Lovin' From The Oven

"Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat." 

~ David Sedaris

So first off, imagine this...there are two muffins baking in an oven. One turns to the other and says "good god it's hot in here!" Her fellow muffin exclaims, "holy cow a talking muffin!" I have heard this joke more times than I have digits on my hands and feet, but I love it none the less. :)

Well, to tell you the truth I blame my friend Hilary for making me forget my goal of "no baked goods for one week". When I opened up my facebook account at approximately 9:32 this morning, I received the notification that I had been tagged in a photograph. A photo of a smiling girl and a fresh baked blueberry muffin no less. Ignoring the fact that my pants hadn't been fitting lately, I rushed down stairs and immediately began thawing some frozen berries in a bowl of hot water. 

Someone once asked me what the difference was between a muffin and a roll.  My response was that a roll is a type of bread, whereas a muffin is more like a breakfast cup cake. When I was younger, I got muffin mix from the grocery store and was always dismayed to find that the resulting baked goods were spongy, slightly purple, overly sweet things. Banana nut muffins are a bit easier to concoct. Really it's just a matter of making the quick bread batter and scooping it into tins. It's also harder to screw up- I mean, can you really over mix something made out of smushed bananas? This time, unlike earlier days, I made sure to thaw the berries completely and rinse them in a strainer over the sink before adding them to the batter. 

Some of my best memories include muffins. Every morning, after hopping off the bus, I would rush into the warmth of my high school cafeteria and stand in line for breakfast. The food at the local high school is amazing. Let me repeat; the food at the local high school is amazing! There was none of that spray cheese on tortilla chip nonsense. or chicken nugget and under cooked gloppy, orange macaroni day. Instead we got to have Thai food, and fresh wraps, Odwalla juices, local salad greens (my botany class grew them in the school's green house!) and some of the most addicting baked goods the world has ever seen. My friends and I would sit around before homeroom, catching up on gossip and forgotten homework, and nibble away at cinnamon rolls and breakfast sandwiches, and a wide array of muffins. There were raspberry or pineapple and coconut, chocolate chip, wild berry, banana walnut, apple cinnamon, and a number of others. 

One day, my stepfather came to pick me up at my college in a snow storm to take me home for the weekend, and we stopped at a diner in the middle of nowhere. He brought in one of his homemade cups in which the waitress could pour his coffee, and the owners of the restaurant joked about trading several loafs of bread and a few pies for his pottery. 

"No thank you. This is one of my favorites." He said politely. We rode home in the station wagon, our mouths and bellies indulging in large, grilled raspberry muffins. 

My favorite muffin memory is about Hilary, in fact. We were on a high school class trip to Washington DC, and she and I shared a hotel room with two of our mutual friends. We were all overly tired after a busy day of shopping and various excursions, and we were nestled cozily in our room, with the lights off. Just as we were dozing off, Hilary sat up laughing and exclaimed, 

"I love muffins!" We all groaned and tossed our pillows in her direction, but we all agreed that it was one of the Hilary moments we would never forget. 

I am off to pedal away some of the muffin remnants settling in my stomach, by way of my mom's stationary bike, but I don't feel too guilty for going back on my goal, just for today.