Something New?

I am thinking of trying something new, for the new year.... I know I am a little early, but thought maybe I would see if any of you out there want to try this with me.
So it turns out I suck at updating the so-called "Recipe of the Week." I am considering switching it to a Recipe of the Month. I would post something up that I have not made before but really always wanted to try. I will then plan to make it sometime before the month is over. And I thought that maybe some of you might want to try it out with me. We could see who succeeds and who fails, and maybe find some great new ideas in the kitchen.
Anyone up for a 2011 challenge?

Productive and Loud

So I had a productive day in the kitchen today! I made 3 jars of carrot baby food, 2 ice cube trays of peas baby food, 3 jars of saskatoon jam, and saskatoon muffins. I needed to get the baby veggies made today because I am almost out of all baby food, and I have to wait to make more fruit until we do groceries on friday, and I didn't want to be stuck making everything then. Daniel is a lucky baby though because all those veggies are local and delicious! Today he tried the peas for the first time and I was impressed that he liked them!
As for the loud part, I had to use the blender quite a bit, and both boys hate the sound of it. I don't know if it hurts their ears but they were both crying. Jacob kept telling me to put the blender away. Poor things.
I am impressed with myself though because I forgot that I was wearing my nice white shirt and somehow I did not get a single carrot, pea, or saskatoon stain on it! Hurray!
Anyways, here is my muffin recipe, it is awesome with blueberries too. Once again it is my own edit from a trusted cookbook. Enjoy.

Blueberry Muffins

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Yield: 12 large muffins

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

3/4 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup blueberries

Directions:

In large bowl combine first three ingredients. Make a well in center.

In another bowl cream butter and sugar. Beat in egg. Mix in milk and vanilla.

Pour into well and stir to moisten.

Fold blueberries into batter.

Fill greased muffin cups 3/4 full. 

Bake at 400 for 20 minutes.

Neglect...

So it may appear that I have been neglecting my blog a little bit... however, I haven't really had a need to bake anything lately for a few reasons: A neighbour dropped off a big container of amazingly delicious cookies on my doorstep one morning... we brought home almost a whole chocolate cake leftover from a church potluck... we went to the farmers' market and treated ourselves to a strawberry rhubarb pie... and we've been snacking on suckers left-over from halloween. As for our meals, they have been fairly standard... pizza, fajitas, and BLTs are a few of our standbys. Though I did make lasagna, which I LOVE, but I don't use a recipe. Though I do recommend adding a can of diced tomatoes to your sauce, it made a tremendously delicious difference the first time I tried it and now I always keep some in my pantry.
I plan to make a cheesecake with my Mom's recipe this week, so stay tuned because it might just become a post!

FIRE!!!! x2

Well, not really, but we did have two kitchen adventures this week that were not so great. First, Jeff turned on the wrong burner, on which I had left a margarine container filled with baby feeding paraphernalia. Toxic plastic smoke soon filled our main floor. We opened windows and doors and I took the boys on the porch. Amazingly, the plastic cleaned off our ceramic top oven super easily, and the only real damage done was that one bottle had to be thrown out. A couple days later, I had 3 burners going on the oven. I was trying to open a package of instant mashed potatoes (so sad, I know, but this weeks "Recipe of the Week" is so much quicker to make with them), and it kind of exploded everywhere. Well, all of a sudden our house was filled with burnt potato smoke, it stank, and the flakes were all turned into little flaming embers. I turned off all the burners, to cool them down and clean up, and dinner was delayed by half an hour because I had to re-boil the water for the pasta.
Jeff and I have made a pact not to set the house on fire again. Ever.