pumpkin banana muffins

Clouds overhead call for warm muffins and black coffee, good reads and thick socks. Enjoy it while it lasts (both the cool weather...and my unemployment :)

Muffins

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground ginger

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon allspice

¼ cup vegetable oil

½ cup granulated sugar

⅓ cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 eggs

1 cup pure pumpkin puree

2 mashed bananas

¾ cup vanilla yogurt

        

Streusel Topping

½ cup all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons firmly packed brown sugar

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

pinch kosher salt

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cubed

Turbinado sugar

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice in a large bowl.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, smash up bananas. Add in vegetable oil, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, pumpkin, and yogurt. Mix until well combined. Add in the flour mixture (about a cup at a time) until just incorporated, making sure not to overmix (makes for a tough muffin).

To make the streusel topping, combine the flour, sugar, cinnamon, and salt in a small bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or two knives until mixture resembles small pebbles.

Fill muffin tin with muffin cups. Scoop ¼ cup of batter into each muffin cup, then sprinkle a teaspoon or two of streusel topping over the batter. Top each muffin with about 1 teaspoon (or as much as you can fit) of turbinado sugar over top of that. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the muffins are golden and a toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before removing from muffin tin to serve.

3, 2, 1...party!

Last weekend, a few of my girlfriends and I threw a wedding shower for our friend Callie. Please let me just share with you a few gems from the day:

1.     Things only take one minute when you wait til the last minute. I do not normally operate on this principle with projects I care about, but it had been a rough week for me and somehow the day of the party snuck right up on me. Then the hour of the party snuck right up. Then the last 15 minutes. So much can be accomplished with good focus and the busy hands of women you trust, synergistically pulling off a common goal (and hey, with about 30 seconds to spare).

2.     Although I am not the girl that travels with a wardrobe, I am now glad to be friends with girls that do. Fifteen minutes before our guests are set to arrive, I am frying up donuts like a mad woman (for freshness sake, obviously). In my haste, I splash grease all down the front of my dress and have to do a quick costume change as the future bride and her mother and sister are walking in the front door. I found myself so thankful for the absurdity that one of the other hostesses had brought 4 outfits to wear to this single event.

3.     husBen is just the best. The minute we hit the door to prepare for the party, he started responding to our every request, like an extension of whoever called out to him. He set out food and washed dishes and poured drinks. He never seemed to stop moving and then disappeared right before the party began, making our guests think we pulled it all off ourselves. What a true facilitator. So proud.

photo credit to Ali D :)

Per usual, I must admit I so enjoyed the hustle and rush of this event with these specific women. I felt grateful to have so many like minds working together and spending time intentionally to celebrate a major blessing of a friend.  If wedding-shower-ing were a team sport, I dare say we vied for the gold (Sochi-ready). Below are a few of the goods we whipped up to feed our gaggle of guests celebrating our dear Callie!

 White wine mojitos

 

the ladies love these

1 bottle white wine

1 cup chopped mint leaves

2 limes (sliced and juiced)

1 ounce simple syrup

½ cup Falernum (lime liqueur) optional

1 cup sparkling lemonade

Combine above ingredients, except sparkling lemonade. Chill for 2 hours then add in sparkling lemonade immediately before serving.

Ham and Gruyere Sandwiches

1 package (2 sheets) frozen puff pastry, defrosted*

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

¼ pound black forest ham, thinly sliced

½ pound smoked Gruyère cheese, thinly sliced

1 egg

flour for dusting

Preheat your oven to 450 F. Place a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet and dust lightly with flour. Lay one sheet of puff pastry on baking sheet. Spread a layer of mustard on the puff pastry, leaving a 2 cm border around the edge. Add a layer of sliced ham, overlapping pieces. Add the cheese in similar fashion.

Make an egg wash by lightly beating 1 egg with 1 tablespoon of water. Brush exposed edges with the egg wash.  Lay the other piece of puff pastry on top and crimp edges together with a fork (press fork down all the way around edges to seal the top and bottom layers of puff pastry together). Brush the whole puff pastry with egg wash and cut a few small slits in the top to allow steam to escape during baking. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until puffed and golden brown.

Allow to cool for 5-10 minutes, then cut into triangles or squares (whatever you find most aesthetically pleasing). Serve warm.

Caramel popcorn

Popcorn, popped

Vanilla caramel, slightly warmed (recipe below*)

Dark chocolate discs

Toffee pieces

Pretzels

Pinch of salt

Toss as much as you’d like of each of the above ingredients together and eat up!

*Caramel

2 ½ cups sugar

2 cups heavy cream

¾ cup light corn syrup

1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and seeds scraped

1 stick unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons and softened

½ teaspoon kosher salt

In a large saucepan, combine the sugar, cream, corn syrup, vanilla bean and the seeds you scraped out. Bring mixture to a boil then reduce to moderately high heat, stirring occasionally, until a candy thermometer reads 230° (about 15 minutes).

Carefully whisk in the butter and salt and continue stirring (constantly) until the caramel is golden and reaches 235° on a candy thermometer, about 5 more minutes. Pick out and discard the vanilla bean and allow caramel to cool for about 5-10 minutes. Pour the warm caramel into a pan or glass dish to continue cooling to room temperature. Use over popcorn, ice cream, pie, or anything you wish! Store in the refrigerator in a glass container. 

Donuts

the dangerous donuts

I followed the recipe fairly religiously for the donuts found on Joy the Baker’s blog (http://joythebaker.com/2012/02/pink-raised-doughnuts-with-toasted-coconut/), but adorned them with white pearl sprinkles instead of coconut and cut mine into squares rather than the classic donut shape.  

Ali, me, Callie, and Mel. Quality folks right there. 

ICU, bed 20

I can only now describe to you the terrifying hours of this past weekend, now that he is safe, now that he is found, now that my little brother is alive and recovering.

Spencer’s girlfriend contacted me around 1:30 on Saturday afternoon, inquiring as to whether I had heard from Spencer yet that day. I hardly considered it a cause to worry, until I called his phone myself and a friend of his answered, also wondering if I knew where Spencer might be. His friend informed me that he had already checked on couches, called hospitals, and even visited the jail looking for him. My immediate contradictory desire to both punch Spencer in the mouth if I found him sleeping in his own bed past noon unaccessible and desire to just locate him safe and intact and not incarcerated or hospitalized almost made my stomach flip. I looked over at Ben with fear in my eyes.

We got in the car and started driving. We didn’t know what else to do and I could not bear to just sit around and wait. We searched up and down the streets where he was last seen, and my tears only really began to overwhelm my controlling mind when he turned the car around the last time to head home. I must have realized at that moment most poignantly that I could not fix this on my own. I called my mom (probably should have done that sooner) and called HPD immediately after.

While waiting for the police to arrive to take our statement for a missing persons report, my mom called me frantically saying something about a message left on our home phone from Ben Taub Hospital. Ben Taub, where you go if you get stabbed or shot, that Ben Taub kept flashing through my brain as I sped to the hospital, picking up a friend along the way as I was a little too frantic to drive safely and be alone in this moment (and husBen had to wait at the house for the police to arrive).

About a block from the hospital, my mom calls me back with more information: he is in the ICU, bed 20. Really losing it now. I practically lunged at his hospital bed when I burst through the doors of the ICU. And there he was, breathing. Alive. My unidentified little brother. Collar. Intubated. In full restraints. Pale with dried blood caked in his hair.

His eyes locked mine wildly and he tried to sit up. I could see his blood pressure start to spike on the monitor so I tried to remain calm and just hold his hand, tell him I was here now and that everything would be okay. The kind nurse let me untie his hands so that we could communicate through writing.

What happened?

You got stabbed in the neck.

Did I hurt anyone?

You arrived alone.

Can I walk?

You are going to be fine.

Is this a shitty hospital?

The best one for you right now.

Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.

I am so sorry I wasn’t here sooner Spencer.

Just please don’t leave me…

My friend made it up to the ICU and we stood by his side til all my other family members arrived, each needing to see for them selves that he was alive and not facing long term consequences of this terrifying incident. No one was allowed to stay overnight in the ICU, so we eventually went home to spend a sleepless night apart from him, waking constantly to call his sweet nurse and ask how he was doing.

The doctors finally discharged Spencer late Monday evening to go home to Victoria under my parents’ watch, leaving the rest of us in position to recover emotionally from the shock of the weekend.

Part of my moving on involves me forgiving myself for those hours between 6 am Saturday morning (after Spencer got through surgery and was admitted to the ICU) and 4 pm when I first saw him. My mind keeps forcing the image of him waking up, cloudy minded on sedation, tied to a hospital bed with a tube down his throat, unable to reach us. Unable to ask what happened or if he still had legs or if he would be okay (you see how my time working in the ICU affects my imagination).

Spencer is going to be fine, probably a little wiser even, and he certainly aged our dear mother about 5 years. I am not sure what I learned from this, except what it feels like to be on the other side, to be the family crammed in a hospital room patiently hanging on the doctor’s orders. And from that first moment of seeing Spencer helpless in a hospital bed, the patient forever became a person; the patients of my future became someone’s little brother.  So go hug your family and keep them close by your side, because it should not take the terrifying potential of losing someone to acknowledge how deeply they can affect you.  

crushed ice

Hi people. I have missed this space! My apologies…

We moved last week and have yet to stop unpacking, throwing away, and adjusting. My absence from this space also in part owes to my one serious complaint…okay, privileged whine…we don’t have Internet yet!

The reality that our previous home signed itself up for demolition forced us to move in with my Aunt Susie, and despite the fact that our new home is a flat (as in, one giant room), this is arguably the nicest place we have lived as a couple.

This flat boasts of a dishwasher, fancy shower, king bed, and a refrigerator that makes crushed ice. Crushed ice! Revolutionary, folks. Also revolutionary is the proximity of our dining table to said bed, so if we have you over for dinner, please let me apologize in advance that you are also in my bedroom. One day we will look back on this closeness with fondness in our hearts. Right now I am still focusing on my gratitude for the crushed ice. 

I am honestly just so grateful for Aunt Susie’s willingness to host us for the next few months with our two large dogs. Family always saves our day.

Below is a recipe for chili I made awhile back but have yet to post, because our bipolar Texas weather—with its days of icepocolypse followed by days of crisp sunshine—has hardly merited an effort at chili. Make it while Texas is still claiming a winter!

Chicken Chili

2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into bite size pieces

1 16 oz container of salsa of your choice

2 cans white beans

2 cans black beans           

4 cups chicken broth

1 can cream of mushroom soup (optional)

Avocados, cheese, cilantro, chips

In a large stockpot, cook chicken over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until browned and almost cooked through (about 5 minutes). Add in salsa, beans, and broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and stir occasionally for about 30 minutes, until broth is reduced. At this point, you can add in a few tablespoons of cream of mushroom soup if you want a thicker, heartier chili. Serve hot with slices of avocado, cheese, cilantro and chips!