, toss them into the microwave or into a lunchbag. I'll probably pop one or two into Ox's snack bag straight from the freezer. They will be nice and thawed by the time he has afternoon snack.

Seriously, if you like muffins, make these muffins. Even uncooked you can tell the muffins are far superior by their ultra-silky batter and aura of hopefulness. I've realized muffins are a recklessly hopeful kind of food. Cranky people don't make muffins by scratch, and if they do, they will not be cranky by the time the muffins come out of the oven.

Well. The kids are off with Mastermind on a morning bike ride. I stayed behind to "clean the kitchen" which today means reading The Cat Who Lived High and writing this blog post. The floor guys might be by today to buff and put on the last coat of clear stuff. . . or they might be here on Monday. I don't know for sure.

Thankfully the kiddos have a date scheduled with their grandma, they need to get out of the house. . . I might make more muffins.

I leave you with the picture at right; Little Frog and Ox are once again reenacting the Judy Moody movie.