Spring "Cleaning"...

...that's my name for these fiber-rich muffins.

Most of this recipe can be found in the family cookbook on page 28.  Colleen's Famous Bran Muffins is the actual title, but since I've altered the recipe a bit, I feel justified in altering the name too.

Spring Cleaning Muffins

Cream together:
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs

Mix in:
2 cups of buttermilk* with 2 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda stirred in

Add to all of the above:
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups Bran Buds (cold cereal)

Optional stir ins (I like both):
1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen) and 1 cup shredded coconut.

Makes about 26-30 regular size muffins.  Bake at 400' for 20 minutes in greased muffin tins. (I usually make these in cupcake papers - they stick a bit to the paper).  These freeze quite well and make a great mid-morning snack or a breakfast-on-the-go or while you're doing spring cleaning.  Let's go with that.

March Madness Wrap Up

I would like to thank all of those that participated in the March Madness Challenges. I have to say we have a pretty talented group here. I think we need to draw in a few more participants for our next big challenge though. Let's hit up Jody, Josie, Marcy, Gabi and any other extended family that could contribute to our collective. I'm thinking we do a summer kick off in early June?

Thanks for all the great ideas. I know I will be using a couple of the recipes in the near future. Way to go family!!

Ikea Hack

There is a cottage industry built around taking stuff  (cheap, cheap stuff) bought from Ikea and hacking it.  Genius, I say.  I don't tend to think in those terms--I mean, if I'm paying full price for something (even a cheap, cheap something), I don't want to have to give it a make-over right out of the gate.  But I do have some things around the house that are from my "It's cheap and we can afford it and, hey, I'll find a use for it later" days.

Meet the totally uninspiring pine magazine holders:

There on the bottom shelf--looking as ill-favored and vexing as can be.

Mayor Blah-ddington from the village of Lesser Blah-ville and his faithful manservant Mr. MacBlah, no?

And here's what they were hacked into.  (Flag on the play!  Improper use of the verb 'to hack'.) Hacked as. (Flag!)  Hacked from. (Flag!)  Shrug.

I wasn't really going for this look when I started but here's how I got there.

I stained the holders a dark walnut, went to Picnik and found a font I liked and plugged in the words (which were chosen from a Pride and Prejudice vocab list. HA!) "odious" and "vexing" (chosen because they were roughly the same length) in and cropped the image to just around the words. I pasted that into a word document and stretched the image so that when I held the holders up to the screen, they over lapped horizontally and fit vertically.  I traced them with simple clear contact paper (bought ages ago from GW) and cut out. 

I laid the stickers onto the front edges and then painted with four or five coats of interior semi-gloss.  I was hoping that this would give me a nice crisp, mod line but when I took the contact paper off, some of the paint came too.  No worries.  We roll with that sort of thing at Casa Dominguez. 

Then I smoothed down the paint that had lifted and went to spray a polyurethane coat.  Eek! It wanted to eat through the paint.  But it turns out that that was pretty cool as well--like I'd sanded it down that way. 

I can't wait for the conversations to start.