Eggs in muffin tins

Several (many?) years ago, I had the good fortune to experience what might be the world’s greatest internship: working at the French Space Agency (CNES) in Toulouse, France. I was there during the Euro Cup, so I learned a lot about French “football” culture (and useful vocabulary, in the instance of a player who got a red card for spitting on another player), in addition to experiencing three months of warm dry sunshine, pastries, wine, cheese, meat cooked on small barbecues with other international interns from all over Europe, train rides through fields of lavender and sunflowers, and exploring many towns throughout southern France. I also did some work, and in what I still consider to be one of my greatest achievements, gave a one hour presentation in French about satellite design. To the head of the department. I don’t know if anyone in the room was actually listening to what I said so much as thinking, “HOLY SHIT SOMEONE FROM THE US SPEAKS FRENCH.” Or at least sort of speaks it.

This was a summer where my main form of entertainment was walking around new places (which is free), eating sandwiches from carts in parks (cheap), and window shopping (also free). When the massive annual July sale arrived (“les Soldes”), after weeks of staring at the same pair of shoes, I finally broke down and bought them (the $40 commitment felt huge at the time). They were an espadrille style, with a closed toe made of brightly patterned red and yellow fabric, heel strap, and ballerina laces (two different kinds! Luxury!). I thought they were the greatest thing I had ever owned, and considering that I wore jeans and a t-shirt throughout the entirety of college and found the concept of a “going-out outfit” utterly mystifying, I was almost certainly correct.

Imagine my surprise, when a few months later, I was back in the US and abruptly exposed to advertising for the “latest thing in fashion”, which just happened to be shoes exactly like the ones I bought (but much less awesome because they typically lacked the pattern I had found). I can count the number of times I had even vaguely participated in a fashion trend previously, and it was zero. Maybe you can’t count that. Is that the whole point of zero? Regardless, I had never before even arrived at the tail end of a fashion trend. JEANS AND T-SHIRTS, people.  (Currently sitting in my grad school office wearing just that). To say the very least, I was flabbergasted. And I got compliments on my shoes (also had never happened. No one compliments Dansko clogs. They just tolerate that you have made a “sensible” shoe choice. Unless they are teenagers in Philadelphia in which case they mercilessly tease you right up until the point where Dansko-like clogs also become the latest thing in fashion and you are once again ahead of a curve you never intended to participate in).

Shoes are not the only places in my life where this has happened, but as someone who generally DGAF about whatever is cool right now (initially because of financial constraints, and now more out of laziness and “wow-that’s-ugly”-ness), it never ceases to amaze me.

In the last year, I have become increasingly horrified by food waste, experiencing the kind of liberal guilt around such an environmental issue that only an upbringing in a place like Seattle can really instill in you. When you’ve been brainwashed to recycle everything (WAIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING THAT’S COMPOSTABLE), throwing away leftovers that you didn’t feel like eating at any point during the two weeks after you made them feels like a sin. (Although, to be fair, I don’t actually know what that feels like since I lack any sort of religious fervor. AT ALL).

My solution to the problem has been to try to come up with creative ways to use the random bits of things that always linger (see also: we never finish a loaf of bread. Even if it’s the greatest bread anyone has ever eaten). I’m not talking breadcrumbs here (I will never use that many breadcrumbs in a lifetime) or fancy grain bowls (with that last little bit of whatever weird grain and vegetable and sauce that I would never in a million years have in the first place). I have been somewhat hampered in this in that I am perfectly willing to eat the same thing in the same way ad nauseum, so magical new applications of the last three chicken cutlets that are not enough for a meal for anyone do not regularly occur to me (my husband (!) is much better at this, I suspect because he never wants to eat the same thing more than once in a row).

Things came to a head in the fall when I realized I was (a) hungry all the time and (b) that there are only so many granola bars a person can eat. Also, it’s hard to make it through a workday when you eat your lunch at 10 am because breakfast seems so long ago. I experimented with making breakfast burritos, which have the advantage of being freezable and then microwaveable, but also are not really labor saving in any meaningful way since it takes hours to construct them. And I always had to buy new stuff for them that I would never otherwise buy. They did alleviate the hunger issues (and the granola bars. UGH), but I could not stay motivated to commit hours of my weekend to them.

And then I was like, wait, can’t you just put eggs in a muffin tin and things will magically happen to transform them into deliciousness? I saw a link to some most likely thoroughly edifying website about just cooking all things ever in a muffin tin so I was pretty sure this was true. Except I think eggs are gross most of the time, unless they are heavily masked by cheese or ketchup (BLASPHEMY), so I was not about to do the healthy thing and pop some egg whites in a muffin tin and end up with some weird baked egg concoction that had no benefits aside from not clogging your arteries instantly. However, eggs that are heavily masked by meat, cheese, vegetables, and starch are thoroughly acceptable, mostly because the egg is more of a sideshow. And these are conveniently the kinds of things that linger in our house. That last little chunk of cheese from the “buy-many-tiny-cheeses” section of everyone’s favorite Seattle food co-op, the last two strips of bacon (it’s just not enough for two people for breakfast, honestly. Don’t listen to the bacon haters), part of a broccoli crown, the heel of bread, four little red potatoes, and some poor lonely milk product that had a grand future two weeks ago when you found motivation and free time but it didn’t last until you got home from the store. What are you supposed to with them?

PUT THEM IN A MUFFIN TIN. And wait for magic to happen. I’m convinced that you don’t even really need to try that hard, except when it comes to greasing the muffin tin and then you should try very hard or you will end up with a big hot mess of eggy-starchy-meaty-vegetableness that does not look like it was carefully formed in a muffin tin.

And when you’re done, you can put them all in the freezer, and take one to work each day for second breakfast and convince yourself that it’s healthy since you’ve covered at least three or four food groups in one snack, it was baked not fried, it has protein (maybe even more than one kind!) and now you can make it to lunch without eating all your other snacks (who am I kidding, I still eat all the other snacks before lunch).

There is no fancy food photography here (there never is, because I can’t be bothered how to figure out the right lighting and when you make something on Sunday night after making dinner and what feels like 300 other things, taking pictures seems overrated. See also: why I am not a professional food person), but they end up looking like something eggy that used to be in a muffin tin. If you have cats with kitchen-counter-boundary problems, you’ll want to take steps to fend them off when these come out of the oven. One time, asshole-Lionel as he is affectionately called in our house knocked one off the cooling rack (ONTO THE FLOOR) and started trying to eat it. No one was surprised.

Oh, and back to my distant original point: Within months of starting to make these, I saw advertisements for similar products that could be purchased in the freezer aisle that would accomplish many of my own stated goals (except the cleaning-out-the-fridge part, which is important). I would not recommend to anyone to use my behavior as a predictor for future trends, but occasionally I would be awesome for market research.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
2. Grease the bejeezus out of  a muffin tin (thank you, Pam spray, for providing me with this opportunity to create a cloud of aerosol fat product in my kitchen).
3. Assess your ingredients:
1. Eggs: You need the equivalent of about 8 eggs. Roughly. More if you’re light on the filler stuff. I have used whole eggs, but this past round I also used a bunch of egg whites that were taking up space in my freezer in place of some of them.
2. Some dairy product: milk, half and half, cream. I don’t think it matters. No doubt someone out there disagrees, but I’ve used all three and they’re all fine.
3.  Cheese: grated. Whatever you want. In whatever quantity you want. I probably use ¼ to ½ a cup each time. (Who am I kidding? At least half a cup).
4. Meat (optional, obviously, if you’re not into these things): I’ve used bacon (cooked), breakfast sausage, and chorizo (whatever I’m currently on track to waste). I could certainly envision using lunch meat if you’re perilously close to the “use by” day, or other fancier meats that you might have.
5. Veggies: eh. I almost used broccoli once but then it looked bug infested so I didn’t. But it would be a great option if it were chopped up nice and fine.
6. BREAD: this is not optional in my mind, but honestly this whole list is optional (although if you skip the eggs, I’m not really sure what you’re making). I have most often used the stale heal of a loaf of crusty white bread, chopped up into small cubes, but we didn’t have any last time (i.e. it molded before I got my act together), so I just toasted two pieces of regular sandwich bread and cubed it. So far, no objections.
4. Assembly:
1. Bread cubes in muffin tin (not necessary, but helps with evening out the distribution).
2. Combine eggs and milk and whisk aggressively. Probably for at least a minute to be useful.
3. Add everything else you wanted to put into.
4. Scoop into muffin tins. If you fill it all the way to the top, it will explode out the sides, so ¾ is probably good. If you’ve done a reasonable job whisking, they will expand nicely and become delightfully puffy egg-like things.
5. Sprinkle additional cheese on top (also optional, but more cheese always happens in my kitchen).
6. Cook for about 20 minutes. Should be slightly golden brown on the top (and will be nicely brown around the sides which you can’t actually see).
7. Cool on rack in tin until you can get them out without (a) burning yourself and (b) destroying them.

Eating immediately would work out great, but I typically store them in the freezer and then pop them in the microwave wrapped in paper towel for 30 seconds to 1 minute depending on frozenness when the aforementioned breakfast emergency rolls around.

Apple Cider

I “learned” some important life lessons last year, some of which I blame for my prolonged vacation from writing about the no doubt fascinating life episodes herein contained:

1. I need to learn how to say “No!” Seriously. Like, I think I need a life coach (like the scene from 27 Dresses where the dude tries to get Katherine Heigl to say “No!” I need that).
2. Maintaining any kind of personal writing activity while completing the portfolio writing requirements of the National Board application for teachers appears to be virtually impossible. And what could be better than replacing self-expression with formulaic adherence to a script?
3. Experimenting with eliminating my major source of stress relief from my life (i.e. running) leads me to be, well, stressed. The best way to deal with this: sign up for races so I will be forced to run and/or coach cross country (with the lovely and talented Stephanie! So fun!). Anyone want to convene for a race in some lovely location?

(It remains to be seen if I actually learned any of these. . . certain family members of mine like to point out that sometimes my learning curve seems to point straight down. . . assuming that up means actual learning has happened.)

All of these are important life lessons as I head into yet another season of recommendation and narrative writing. At the moment, I have written 19 letters of recommendation (with a few more on the horizon, tear.) And I will be spending the next week writing a paragraph about each of my lovely students and their academic progress. Before I head into the writing space that involves providing palatable feedback to teenagers in such a way that their parents wont think I’m completely incompetent, I thought I would briefly share my two new favorite culinary delicacies, both of which involve apple cider (the kind available at your friendly neighborhood “I-am-trying-to-shop-locally-but-have-no-idea-where-this-farm-is-located” farmer’s market).

I love apple cider, but for the life of me I cannot seem to get it together and actually drink a whole half-gallon when I buy it from the farmer’s market, but consistently refuse to buy the smaller size that would be more reasonable for a young lady keeping house for herself. Science teacher that I am, there are really only so many refrigerator fermentation experiments I can do before I totally gross myself and everyone else out.

As a result, I’ve been exploring various uses for apple cider that enable me to enjoy the taste without the “will-I-be-drunk-or-have-some-weird-disease-after-drinking-this” qualms that are generally associated with the apple cider in my fridge.

Recipe 1: Apple Cider Caramels.

            Step 1: Go to the Smitten Kitchen site.

            Step 2: Make this recipe.

            Step 3: Buy her book immediately.

            Step 4: Make everyone you know think you are a brilliant cook because her recipes are SO GOOD!!!!

Recipe 2: Apple Cider Jelly. (This one has similarly complex directions.)

            Step 1: Buy a gallon of (unpasteurized) apple cider.

            Step 2: Bring to a boil in a pot.

            Step 3: Reduce heat and cook on medium-low until the liquid coats the back of a spoon.

            Step 4: Cool, pour into a jar, and spoon directly into your mouth. Or be slightly more classy and put it on something that needs a bit of apple cider flavoring.

Mine made about 2 cups (not the 1 cup claimed by the research I did. Of course, the research I did also involved temperature measurements and a statement about the time required that turned out to be wildly incorrect). There are many other recipes out there for apple cider jelly, most of which involve buckets of sugar and pectin, but I consider this to be wildly unnecessary owing to the fact that apple cider tastes awesome already and there is already plenty of pectin in the apples to make it gel if you cook it enough. In the future, I may experiment with “flavors” (like cinnamon and so on), but the basic version is so delicious I’m not sure it’s worth it.

Both of these taste like condensed apple cider. Which is more or less what they are.

Happy holiday season! As always, this is my favorite time of year because it gives me an excuse to bake in disgustingly large quantities for people I love. Woo!

Cinnamon rolls

My friend Caitlin has decided to follow through on her promise (threat?) to set me up with a co-worker of her husband’s, now that she has decided that he (a) does not drink too much to be a satisfactory option and (b) likes to run. Fortunately, this set-up will take place at a running centered event, the Urban Pickle Assault.

How could this not go well? The word Assault is involved. And yes, the four of us will be running around the city with a decorated cucumber taking pictures (hopefully nothing too suggestive, although that could certainly be a conversation starter) and looking for a golden pickle. High for the day is a tropical 44 degrees. 

Just to make sure it goes well, though, I am bringing the following things in my arsenal, which never fail to impress the boys:

1. Short hair. On a recent foray into the wonderful world of online profiles, I came across one fine gentleman who summed up his interests as follows: “Girls who are fat, lazy, or have short hair need not apply.” Gosh, if only I’d known that my prospective partners in Philadelphia are still living with the gender ideals of the Victorian era, I might not have cut my hair.
2. Neon orange leg-warmers. That’s right folks, the ‘80s are back. On a whim, I suggested that our team name be the Neon Nerds. The latter word for obvious reasons, the former because at 7am on that particular day, “neon” was the only word that suggested it to my tired brain as a word that also started with “n” and might lead to costumes. As it has. Everyone looks good in neon orange, especially me.
3. The types of bags under my eyes that make people ask if I’ve been punched in the face. Honestly, I’ve just started answering in the affirmative. “Yep. I did. Of course I won. Geez.” (Not-entirely-related-side-note: In the past year I have become obsessed with the RadioLab podcasts produced by NPR and WNYC, as they are gloriously and unabashedly nerdy, and all about various things relating to science, technology, and modern life. I most recently listened to one about sleep, which suggested that one of the functions of sleep is to work out problems and create solutions that your conscious self can’t. This seems to explain a lot about why teacher sleep is not always as restful as I might like. I am still trying to figure out why a friend confessed envy of my vivid dreams. Nothing says fun like 6 straight hours of dreaming about teenagers-gone-wild.)

Should all these fail, which seems unlikely, I could always start with, “Hey, I made 6 kinds of cookies, a cheesecake, cupcakes, and an apple pie in the last two weeks. And I brought you a cinnamon roll.” Perhaps that would be a gentler introduction to my life. And might make me sound psychotic since it would probably come out of my mouth at about 400 miles an hour.

Now that I’ve confessed my questionable sartorial decisions, I will also add (ironically) that I love Nigella Lawson’s cookbooks, especially the one titled How to be a Domestic Goddess. The irony is astounding, since I am usually baking in running clothes with disheveled hair (it’s amazing to me that such a small amount of hair can look so ridiculous so often), flour everywhere, dirty dishes by the truckload. Have you ever watched one of her cooking shows? As a former anonymous roommate of mine said, “Watching her show just makes you want to get it on.” (Of course, Nigella herself claims that was not her intent. ) I doubt the same could be said of my disaster zone of a kitchen and moderately spastic behavior in which I am more likely to burn myself with steam while making caramel than sensually lick my caramel covered finger. (True story. It happened this weekend while making this AMAZING cheesecake. The burning part. In case you were confused.).

But anyway, sexy or not, I do enjoy her recipes, especially the one for cinnamon rolls since it is (a) delicious and (b) the aforementioned nerd in me enjoys the arrangement of the buns in the pan. So pretty and symmetrical! It is not particularly challenging to make, although if you are afraid of kneading dough for some reason, it might cause you to hesitate briefly. They are mighty tasty. Thank goodness one of my delightful 9^th grade advisees requested these for her birthday, even though I totally dropped the ball on making them on the correct day. (Another irrelevant side note for all my adult friends: can we all just take a moment to thank our lucky stars that even though we sometimes complain about getting uncomfortably old, we are no longer in 9^th grade? Is this just me? Oh my god. Am I still socially awkward? Sure. But oh my god it is so much less painful now.)

Here goes. Tasty for breakfast, or on the very real chance that you aren’t going to wake up two hours before breakfast to make it (unless you are really, legitimately making an honest effort to impress someone) whatever time of day you make it.

Warning: you DO need parchment paper if you are going to make Nigella’s version. Or probably any version. Cinnamon buns are sticky. Due to an unexpected oversight, there was a two-inch strip left on my roll when I was halfway through this. However, since I am more than a week behind on dishes, this proved not to be a problem because I still had a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Seattle trained me well in the arts of recycling.

My mom makes delicious cinnamon buns, and just uses a French bread recipe for the dough, which consists primarily of flour, milk, yeast, a bit of sugar and salt. If you go for Nigella’s version, you will also have butter and eggs. I guess it just depends how decadent you want the buns. I always vote for more fat if at all possible.

As there are infinitely many cinnamon roll recipes out there, I will not bore you with the details of this one (plus, I don’t want her copyright-ers to sue me. . .). But here are a few tips about making them in general:

1. For the filling, it is actually disastrous (in my experience) to have the butter melted all the way. The ideal is a nice soft, room temperature butter, mixed with liberal quantities of cinnamon and sugar so that it forms a sugary paste that you can spread in the desired thickness. Melted butter = disaster.
2. If you are making individual rolls (as opposed to the single pan cluster here), it frequently happens that if you don’t seal the rolls really well when you put them on the pan, they tend to become unrolled when they rise and puff up. That makes them a little less roll-like and more seashell like. Still tasty, just not as aesthetically pleasing.
3. These look really tasty and fun as well. And baked in a muffin tin. I briefly thought about making these, until I realized that would require me to clean the muffin tin afterward. Ugh.
4. You can add fun stuff if you are motivated, like walnuts, pecans, or raisins. Not recommended if part of your target audience is allergic to any of the things you try to add.
5. Usually best eaten sooner rather than later, which I personally think is true of virtually all baked goods. Not that it’s usually a problem.

Maple Bourbon Sweet Potato Pie

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

True to form, Thanksgiving was three days ago, and I have millions of other things I need to do, but I really need to tell you about this recipe. So that you can make it. Right now. Especially because it’s not pumpkin pie (apparently only permissible on Thanksgiving), is actually WAY better than pumpkin pie (sacrilege!), and sweet potatoes are in season (I bought 5 lbs for $2. That’s why I had to make two pies. Sort of.)

Before I start though, I want to share some thankfulness. In no particular order (other than what I’m pretty sure are random neuron firings):

I am thankful that:

• When my cat knocked a cup of tea on my computer and I was too stupid to deal with that properly, the amazing tech office at my school fixed my computer in one day (and I didn’t even lose my hard drive. . .)
• I still get carded occasionally, even if the person looking at my driver’s license sometimes bursts out laughing when he sees it.
• Turkey tetrazzini is not actually as gross as elementary school lunch made it seem. I’d be in an awkward position with some leftovers otherwise.

And I am thankful for bourbon, and the fine people of Maker’s Mark. Because without them, I wouldn’t have been able to make this amazing pie.

I had never had sweet potato pie until I moved to Philadelphia and one of my advisees asked for it for a birthday treat. That could have ended very badly. Here’s me, trying to make my student’s favorite dessert, without having any idea what it’s supposed to taste or look like. It turns out, I actually like regular sweet potato pie better than regular pumpkin pie. Same spices, just as much fatty nonsense, but such a more interesting flavor.

This is not regular. Just read the name. I “had” to buy a bottle of Maker’s Mark to make this recipe (and believe you me, I felt a little bit like a weirdo spending ten minutes in the whiskey aisle at the liquor store trying to decide which one to get. . . On the other hand, perhaps it could be viewed as a life victory that I’ve reached this point in my life without forming strong opinions about whiskey or viewing quality time in the whiskey aisle as a suitable past-time).

(For those of you thinking of visiting, I can now offer a mostly-full bottle of Maker’s Mark as an incentive. . . if you don’t consider that to be an incentive, we may need to reconsider our friendship. How else are we going to make this pie together?)

Let’s get serious.

General rules apply about pie crust (if you know what those are). Cold butter, ice water, fast work, and gentle rolling. If you really want to know all about it, I strongly encourage you to read what this amazing cookhas to say about it. She’s an amazing baker and cook in general, and has delightful instructions. I didn’t actually use this pie crust for the recipe, but I made it three times the next day and it was amazing, so I advocate you using it for this. Or, half of the recipe she includes.

Now, for the interesting part. When I made it, I did a double recipe, which worked out perfectly. I was a little lazy about mashing the sweet potatoes, and overfilled the pre-baked crusts, but everyone survived.

Maple Bourbon Sweet Potato Pie (brought to you by the New York Times Dessert Cookbook, contributed by Karen Bonner of Magnolia Grill)

Ingredients:

2 medium or 3 small sweet potatoes (1.5 pounds)

¾ cup heavy cream

6 tablespoons maple syrup

5 tablespoons dark brown sugar (or light brown, if you forget to read the recipe for specifics ahead of time)

¼ cup bourbon

3 large eggs

1 large egg yolk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon “freshly” grated nutmeg (mine was not so freshly)

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves (honestly, who is measuring at this point?)

A few grinds black pepper

 

Things you need to do early:

•    Roast the sweet potatoes for one hour in a 425 degree oven. Before putting them in, skewer them a couple times with a  fork (this is a little challenging). You know they are done when you can skewer them easily (hopefully before burning them). I would strongly urge you to do this on foil so you don’t put yourself in a very awkward pan-cleaning situation.
•    Make a single pie crust and pre-bake it. Pre-baking involves pre-heating the over to 400 degrees, covering the pie shell in foil, and putting a weight in it (either one of those fancy pie weights, a bunch of beans, or, as a last resort, a hefty metal one-cup measure). After ten minutes, take out the weight and foil, and let it cook until golden brown. Don’t overdo it or you will have a very burned pie later on. Notice the fork holes poked in the bottom of the crust, and the really mediocre job of pinching the top edge of the crust. Whoops.

Things to do later:

•  Pre-heat oven to 350.
• Once the sweet potatoes have cooled, de-skin them and mash them to pieces. If you have a potato masher or some other fancy tool, use it. Mashing them with a fork is lame, tedious, and not terribly effective. Unless your standards for mashedness are as low as mine.
• Here’s my favorite part: combine everything. Make sure the sweet potatoes are legitimately not HOT or you will end up with omelette in your pie. That’s gross. I even like omelettes now and I still think that is gross.
• Pour batter into pre-baked shell. Put it on a cookie sheet (or if your oven is small and you are making two, don’t do this, cross your fingers, and it’s your fault if you totally destroy your oven. I went with the second option).
• Bake until filling is just set. (If you jiggle, there are no waves; if you put a knife in near the edge, it comes out clean). I personally feel like there is a pretty broad window for when you can take it out and it will still taste good, so don’t obsess. Says the expert at not-obsessing.
• Feed it to your co-workers, your significant other, or anyone else you are thankful for. If you lived at my house, I would feed it to you! (Sorry Lionel, cats are not included in that offer). 

On a more serious note, I am thankful for some things:

I am thankful that:

• I have two brothers who understand why I turned out the way I did, and support and love me in spite of it, and manage to communicate that they care about me from 2,000 or 10,000 miles away. Roughly once every three months.
• My mom thinks I’m great. And worries about me. Even though she has no idea what I’m doing at this exact moment, I can promise she’s still worrying. How cute!
• My dad thinks I’m great. And that I can do anything. But never lets me settle for what I have done.
• My high school friends (I know some of your are reading this) put up with my asinine decision to live in Philadelphia (temporarily) and neglect them (regularly) and let me “make up for it” by sending them chocolate from Switzerland. And they still include me in plans when I am “home”, and are both subtle (ha!) and persistent about encouraging me to move to the correct side of the country.
•  My college and post-college friends tolerate my spastic communication style and irregular visits and seem plenty happy to see me every time. And do not make fun of me for the fact that their lives have moved beyond college and sometimes I think mine has not.
• Caitlin and Stephanie make me exercise. And put up with me when I cry. WAYYYYY too much. And put up with me being a dictator in the kitchen and absolutely crazy when driving.
• Tim and Tanya invite me to dinner, and Thanksgiving, and are wonderful neighbors and friends. And are always supportive, even if my issues are really trivial at times.
• I am one of the lucky teachers who has autonomy in the classroom, and an entire network of amazing educators who think ambitiously and never let me think that last years ideas were good enough.
• I have a cat who likes to cuddle, purr, chew on my feet, and knock glasses of tea on my laptop. Oh, wait. Maybe just the first two. But dang is he cute when he does it.
• Hannah who has a matching tattoo. Which means a lot. How many people do you know who would permanently scar their body with you? On purpose and while completely sober? 
• If I forgot you, I am also thankful for you. And the fact that you are not going to yell at me for forgetting.

And, honestly, I’m ridiculously thankful that I have lived almost 29 happy, healthy years with amazing people around me who like me just the way I am. (Right?)

Blueberry Muffin Bread Pudding

 Or, on the joys of internet dating. And getting burned. Literally and figuratively.

Also known as: I hope my mother isn’t reading this.

Dear gentlemen who like to meet women on-line:

1.  Professing extreme distaste for my choice of job is not a good way to make a first impression. First, it makes me think you’re an idiot. Second, it is offensive. Third, I don’t gasp in horror when you say you sit in a cubicle all day and at least my job involves social interaction.
2. Are you really laid back and relaxed? Easy-going? Well, I’m sorry to break this to you but I’m not. I have probably been relaxed for roughly 30 seconds in the last ten years. Just a heads up in case your idea of a good time is sitting on the couch staring at the wall.
3. Can you read? Are you sure? Then maybe you should find out if I am actually interested in dating someone who was 18 when I was five. Gross. Seriously.
4.  If you don’t find anything funny, we are not going to get along.
5. If you care deeply about the length, color, or styling of my hair, I should warn you that this is an argument that you are going to lose. I may show up on our next date with neon pink spiky hair just to find out how you react. Childish? Sure, but it’s my hair, so calm down.

Sincerely,

            The nice young lady who is afraid of sea monsters and likes to run marathons.

Perhaps I’m not cut out for this activity. I find it kind of creepy. And I refuse to post pictures of myself at the beach. And frankly, after reading 500 profiles of people who are all laid-back, easy-going, and relaxed, I start to feel like a horrible, uptight person. Except that I frankly think life is way more entertaining when you get excited about things. Or most things. Okay, fine, everything.

Maybe I would get better results if I just wrote an ode to something. Like the Phillies? Or food? Or fire? Or would I sound like a pyro? Let’s give it a shot. . .

Have I ever mentioned that I love fire? And burning stuff? And hot things? Bending glass is so cool. Solid-state phase changes in ceramic pots are amazing (and toxic, fyi). I only wish my aim was a little better. My left arm has it’s own private version of the geologic record, except instead of layered rocks it’s layered burns. I thought the one I got from that bread-baking episode three years was bad, but then I splattered oil on myself, directly on top of the old burn. I get asked at least once a week why I have such a ridiculous looking bruise on my arm. People are only mildly horrified to discover that it’s slightly more permanent than a bruise.

Usually, though, I try to play along with the instructions in the recipes and take things out of the oven before they become a flour-based version of my arm.

Which is why this outcome was sad:

(I’m going to avoid self-righteous ranting here about how I “never burn anything” and “it must because my new oven sucks”. Let’s be completely honest for a hot second: I’m horribly absent-minded, and even the 9 small minutes it takes for some cookies to bake is pushing my attention span. It’s truly miraculous that this particular fiasco is the exception and not the rule).

I could only make my way through half of one of these before I got really depressed and left them in a bag in my refrigerator for a week. There was a lot of internal angst about what to do: eat them, and be digestively horrified? Give them to friends and apologize for burning them? Throw them out and suffer the guilt of wasting food, the cardinal sin in the waste-not-want-not household of my upbringing?

I don’t know what prompted heading in the bread pudding direction (and I will say that googling “muffin bread pudding” to see if this was a horrible idea was not terribly successful. Turns out, making bread pudding in muffin shape is more popular than using your failed muffins as the base of bread pudding). However, I decided that there were several points in favor: first, I could cut off the burned parts and still have relatively tasty muffins. Second, I would be able to finish off a couple things in my fridge (always a challenge when living the single life, frankly). And finally, I could reconstitute those dry, week-old muffins into something moist, spongy, and rich.

As my friend Caitlin said, this recipe is kind of like cheating, because you start with something delicious, and then you turn it into bread pudding. I mean, seriously people. Seriously. (To quote Caitlin).

And in case you are desperate for more details about my personal life, I will just let you in on a little secret: I have cried every day for the past week, and most of those occasions were in public. I really wish I could stop doing that. That is my justification for the addition of rum. Whatever. It tasted awesome.

Another baking disclaimer: I was pretty irresponsible about proportions. I found a recipe, scaled down, and added my own fun stuff based on what I had. I honestly don’t think you can really mess this up too badly as long as you’re in the ball-park.

Blueberry muffin bread pudding

6+ cups cubed blueberry muffins (if you burned them, cut off the burnt parts. Duh. 1 or 1.5 inch cubes work nicely)

3 cups milk+cream (I just blended all the milk products in my fridge. A lot of recipes argue that more fat is better, but I think it’s personal choice.)

3 eggs

½ stick of unsalted butter, melted and cooled (you can use less.)

¼ cup sugar

1 teaspoon of vanilla

1 teaspoon of cinnamon (or to taste)

Extra fun stuff I added (which is totally optional, and can certainly be varied):

Toasted walnuts (nice texture)

Cubed apples (they were languishing in my kitchen)

A couple tablespoons of rum (add to custard mixture). (Special note to Katie: I used the Flor de Caña, because that’s what I had)

Vague instructions:

1. Butter a pan. I used an 8x8 glass Pyrex pan. Exactly the right size for the quantities listed above.
2.  Spread bread cubes around. It should come up pretty much up to and over the top of the pan when loosely spread.
3. Mix together the custard mixture. Try not to cook the eggs with hot butter. Disaster. I’m serious about the melted AND cooled part. Perhaps I should put “melt butter and let it cool” for instruction #1. Or maybe we can treat this like one of those ridiculous tests that is designed to see if you actually read all of the instructions before getting started.
4. Add the garnish elements (fruit, nuts, other fun things) to the bread cubes.
5. Pour the custard mixture over the bread cubes, trying to hit most of the top cubes.
6. I let this sit in my fridge, covered, for an entire day because I got too tired on the night I was making it. Typical. But that worked great, because then all of the muffin pieces got nice and soaked through with the custard mixture. You could also limit yourself to an hour or just overnight (hot bread pudding for breakfast? Oh my god can I come to your house for the weekend?).
7.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. (I will tell you, if you do a Google search, you could probably make a bar graph of the distribution of temperatures suggested between 300 and 400. Maybe I’ll do that next time I get bored). You can let the cold bread-custard mixture sit out during the preheat. Cook for 35-45 minutes, until top bread pieces and bottom of custard are golden brown. Don’t overdo it. Or burn it. Because I have no idea what you do with burned bread pudding.

I’m fairly sure you can actually make bread pudding with just about any bread-related product. I’m also fairly sure that’s how fancy restaurants make bread pudding seem like gourmet food.

p.s. As I am posting this, I am listening to the world’s most depressing advertisement on the radio. “Are you single and all your friends are married? Do you want to go out but have no one to go with?” Wow. Way to make me sound like a loser.  Now I’m dying to sign up for your offer.