Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

As of this morning, I was still undecided about what to make for dinner tonight, but that turned out to be a good thing; we went to a lunch at my friend Andrea’s house, and when we came home, my hubby and I were so stuffed that we really couldn’t think about dinner.  I opened up my Pinterest ‘Bread’ board, thinking that breakfast for dinner was a perfect way to end the day, and I saw these Rhubarb Muffins.

Now, I don’t have anywhere close to the amazing rhubarb crop that Mel has–did you see the picture? the wagon FULL of it?–but I do have a lone rhubarb plant in my backyard.  It’s not red rhubarb, which I would kind of prefer, but it’s rhubarb.  I decided that I need look no further for dinner tonight…and then I remembered why I haven’t made these already.

Coconut oil.

I don’t have any.

At this point, however, I really didn’t want to have to come up with another dinner idea, so I decided to forge ahead.  After all, the muffins themselves say ‘or vegetable oil,’ so I was safe there, and as for the streusel, well…let’s just say that I didn’t think anyone would complain if I used butter instead.  (For the record?  No one did.)  I followed the recipe otherwise, although I found I only got about 18 muffins out of it.  They rose impressively, so that was fine, but I would fill one pan of 12 before deciding whether to try to fill a second one or use a 6 instead.  There would be enough streusel for another full dozen, though.

The verdict was fairly unanimous; the girls and I all loved them.  (My hubby didn’t end up eating with us, and the boy was having diaper  issues–his opinion can’t be accurately gauged.)  The one thing I did regret was the coconut oil.  I’ve been told that there are two kinds; one that flavors your recipe like coconut, and one that doesn’t.  Since there was no other spice in the muffin itself (just the streusel), I would have enjoyed some coconut flavor.  I actually added a little bit of coconut extract to the streusel, and that was rather lovely.  If I try them again before I get my hands on some coconut oil, I’ll probably throw a bit of cinnamon in the batter, just for flavor.  All in all, however, we did quite enjoy them the way they were.

Hello, world!

I really meant to put up a post saying I was tied up with family, because I took my kids to Idaho to visit my parents, and we just got back yesterday.  I was too busy packing for four before we left, though, and then I was tired from the drive, and THEN, well, my parents’ computer is painfully slow.  (It’s one of the hazards of living with a computer guy; most people’s computers feel slow to me, but my parents’ is particularly bad.)  And so I didn’t, but I am back!  The kiddos had lots of Grandma and Grandpa and cousin time–my brother lives 5 or 10 minutes from my parents–and are still kind of tired and grouchy, but hey.  We are striving to get our lives back in order.

The reason that it feels like we came home to madness, incidentally, is that we are in the process of switching bedrooms for the girlies.  The boy is going to need to move out of the crib sometime this winter, and three kids in the same bedroom isn’t ideal anyway, so the girls are moving downstairs into the (former) library/storage/guest room.  Which, of course, involved Mommy and Daddy–and specifically Daddy while the rest of us were out of town–moving all of their stuff out of it and trying to find a place for all of it to go.  (We have SO MUCH STUFF!)  We’ve donated two (large) boxes of books, plus our old cd and dvd racks, and my hubby even partly cleaned out his shoe collection.  (He’s really not much of a shoe guy himself, but his dad likes to try different brands and styles, and my hubby gets all of the hand-me-downs.)  The whole process would feel more impressive if it weren’t just a teeny tiny drop in a very large bucket…

Anyway.  While I was in Idaho–away from the craziness–I did manage to finish the third book in the Melendy quartet, and I found it to be every bit as delightful as the first two.  Then There Were Five begins at the end of the school year, when the siblings have a whole summer awaiting them, and carries them through to the fall.  Along the way they make a host of new friends and have all sorts of adventures–exciting enough to make for fun reading but normal enough to be believable.  They also, as the title suggests, manage to expand their family a bit.  All in all, it was a lovely read; Elizabeth Enright hasn’t disappointed me yet.  You should absolutely give the Melendys a try–The Saturdays is the start of the quartet–as well as Gone-Away Lake, which has an irresistible premise.  I promise you’ll be glad you did!