Home Made Foods

I guess I'm a bit strange. I have a whole foods, plant based diet. I only rarely eat out. I don't eat meat, or dairy. I cook. I clean, and yes, I do laundry, but I don't like to. Anyway, I am one of those males in America that doesn't show up on the media radar, because I like to do so much stuff that would traditionally be called "women's work". I know, housekeeping and cooking and such really is everyone's work, but I didn't make this up, I only know that I have been labeled "Martha Stewart" and my own wife said I would make a good Mormon wife to someone. But I'm not Mormon... but I digress. You get the idea. I like to do things that are commonly thought of as "keeping house." And one of those things is making muffins and cookies.

Last night we had some guests over and I honored them with my Chocolate Chocolate Chunk Pecan Muffins. These are made with no added oil, and only as much fat as the chocolate chunks and the pecans have. And they are so good, everyone is always surprised to hear that they are vegan.

Anyway, since I made the muffins last night, and they were devoured for desserts and snacks and even breakfast this morning, I decided to make Apple Spice with pecan muffins for dessert tonight. And now the whole house smells like cinnamon and apples.

Oh, and did I mention that I ground the flour for the muffins too?

Sometimes eating good food is a BIG part of that simple life that I'm creating for myself and my family. I think we live a slower paced life than the "rat race" that so many of my coworkers aspire to.

Basic Muffin recipe:

4 cups whole wheat flour (any kind works, I grind mine into pastry-four fineness.)
1 cup rolled oats (quick cook or long cook, doesn't matter)
1/2 to 1 cup sugar, depending on how sweet you like your muffins
2 Table spoons baking powder
5 Table spoons ground flax seed
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup natural apple sauce (can be home made if you want)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract


And to make Chocolate Chocolate Chunk:
Add to basic Muffin recipe above:
5 Table spoons cocoa
1 cup chocolate chunks
1 cup pecans (halves, pieces or ground fine. Optional) You can use any nut you like if you don't have pecans. This is a very forgiving recipe.



Heat oven to 400F.
I use silicone non-stick muffin pans, but if you use metal ones, you will need to grease them somehow. I'll leave that to you.

Combine the dry basic muffin ingredients in the mixer bowl, mix all dry ingredients so they are well mixed. Add wet ingredients, then add enough water just so the batter is wet through, and still thick, but not so thick as bread dough would be. The consistency needs to be loose enough to spoon easily into those muffin pans.

Spoon into muffin pans (this makes 24 muffins!)

Bake the muffins for about 30 minutes, then test to see if it is done with a wooden toothpick.


If you want Apple Cinnamon muffins,
add to the basic muffin recipe
1 chopped apple finely chopped
1 cup pecans (halves, pieces or ground fine. Optional) You can use any nut you like if you don't have pecans. This is a very forgiving recipe.
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger

Prepare as above muffins

You can try other kinds of fruits - Banana and Nut is good
Pumpkin and spice
And blueberry.
Add or remove spices as you want, until it sounds like it would be good for you.

Good luck.

Long weekend

One of the joys of life is living it. Taking the time to just settle in, pick up a good book and enjoy. This is what I've done today. Keeping it simple.

This week has also been a time of rest, relaxation and healing. Recharging mental batteries so to speak.

Mary and I had a quiet Thanksgiving day. She spent the day curled up reading, and I made several delicious vegan dishes. I made dressing balls, mashed potatoes and gravy, baked sweet potatoes with pineapple and cloves and just a hint of brown sugar, green bean casserole, butternut squash, acorn squash, and vegan brownies for dessert. Ok, so some of those things weren't around for the original Thanksgiving meal, but it was plenty to fill our plates (and our bellies.) And no, I didn't miss the fake turkey this year. It simply wasn't needed. We ate well, and were satisfied. And we are still eating the leftovers!

I got my stitches out yesterday, and the doctor said I was a very fast healer. Yeah! That really comes in handy for someone who has fast and powerful reflexes like mine!

I built Kit T Kat a cat tree on Friday. It has 4 levels, and is carpeted in a dark green to go with our current furniture color scheme. It also has sisal rope wound around 2 of the legs for Kit to scratch her nails on. There was some wood that wasn't covered by the carpeting, so Mary and I glued (and tacked) some of the rope down in those spots to cover the wood. Very nice effect. You can just see the top of the cat tree in the lower left-hand side of the picture.

Today I built 4 Cat-shelves, and covered them in carpet also. I hung 3 of them on the wall using banister mounting hardware. The fourth will get mounted later. I found the idea on the internet. The trouble is, our cat hasn't figured out how cool these things are yet. Give her time. I may make enough of these shelves for the cat to get all around the living room. They are pretty easy to make. Our house is on it's way to being extremely cat accessible! (Mary has been having good fun watching me work to build things for the cat... Laughs and says that I amuse her. Whatever could she mean? Me!?! Amusing? Bah!)

Mary said I may get another kitten to play on the cat toys and be a playmate for Kit. I'm not sure about that one... I may get another kitty for Kit to play with in the spring. If so, it will be a cat, not a kitten. Preferably a cat that is at the shelter and needs adopting. I'm not sure I want to deal with the kitten stage of training.

The best thing about these projects is that I built them out of scrap wood, and only had to find the carpet, rope, and banister hangers to make them. I also used screws and staples I had on hand. So I really saved money. Frugality rocks. I checked the prices of the cat trees online, and found ones comparable to the one I built selling for over $150 US. Wow. And the cat shelves? $34 US a piece online. I love being handy with tools.

Here is a picture of the house sign that I built several weeks ago, and finally uploaded so that I could post the picture. Ok, so this picture was in the camera with these others... but anyway, here it is.

You can click on the images for a larger closeup of these photos.