Vanilla Walnut Pear Muffins

Along with my bag of free apples from the other day, came 3 frozen then thawed, slightly mushy pears.

There was a recipe in a cookbook of mine that I have wanted to try for a long time, but I never think to buy pears, so I have never tried it.

So with the help of these three pears, I made these:

Yes, they rose a lot more than I thought they would. The recipe said to fill the muffin cups 100% full....I filled them 3/4 full and still ended up with massive muffins!

How did they taste? Ok I suppose. I am not a big fan of pears, but they are nice and sweet, so I like them. Mon Amour likes them, though, in his words to me "They are not the best muffins you have ever made".

In summary, I am not rushing out to buy more pears so I can make these again. But if more free pears land in my lap, I think I will give it another try...and perhaps make a few adjustments to the recipe based on my own feeble knowledge of baking and what needed tweaking.

Note: These were not yummy enough tempt me to post the recipe. But, if you really like pears, and want the recipe, I am willing to share. Just let me know.

Three Mile Island

A while back, Mon Amour and I were up in the PA area; and it turns out, we were a mere mile or two away from 3 Mile Island. I don't know much about this place, except that there was a nearly catastrophic malfunctioning of the nuclear power plant on the island.

It is clearly a landmark, so, being so close, we could not pass up an opportunity to visit and take some photos. While there we were impressed by how bleak and ominous it felt due to the combination ice-flow and nuclear power plant vapor clouds. So Mon Amour took lots of cool photos.

What was most crazy was how close so many houses were. Where we live, I always think its a little crazy to give directions that go something like "You will pass some cows in a pasture, then turn right after the big red barn". But how much more weird would it be to say something like "Come down wandsuchstreet, and when TMI comes into view, we are the house directly on your left". That would just be disturbing.

Homemade Applesauce

This baking moment is brought to you by a free bag of apples that I got from work. (Yes, it's a sort of a weird work perk...but not the weirdest I have ever gotten. I have a strange job, with strange perks) The apples were left over from an event, and had been left in someone's car, so they froze. Then they thawed. They felt a little bit mushy, and my coworker was about to throw them out - when I snagged them!

Less than perfect fruit is excellent for baking with. I decided that these 7 huge apples, would be excellent for making applesauce with. After searching high and low for a recipe I thought I would like, I settled on this one. I think I may have used a bit less sugar than it called for. I can't remember exactly.

It was very easy. In no time at all, I took this:

And with the help of my friendly potato masher...

Made some yummy, homemade applesauce.
Conveniently, I had cleaned and saved an old Acme Apple Sauce jar, which I filled completely 48oz full. So now it is in the fridge looking store bought, but tasting so much better.

Side note: Generally I believe homemade things to be cheaper than store bought; however, in this case, where, I typically pay about $1-2 for 48oz of applesauce. I am pretty sure that the 7 huge apples it took to home-make the same amount would have cost more than $2 (had they not been a work-perk). Though, this homemade stuff is amazingly more delicious.

What I did with the 3 free, slightly mushy pears that I also received is a story for another day...

Baby

We got to visit with this adorable baby again recently.

And once Mon Amour was armed with his fancy camera. So he took lots of pictures. There are too many cute ones to pick from...here is but a sampling.

Love that color-accent feature!

I think this is her confused face.


This is a yawn.

Not to be confused with this - an unhappy cry.

This is why she was crying - she was fighting beautiful, blissful, sleep.

Awake again. Still adorable.

Ginger Cookes

Recently I have been on a bit of a baking kick. I don't have a lot of large chunks of spare time for baking, but have discovered that for the most part, I can find time to do anything that is a high enough priority for me. For the past couple of weeks, that high priority thing with which I am filling in my spare time has been baking.

Some things have been yummy. Some have been not so yummy.

And some have been very very very yummy.

This would be one of the very very very yummy kind.

Ginger Cookies.

They are not very interesting to look at. But they are delicious. They are kind of a mix between gingerbread cookies, and ginger snaps - with the softness of gingerbread, but the flavor of ginger snaps. Amazing.

You can find the recipe here.

It does call for fresh ginger. Which I happened to have when I made these. (It was a present, I wouldn't even know where to begin buying fresh ginger). You could probably make it with non-fresh ginger...but I have not tested that theory. So I technically can't say.

Enjoy.

Colored Walls: Part 1: The Kitchen

As previously mentioned, we have gotten permission to paint our house. Which is very exciting, cause we are going to be here for a while, and are trying to make it feel as homey as possible.

Also as previously mentioned, we recently received a bunch of free paint from Mon Amour's parents. So, when Mon Amour found himself with a day off from work, we decided to pull out this paint and see if we liked any of the colors.

We discovered we had 2 half-cans of a green color that was very similar....but possibly a shade or two off. Knowing that we would probably need a whole can of paint, and noting that both cans were of the "Satin" variety, we decided they were safe to combine.

So, into one can went both greens, resulting and a 3rd shade of green in a totally un-reproduceable , but lovely color.

Still not being sure how much paint we would need to paint the whole kitchen, we decided we would take it one wall at a time. Making accent walls, if you will, until we ran out of paint.

Wonderfully for us - we have enough paint to do both of the main (i.e. not cabinet covered) walls in the kitchen. It looks lovely:

My kitchen is now full decorated...at practically no cost to us.

• Curtains - Free material from Mon Amour's Mom
• Paint - Left overs from Mon Amour's Parents
• Paint Supplies - Gift from my parents and some loaners from friends
• Curtain Rods - Real cheap at walmart

My favorite part though....was the fact that we had a little bit of paint left. Not enough to do another whole wall.....so Mon Amour had this brilliant idea (he is the one in the family who has all the quirky ideas that end up being really cool)


Let's paint the trim around the door green!

So we have two walls that are green with white trim
And one wall that is white with green trim.

I love it.

Marge's Addiction

Marge is addicted to chewing things.
She chews her toys
She chews the furniture (less now than she used to)
She chews the towels that make her bed comfy
She chews on the carpet (used to)
She chews on her friends (a VERY bad habit that we are in the midst of breaking her of)
She has even tried chewing on our cast iron stove.

And it seems the stove is pretty much the only thing she cannot demolish. For everything else, it is just a matter of time.

Take this toy for example. Looks pretty tough right?

In fact, is supposed to be indestructible, as evidence by these reviews.

So, what did Marge do to it:


The testimonials from "real clients" state that it is the only toy that lasts more than 1 day with their dog. However, it seems that compared to our dog, these "real clients" hardly have "real dogs". (This toy only made it to day 2 because Marge got a 2nd new toy at the same time - and that one got destroyed first. Then she move on to this one)

Marge has some powerful jaws. And a serious addiction to chewing.
Oh well, at least she enjoyed it while it lasted.