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I got a package! Miss Jes sent me a few things, some or all of which she picked up when she went to St. Croix:
Thanks, woman!
*I may or may not be talking about myself. These are an old favorite of mine (stolen from Quaker), from when I lived in NJ and used a hand-me-down hand mixer to satisfy my need for baked goods. They take no more than 15 minutes of prep time (10 if you’re in a hurry). I used to make them at least twice a month (it’s a miracle that I didn’t burn out the motor in the hand mixer) and a 9×13 pan never lasted long. A coworker in NJ called them ‘hobbit bars.’ They are so dense and delicious that they could potentially eliminate the need for chocolate chip cookies. Yeah, they’re that good — especially warm.
Around here, we like to eat them for dessert, and then again for breakfast. It’s okay because they have oats in them! If there is anything I love as much as cake, it’s doughnuts, which are breakfast cake. A good muffin is sort of like cake, too, so a cake-like muffin that tastes like breakfast cake is…well, I’ve lost that train of logic, but it sounds awesome, right? I think the King Arthur people actually tapped directly into my brain to come up with this recipe.
The fun part is dipping them in melted butter and cinnamon sugar. I made a 2:1 sugar to cinnamon blend, which was strong but really good. We also found that they went well with the last bit of leftover lime glaze that had been abandoned in the back of the fridge (yes, it kept that long! 10 seconds in the microwave and it was like new).
As always, I tested one as soon as they were done. It was so fluffy and delicious that I had to try another just to make sure the first wasn’t a fluke.
Nope, not a fluke. Give these a try for breakfast this weekend! A muffin is a perfectly legitimate, grown-up breakfast food — you can tell yourself that you’re not really eating doughnuts OR cake. Your secret is safe with me.
This one is for the cosmetic junkies. I don’t think I have ever finished a lipstick. I have finished a few lip glosses and eyeshadows (and a blush! Twice! And I just found out that my color was discontinued more than a year ago; I think I have a couple years left in the current pan), but I’ll usually decide I’m over the color and toss it before I’ll finish it. The exception is anything above drugstore level. I know you’re supposed to toss things after a certain amount of time, but if I paid $14+ for it, I have a problem doing this, even long after the expiration decade has come and gone. (Mom, if the idea of my ancient makeup is making you make that sound, trust me — this post is not going to get any better from here. Proceed with caution.) Case in point: my first MAC lipstick, from 1995. Still smells normal, looks normal, goes on smooth. My internal monologue goes something like this: Will I wear this color again? Nah. Wait, maybe! I’ll just hang on to it, then. As a result, this lipstick has been with me through seven dorm rooms, two apartments, and three houses. Check the old-style tube. The silver tube is probably close to ten years old and it’s now a permanent color in a normal, black tube. Just for reference, the last tube is the last lipstick I bought (probably also technically past its expiration by now):
So, eyeshadows. There are only a couple colors I use quickly enough to have replaced more than once. As you can see by the packaging, the color on the left isn’t one (the one on the right is in current packaging, which has been around forever):
One of the other brands I like as much is Urban Decay. How long have I had the one on the left? Long enough that the color has been discontinued, for one. I’m sure I bought it in college, if not high school. You’d never know how often I use it by the amount left in the pan. Hopefully this one will last until I die since they don’t make it anymore. Just kidding, Mom & Dad!
I do think the old pans were cuter, if slightly less practical. The last really old thing I have is an Urban Decay lipstick. Definitely bought this one in college. I don’t have any of their new lipsticks, so I stole a picture from their website to compare. I think the old packaging was cooler on this, too.
This has been a lesson in why you shouldn’t share makeup. Thanks for coming; Lysol wipes are by the door. I recently ran across this recipe on a friend’s blog and knew I had to try it! It assembles pretty quickly, and then you can set it aside to bake whenever you’re ready.
If you are like me and tend to keep a lot of baking basics (flour, butter, eggs, etc.) on hand, you’ll probably only need to buy graham crackers, marshmallow fluff, and chocolate. I went generic on the first two and bought Ghirardelli semi-sweet baking pastilles instead of Hershey bars. I actually bought two tubs of fluff (7 oz each) and needed only one, so I ended up with enough ingredients for two batches at a total of $7.40 plus the minimal value of the staples I had on hand. The bars were so good that we only got two nights out of an 8×8 pan, but that’s still pretty inexpensive.
When I got to this point I realized why the original recipe calls for Hershey bars — spreading the fluff is a challenge! Remarkably, with a little care almost all of my chocolates stayed where I had pressed them gently into the dough, but next time I think I’ll flip the middle layers and just sprinkle semi-sweet or dark chips across the fluff.
I have this thing about the taskbar on my work computer — it has to be arranged a certain way. My Outlook must be the left-most button. My personal webmail is next. It doesn’t really matter what comes after that since I’m opening and closing programs and spreadsheets all day, but if something goes wrong (like accidentally shutting down Outlook), I will not hesitate to close every window so I can put things back into the correct sequence. I hate when that happens, but someone has to restore order to the universe. Am I alone in this? A couple days ago a former coworker of mine sent me a Facebook message just to tell me that he had eight windows open and his Outlook was number six or so. He even sent a screenshot just to torment me. I honestly don’t know how anyone can work that way. Anyhow, it’s almost Friday and I’m ready to drop. Would it be wrong to sleep through the whole weekend? At the very least I’m not getting out of my pajamas without a very good reason!
Ah, that picture always makes me laugh. Have a great weekend! Just a little treasure that I picked up in Austin at Parts & Labour. They carry wonderful locally made things. It’s very, very hard to choose just one or two items to take home, but if you blow your budget at least you can feel good about supporting local artists! Click the photo to go to the artist’s site.
It’s a fact of life that Austin is a cool city. It’s consistently ranked as one of the best places to live and retire, which is exactly what my parents are doing. We went to visit them this weekend and Austin forever secured its placed in my heart with its cupcakes.
Oh sure, every city has cupcake boutiques these days, but it seems like most of these designer cupcakes are small in size and high in price. Austin’s goodies satisfy and can be had for a mere $2.50. Could I make my own for even less? That is not the point. The point is instant cupcake gratification. If you haven’t already concluded that I probably brought a few home, then I’m afraid you just don’t know me at all.
Excuse me, I have some eating to do. No time to blog, big plans for the weekend and it starts tonight! My sister is flying in at this very moment, and after Mark and I pick her up we’re planning to stop by the Houston Museum of Natural Science for a midnight visit to Lois. The rest of the weekend we are having a little Lone Star State family reunion with our parents, who sold their house in under a week and are now posted deep in the heart of Texas (clap-clap-clap-clap).
How about you? Anything exciting lined up for the weekend? Tonight I’m not going to bore you with more Hawaii photos; I’m going to bore you with some Hawaii videos! Click the photos to go to the video. I don’t have very good video editing software, so no color correction, sorry!
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