Moosewood Muffin Madness

There's nothing like the smell of fresh baked muffins - any time of day. Usually I try to have bananas on hand all the time for cereal, and when they overripe, they go into banana bread. Today I tried out the Moosewood muffin recipe, instead of my standard banana bread, and it looks great! It's nice because there is a standard base, and then you can add whatever variation you want to make your muffin flavor. It also could be made vegan fairly easily by using egg substitute.

What's in it
Wet ingredients:

2 eggs

1/2 C vegetable oil

3/4- 1 C brown sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

Dry ingredients:

2 C flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Additional variations 

(must have one of these along with the wet and dry ingredients):

Apple: Add 2 C grated tart apples and 1 tsp fresh lemon zest to wet ingredients.  Add 1/2 tsp cinnamon to dry ingredients.  Optional: fold in chopped walnuts or pecans into batter.

Banana: Add 1 1/2 C mashed ripe bananas to wet ingredients.  Optional: Fold in chopped nuts or chocolate chips into batter. 

Blueberry-Lemon: Add 1/2 C fresh or frozen blueberries and 1 Tbls fresh lemon zest to wet ingredients.

Zucchini: Add 2 C grated zucchini to wet ingredients, and 1 tsp of cinnamon and 1/2 tsp of ground cardamom to dry ingredients.  Fold 1/2 C raisins or currants, and 3/4 C chopped nuts if you like, into batter.

How it's Made

Preheat oven to 350.

In a large bowl, combine wet ingredients.  In small bowl, combine dry ingredients.  Add appropriate variation ingredients to wet or dry ingredients.  Stir dry ingredients into wet until just combined.  Fold in additional ingredients if necessary.

Spoon batter into oiled standard muffin tins (makes 12), and bake for 20-25 minutes until toothpick comes out clean.  If using mini muffin pans, bake 10-15 minutes.

Rustic Veggie Melt

The other day I needed a quick dinner and I ended up with a delightful meal worth posting.

My sister works at New Seasons and is able to bring home a lot of produce for free. When ever something is dropped or bruised or on the verge of going bad they set it aside. It's from this group of veggies she can pick some for us to enjoy at home. She brought home a lot of squash, peppers and onions which she chopped and roasted. I walked in when the veggies were coming out of the oven, which drastically reduced my overall cooking time, but it's still easy. Here are the instructions:

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees

Rinse and chop various veggies, in this case we had green and yellow squash, red and green bell peppers, yellow onions and whole cloves of garlic. Toss veggies with olive oil, salt and pepper. You can add fresh herbs too. We had thyme, rosemary, and oregano. Roast in glass baking dish until all veggies are cooked through and starting to brown, tossing at least once. Remove from oven and set aside to cool slightly.

Increase oven to Broil.

Cut thick slices of sourdough and lay them on a flat cookie sheet, covered in foil if you like foil.
Scoop some of the roasted veggie mixture onto each slice of bread and spread it to the edges. Sprinkle with fresh chopped basil or other herb if you have it. Then layer some jack or mozzarella cheese over the top. Place in the oven on middle rack and watch until the cheese just starts to bubble and the edges of the bread are toasty. Remove from the oven and seve immediately.

I didn't have the energy to make a whole salad to go with this so you can see I just tossed some avocado pieces with lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Total time with roasting veggies is about 1 hour (most of which you are sitting while veggies cook)
Total time with pre-roasted veggies is about 10 minutes. If you pre-roast veggies they can be stored in the frig for a few days and you can have this meal for an easy lunch or brunch with an egg on top.

Enjoy!