The Truth About Mousse

My friend Ami posted this link to an article in Huffington Post about how social media can seriously stress you out. Things we pin on Pinterest and things we choose to Facebook and Tweet can easily blur the line between what is real and what is perceived as real. Someone's picture or post that captures a seemingly perfect little moment of life can either genuinely move you, or leave you with the feeling that no matter what you do, someone else is doing it cooler. Someone is more organized, more creative with their solutions, more environmentally responsible. They make more nutritious meals, they have more patience, less anxiety. They just do it better.

They don't.

Life on social media is a cleverly crafted illusion. A web of avatars. What is put forth is chosen to be put forth and what is kept behind is sacrosanct and a mystery. But the truth does exist amongst the pins, posts and pictures. What you put aside with "someday I'll do that," can be done today. I'm here to help.

Who hasn't seen this little meme circulating around:

Homemade fruit pops. Good, and good for you. You pin it. You say you'll do it someday. But is it real? Do they actually work?

They do. I did it. You don't need a recipe, you just need common sense. If you have fruit, pop molds and a food processor or blender, you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it.

They work. These are truth. If you want to sub greek yogurt for the pureed watermelon, they will also work and be truthful.

Now. Has anyone seen this going around? Coconut and raspberry mousse. Doesn't that look amazing?  Can't you just taste it? I mean seriously, you only have to look at that mass of fuschia goodness and your mouth just waters. In the article, the author describes how she barely got a spoonful out of the blender before the entire family fought over it on the kitchen floor! And you can totally believe that this is something worth fighting for. You'll whip yourself up an entire blender after the kids are asleep and eat it all yourself, right?

Wrong.

Lies.

Propoganda.

I am here to tell you the truth.

The recipe seems innocent enough: 1 avocado, 1 frozen banana, 1 cup of frozen raspberries, and 1 heaping tablespoon of coconut milk. Blend and serve. That's it. Simple. Brilliant. And beautiful and pink and yum. Right?

Wrong.

Now I do admit I used strawberries here but I didn't think it was going to be a game-changer. I wondered what "heaping tablespoon" of coconut milk actually meant but I figured it meant you pour over the food processor and let it spill over the sides of the tablespoon for like two seconds. How scientific does this need to be?

Ah, but science will get you in the end. An avocado is green. A frozen banana is tan. You're already two strikes down and no amount of red berries will overcome the natural free-flowing tendency of these two already dun-colored fruits to turn brown when exposed to air.

Behold:

Let's see those two shots side-by-side, shall we?

As for taste? It was thoroughly okay. Texture was nice. The coconut was totally lost.  I certainly wouldn't fight for it on the kitchen floor. I poured some of it into pop molds and the rest went onto the compost.

In life there is no right or wrong, no winners and losers. Nobody's cooler than you, nobody's better than you, everyone is making it up. All you have is the truth about who you are and what you feel. Live the truth. 

And then strain some of that watermelon puree into a glass, add a shot of vodka, and just be.

Fava Bean Salad

I posted about fava beans before. Prepping them is a little labor intensive but they are so, so good, and this salad, pinned from Whole Living, is just dynamite—bright, fresh and full of spring. I made it last night with Bouchons au Thon and roasted potatoes and there wasn't a scrap left.

I used my own vinaigrette instead of the garlicky dressing shown below, although it does sound delicious. I had no feta cheese. I had crumbled goat cheese but I'm the only one who likes it, so it ended up being cheese-less.

Fava Bean Salad (with Roasted Garlic Vinaigrette)

For the vinaigrette:

  • 1 head garlic, 1/2 inch cut off top to reveal cloves
  • 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
  • 3 tablespoons red-wine vinegar
  • 3/4 teaspoon coarse salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
  • 3/4 cup (2 ounces) walnuts, toasted and chopped

Freshly ground pepper, to taste

For the salad:

  • 1 pound shucked fresh fava beans (from 3 pounds pods; 3 1/2 cups)
  • 2 cups fresh corn kernels (from 2 ears of corn)
  • 1 medium cucumber, quartered lengthwise and thinly sliced
  • 1/2 red onion, thinly sliced (1/2 cup)
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
  • 2 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

Make the vinaigrette: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Drizzle garlic with 1 teaspoon oil. Wrap in parchment, then in foil. Bake until soft, about 30 minutes. Squeeze garlic from skins. Mash until smooth.

Whisk together the remaining ingredients with 1 tablespoon of the roasted garlic and remaining 2 teaspoons oil.

Make the salad: Prepare an ice-water bath. Cook beans in a large pot of boiling water for 2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer beans to ice-water bath. Let cool completely, and remove with the slotted spoon. Cook corn in same pot for 1 minute, and drain in a colander. Peel thin shells off beans.

Toss cucumber, onion, parsley, feta, beans, and corn with the vinaigrette.

Serve.

With a nice chiaaaaaaanti.

Circles of Life

Our yard is full of circles: circular garden beds, free-standing gravel circles with our big blue planters from Dean's. A circle beneath the Japanese maple in the front lawn, and another circle, more of an oval, in the lower yard underneath two giant elm trees.

This oval was on my List this year. Jeeps ringed the trees with stones and filled in with mulch about ten years ago. I ambitiously put in about a thousand Siberian squill bulbs, which did beautifully and probably would have continued to do beautifully had we given the slightest damn about the area.  

We didn't. Total blow-off to the point where it became a dumping ground for sticks, dead soil from flower pots, decapitated Barbie dolls, a dozen Littlest Pet Shop figures, and a few magic markers. Bittersweet, the crack dealer of the garden world, knew a good neighborhood when it saw one, and moved in, followed shortly by its two favorite whores, Virginia Creeper and Lamium.  

"I gotta do something about that bed," I'd think every year, and then just turn to something else.  So here it is in all its weedy glory:

Can't quite get the effect?  Move in closer:

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. And dig the wagon wheel. Utah or bust.

Bust.

So I moved in on it with the sole intent of cleaning it up. Yank out the bittersweet, the creeper and the clumps of grass. The lamium could stay as far as I was concerned because it does have pretty purple flowers and is a dependable ground cover for this kind of area. My mom had always talked about her friend Gail's under-tree garden which boasted a dozen varieties of hosta plants and was the most gorgeous thing. I have no doubt it is the most gorgeous thing, I also have no doubt it would be an open buffet for the deer. No hostas. At most I would move over whatever hellebore seedlings I could find. Maybe. I wasn't getting emotionally invested in this project. It wasn't even a project, for crying out loud, it was just cleaning up.

(Cough)

Prudently I divided the oblong bed into sections so I could pace myself. Do this much today, do this much tomorrow. Surprisingly, the weeding out took less time than I expected and over the course of a couple lunch hours raking, and a few evenings after work pulling by hand, it was mostly clear.

As I stepped back and looked at the clean space, the big roots of the elms started to define pathways and places. The elm closest to the house was clearly asking for someone to sit under it. How about a stump seat? I'm always incorporating stumps into my beds and borders, and thanks to Hurricane Sandy, there's no shortage of them in the woods and along the roads that border my property.  And the really lovely thing about them is that they roll.  

I walked up the road a ways, found a good one, and rolled it on down. Once situated in a flat space between two large roots, I took a seat with my back up against the trunk.  

This is great! Was there room for another seat? I looked on the other side of the tree. Of course there was! Another large stump got rolled down, and then a smaller one, making three seats in all under the tree.

Another curious-looking, half-rotted stump wouldn't make a good seat, but it was so cool-looking, like a little woodland creature's house. I put it down at the front edge by the stone ring just to hold onto it, maybe I'd use it in another bed.

I figured that was it, my work here was done.  I gathered up the shovels and rakes and loppers. The broken-down wagon wheel I had propped up against the second tree to get it out of the way. Half the spokes were rotted away completely, but the other half plus the hub of the wheel looked intact, and sort of evoked a rising sun. Maybe I could weatherproof it and do something with it.

Wrestling to move this half-wheel to a safer place, the rusted iron hoop fell down on the ground, right by two of the stump seats. I looked at it. Wait a minute. That's interesting. A circle inside the circle. It kind of looks like a...a...pool, or something. A pool. Yes. What if I filled it with stones? White marble stones? Would that look weird or would it be cool?

You can see where this is going. Yes I did fill the hoop with stones and sea glass, and since I was making a focal point, I might as well bring over a few hostas, and since I'm bringing hostas, well, there may as well be painted ferns, too. Next thing you know I'm mugging every other shade garden bed, stealing shamelessly: lily-of-the-valley, hellebore seedlings, forget-me-nots, ferns, sweet woodruff. One trip to a garden center and I came back with variegated Solomon's Seal and a hosta with bright chartreuse leaves. Another trip to another garden center and I found white bleeding hearts and white foxgloves. In the course of five days, it went from cleanup to a project, and went from being the yard's eyesore to one of my favorite places.

Warm Spinach and White Bean Dip

This warm dip is reminiscent of the artichoke dip I got from Suzanne, but a little more healthful. Instead of the half cup of mayonnaise it gets its creaminess from pureed cannellini beans and lowfat ricotta cheese. The lemon really turns it into something nice. Serve it with vegetables, chunks of bread, or pita chips for dipping. And plenty of gin and tonics.

Warm Spinach and White Bean Dip

  • 5 ounces baby spinach (3 cups)
  • 1 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
  • 1 can (15 ounces) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh chives
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon zest
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt
  • Freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Wash spinach, leaving some water clinging to the leaves. Transfer to a large saucepan. Cover, and steam spinach over medium heat, stirring once, until wilted, 4 to 6 minutes. Remove spinach using a slotted spoon, and let cool. Squeeze out excess liquid using a kitchen towel; coarsely chop.

Pulse ricotta and cannellini beans in a food processor until smooth. Transfer mixture to a medium bowl. Add chives, lemon zest, and salt. Season with pepper. Stir in spinach. Transfer to a 1-quart baking dish.

Bake until bubbling, about 30 minutes. Season with pepper. Serve warm

Sweet Potato Quinoa Burgers

These veggie burgers didn't quite come out the way I wanted them to. Taste got a 10. Texture got a 3. Something went wrong somewhere (I have a few ideas), or it's one of those recipes you have to fiddle around with. But again, as far as taste goes, these knocked it out of the park so I feel they are worth another try.

To make up for them being less than stellar, I'm including a brussel sprout-and-radish slaw that I shamelessly stole/copied from Mezon in Danbury, where we went with friends the other night for Tapas. I just made a little, thinking that only Jeeps and I would eat it.  But go figure, Panda kept dipping her spoon in and so did her friend who was over for dinner. These dang kids, you can never figure their tastes out.

Go Figure Sweet Potato Quinoa Burgers

  • 1 can (15 ounces) black beans, drained and rinsed
  • 3 cups peeled and cubed sweet potatoes (I think I screwed up here because instead of measuring 3 cups of raw, cubed sweet potato and then steaming that amount, I measured 3 cups of steamed mashed sweet potato)
  • 3/4 cup sweet corn, frozen or fresh
  • 1/2 medium red onion, finely chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/2 cup cooked quinoa (I didn’t screw up here; cook the quinoa first, then measure 1/2 cup)
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • Heaping 1/3 cup garbanzo bean flour, or finely ground rolled oats, or almond flour (I had none of these things but I did have almond meal.  Maybe it contributed to the mushy texture, maybe it didn’t)
  • 1/4 tsp sea salt
  • Fresh black pepper to taste
  • 1 tsp cumin
  • 1 tsp oregano
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • 1/4 tsp cayenne (optional)
  • 1 tbsp hot sauce

Fill a large pot 3/4 full of water and bring to a boil on the stove.  Add the sweet potatoes and lower the heat to simmering.  Let the potatoes cook for about 20-30 minutes.  Drain the potatoes and set aside to cool.  (You can also steam the potatoes in the microwave.)

While your potatoes are cooling preheat the oven to 375 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or non stick foil.

Once your potatoes have cooled use a fork to mash them.  You want them mashed but not creamy.

In a large mixing bowl add half of the black beans and mash them with a fork.

Add the rest of the beans and the remaining ingredients.  Stir until just combined.  Form the mixture into 10 balls.  Each burger should be about 1/2″ thick.  Place each patty on your prepared baking sheet and place in the oven for 30 minutes, flipping the burgers over once halfway through baking.

Remove from the oven and serve.

I made the slaw by running 8 brussels sprouts and 4 radishes through the shredding disk on the food processor. Then I dressed it with lime juice, mayonnaise, and chopped cilantro. Raw brussies are bitter, so after combining all that, I started adding squeezes of honey and tasting until it was the perfect blend of sweet and sour. You'll know when you get it right.

Dreams of Dinner Parties (Italian Dinner 101)

I made Italian Dinner 101 the other night. You know what I mean: pasta (whatever you have), sauce (homemade, bottled, with or without meatballs), garlic bread (mandatory) and salad (optional). It's a no-brainer, you can make it in your sleep, yet it's a meal that for so many of us is laden with context and dripping with meaning and memory. This is often your maiden voyage in the kitchen, the meal you cut your teeth on as an adult cook, the Sure Thing whipped up for first dates at your first apartment. ID101 is the stuff young dinner parties are made of.

For me, ID101 will always conjure up a summer evening of 1983. I was fifteen, my parents were away somewhere, and my brother, his friend Jim, and Jim's girlfriend Anna were making spaghetti. There they were, these three adults, and I laugh writing that because they seemed unequivocally adult to me, but their average age couldn't have been more than 20. With blithe, chatty confidence they were in my mother's kitchen, putting water on to boil, chopping onions and garlic, concocting sauce, slathering Italian bread with butter and garlic powder and wrapping it in foil to put in the oven, washing lettuce for a salad. They were making dinner. They were having a party.

And I was invited.

To me, this was not only the coolest thing ever, but it became all I wanted to do someday: have a few friends over and make a pasta dinner on a summer night. I remember tearing apart my dresser and closet because Anna had on a sundress, Jim was wearing aftershave, and my brother was in the shower: clearly, this was an occasion. I'd been let behind the velvet rope and I wanted to look nice. What I came up with probably involved a peasant skirt, and definitely there was a lot of mousse and eyeliner and drugstore perfume, but I walked into the kitchen as Anna was breaking a fistful of spaghetti into the pot, and she glanced at me. Thirty years later I can still see her at the stove and hear the way she said, "Oh don't you look nice?"

She asked if I could find candles for the table and light them. I scurried off. There was no salad dressing but have no fear, Little Sister is here: my Mom had taught me to make dressing when I was like six, so I got out the cruet and the vinegar, mustard, dried oregano, worcestershire and oil, and the salad was dressed. When Anna needed a bread knife, a colander, a grater for the cheese, I reached into drawers and cabinets to procure immediately. When Jim couldn't find the corkscrew, I knew where it was. When my brother came out with two shirts and asked "This one? Or that one?" I said that one and Anna nodded, yes, definitely that one. Jim said, "We need music," and I fetched my tape deck from my room and tuned it to the radio.

There was no A/C in our house in that day, the boiling water and the heated oven made the little kitchen into a sauna. We opened windows and sliding doors and turned on fans. The cat got underfoot. Anna and Jim canoodled and I amended my visions of the future to include a boyfriend, preferably one who could cook, but I'd settle for one who'd kiss my neck while I was cooking and I'd playfully shoo him out of the way as Anna was doing. Exactly the way Anna was doing, that was going to be me someday.

Finally, we sat down at our round dining room table to feast. Anna sat in my mother's usual place, plating up and passing. Jim poured wine, including some for me. I took a sip and it was awful, but I would've sooner died than go get myself a 7-Up. Jim held up his glass and made a toast and I clinked mine with theirs. I sat in candlelight, in the company of the elect, eating and talking and included. I was perfectly happy. I needed nothing more, except to grow up and be this, do this, have this. It was one of the top five dinners of my life.

At some point in the evening, I had enough wherewithal to scram and leave the young adults in peace. I went up in my loft and read or wrote in my journal. My bedroom window looked out over the patio, and through the screen wafted the faint smell of cigarette smoke, muffled conversation and laughter and the clink of beer bottles. I fell asleep, dreaming of pasta, garlic bread, salad, the company of friends and romance in the kitchen.

Was it any wonder that some years later, when I was in college, my novel-in-progress contained a seduction scene that revolved around Italian Dinner 101? I had Julie, my ballerina heroine. I had Buddy, who loved her but she didn't return that love. Buddy needed a girlfriend, somebody really cool, he deserved it. Meanwhile, there was this girl Lucy two rooms down and she was cool, and she too deserved someone, but how could I get her and Buddy together?

Turns out Lucy was no idiot, she knew exactly how to do it: she just made dinner and looked like dessert.

Photo Credit (via Creative Commons):
Melalouise

It's Just a Mission Statement

Jeeps isn't a reader, and when he does pick up a book it's usually non-fiction about business or branding or the like. But a little while ago he asked me to read something for him. Literally. Not read a book together, but read it for him and report back with a synopsis, because "you read faster than I do, you could get through this in one night."

Normally I'd ignore that kind of thing but this particular book happened to be about something we'd been struggling with. Namely: we're raising a family, but really, what the fuck are we doing?

Patrick Lencioni, founder and president of The Table Group, has authored several books about strategies for business health and success. But in The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family, he turns those strategies and principles around to the one of the most important organizations in life: the family. He observes that even successful people who apply strategies and long-term thinking at work do not implement plans and goals for their own household. We accept family chaos as status quo, and put up with levels of confusion and disorganization and craziness at home that would not be tolerated at work.

So I read it. I didn't care for the fictionalized account of the imaginary family's journey to find its core principles, rather I preferred Lencioni's own voice in the last 30 pages or so, which was when I found myself taking notes.

As Jeeps left for the train station, I tucked my notes into his jacket pocket. "Do your homework on the train," I cooed, "there'll be a meeting after dinner tonight."

So after we were done eating, we opened a bottle of wine, ignored the dishes, ignored the kids, and compared answers to the Three Big Questions.  Basically what these do is help you find some context for your family life, something to address that nagging, larger question of "What the fuck are we doing?" Which, admittedly, most of us don't do.

"Even the leaders of most mediocre companies sit down and try to figure out what their priorities are, how they differ from their competition, and what their unique advantages or disadvantages might be.  They don't just wing it...And yet most of us go about leading and managing our families with almost no formal context.  We don't take time to explicitly decide who we are, what we stand for, what we want, and how we're going to go about succeeding and thriving as a family.  Why don't we?  We go on living context-free lives, taking on every decision and issue in a relatively isolated way, as though it weren't part of a larger situation.  And then we wonder why each day feels like a disconnected, reactive game of survival, a grind without the purposeful progress we all crave."

The three questions are:

1) What makes your family unique? The answer to this question is going to be largely shaped by your core values, things that drew you to your life partner in the first place, fundamental and positive qualities about your family, things you could not stop or suppress even if you wanted to. 

2) What is your family's top priority, or rallying cry, right now? This is not your family credo forever and ever amen. This is a project or priority to rally around and address in the next 2-6 months, after which time, you come up with another one. 

3) How do you talk about and use the answers to questions #1 and 2? In other words, how do you keep the context alive?

Jeeps and I compared our lists of core values and unique attributes and right off the bat, we noticed that "humor" was at the top of both our lists. We laugh a lot around here. And not dry, witty humor although that's my preferred kind. No, it's strictly Mel Brooks style, farts and butts and bathroom humor to get us through the unpleasant things in life. And at this point in the pow-wow, Redman wandered over, wanting to know what we were doing.

"We're having a meeting," Jeeps said.

"Hey, Red, what makes our family special?" I asked, curious as to what he would say.

He thought for exactly three seconds and answered, "We make a lot of fart jokes."

Jeeps and I exchanged impressed glances. Then Panda walked by. "What makes our family unique?" Jeeps called over to her.

No hesitation or thought. "Oh, we're hilarious," she said.

Feeling extremely validated, we went on with our list of things we held dear, being careful to not confuse core values with "permission to play" ones. I mean, things like honesty, kindness and fairness sound like they should be core values, when really they are bare-minimum expectations of civilized behavior.

In the end, our mission statement of uniqueness looked like this:

"We value humor, knowledge, self-sufficiency, a strong family narrative, and hospitality. We feel opening our home and our experiences to others creates greater understanding."

That's it. Pencils down. Not very elegant, not very profound, not very long, but it's just a mission statement. It's us. It's ours. It's context.

We went on to put together our rallying cry du jour, and our strategy to achieve it, which I won't go into because already this is getting long.  But honestly just sitting down and putting together this kind of statement was an eye-opening experience. There was something very gratifying about it. And right when we were done our friend Cheryl came by to pick up her daughter. We showed her what we were doing, she sat down at the table, and we ended up having a really good conversation about family life and parenting and other things.

Opening our home and our experience to others creates greater understanding.

Weird. Right?

What's your mission statement?

Golden Beet and (Green Bean) Salad

You have to laugh at yourself. You'd cry your eyes out if you didn't.

It's spring, which means beets. For those of you with beet issues, just leave the post now, because I love them in a very prejudiced way and I don't have time for non-believers.

DeCicco's always has beautiful produce and on my last trip they had gorgeous, fat, golden beets, which are my very favorite of all beets. I'd had my eye on this golden beet and green bean salad I pinned from Martha Stewart. I remembered to grab crumbled goat cheese and I swear, I swear I bought two bags of French green beans—one for Easter, and one for the salad.

I must have made both bags on Easter because after I'd roasted the beets and had the water boiling to blanch the beans, I went to the fridge and...no beans. What? Of course there are beans, I bought two bags because I knew I was making this salad! No! No this is not happening!

You know that thing where you search the fridge thoroughly for something you know is there. But it's not. But you keep going back to the fridge and searching again? In weird places like the butter drawer?

So anyway, once I was convinced that there were no beans to be had, I kicked myself around the kitchen a couple times but then the show had to go on. I regrouped by roasting some asparagus and it worked out fine, it was delicious. Just imagine it's very fat green beans, OK?

One other thing: I usually roast beets wrapped in foil, but pressed for time, I cut them into 1" dice and roasted them direct on the baking sheet at 425. This is fine, but in small dice at high temp they will caramelize very quickly, and once you smell burning sugar, it's just a wee bit too late. Jeeps and I ate the really scorched ones and left the pretties for the photo shoot. It's all good really.

Golden Beet and Fat Green Bean Salad

  • 6 large golden beets
  • 6 ounces haricots verts, trimmed and cut in thirds
  • Coarse salt
  • 2 tablespoons white-wine vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons minced shallot (from 1 shallot)
  • 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
  • 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • Freshly ground pepper
  • 1/4 cup loosely packed torn fresh basil, plus small leaves for garnish
  • 2 ounces goat cheese, crumbled

Preheat oven to 425. Peel and trim beets and cut into 1" dice.

Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper, spread on baking sheet, and roast for 10 minutes. Shake the sheet to redistribute and roast another 10 minutes. Watch carefully to avoid burning. (Alternatively you can wrap the beets in foil and roast for about an hour). Transfer beets to a large bowl.

Cook haricots verts in boiling salted water until bright green and crisp tender, about 2 minutes. Transfer to ice-water bath, and drain. Add to beets.

Mix vinegar, shallot, and mustard in a small bowl. Add oil in a slow, steady stream, whisking until emulsified. Toss with vegetables, and season with salt and pepper. Stir in torn basil and goat cheese. Garnish with basil leaves. I added some pine nuts as well. It's a salad, there are no rules.

Serve.

Laugh.

Sweet Potato Muffins with Two Toppings

I made these to 1) continue on the breakfast muffin kick and 2) use up the one sweet potato I had left after making the sweet potato and black rice dish. The orginal recipe had an oatmeal crumble top, which I was going to make, but then I spied the box of Trader Joe's "Just the Clusters" Vanilla Almond cereal and thought I could skip a step and make a granola top. This turned out terrific. Really you could sprinkle anything on top of these and it'll be terrific. Terrific Sweet Potato Muffins

  • IMG_60251 3/4 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 cup cooked and mashed sweet potato (I peeled and diced one, put it in a pyrex bowl with a cup of water, covered with saran and nuked it for about ten minutes. Drain, cool, and mash. You could also roast it a more savory, intense flavor)
  • 3/4 cup buttermilk
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 tbsp coconut oil, melted (or any vegetable oil)
  • 2 tsp vanilla

Crumble Top

  • 1/4 cup oats
  • 1/4 cup flour
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 tbsp melted butter
  • 1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 400. You'll turn it down when the muffins go in. This is a new method for me - the blast of hot air at the beginning of baking makes the muffin tops rise high. Who knew?

Mix dry ingredients and set aside

Mix wet ingredients. Add to dry and stir until just combined.

Line muffin tin or spray with Pam. Fill cups 2/3 full. Sprinkle with crumble top or granola.

IMG_6026

Put pan in oven and turn heat down to 375. Bake 16-18 minutes until golden brown and the kitchen smells of autumn.