Fall Muffins

With fall comes apples and when it starts to get cool it's time to use the oven. So apple muffins ..... these have no eggs or butter with only 2 Tbsp of oil. Of course they do have some sugar but there's no perfect food! 

2 cups whole wheat flour

1.5 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

1 ripe banana, mashed ( I keep ripe bananas in the freezer and pull one and defrost as needed)

1/3 cup sugar

2 Tbsp oil (I like to use Canola)

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup soy milk 

1 tsp vinegar

1 cup peeled and chopped apples

• Mix together the flour, baking powder, soda and cinnamon.

• In another bowl cream the banana, sugar, oil and vanilla.

• Stir vinegar into the soy milk and add to the banana mixture. Mix well.

• Add flour mixture and apples to the banana mixture. Stir together until mixture is evenly moistened.

• Spoon batter into oiled muffins forms and bake at 375 degrees F for about 20 minutes or until muffins are golden and toothpick comes out clean. 

This makes 12 muffins but they are not large muffins. If you prefer them spilling over the top them make 10 muffins. If you do not have whole wheat flour use 1 cup refined flour with 1/2 cup each of wheat germ and bran. That is how I first made these muffins when whole wheat flour was not to be found where I lived. (That was a few years back!)

 Enjoy!

Llama or Alpaca?

I saw these adorable creatures a couple weeks ago .... I assumed they were llamas at the time but perhaps they are alpacas. Alpacas are smaller than llamas but without the other to compare I don't know. What do you think? I wanted to reach out and pet them but know nothing about their temperament so thought it best to just admire and talk to them. They were so sweet looking ..... two even laid down in the field to roll around like my dogs.

Two Eagles!

Last summer I was excited to catch a photo of one eagle. Today as I looked up into the trees I caught sight of two eagles and managed to snap a photo before one flew away. What do you think? Which is the male? Or are they not a couple?

Update: I found this excellent site if you want to learn about the Bald Eagles in North America. Seems the larger one is probably the female and these two were lucky to reach adulthood as less than 50% do. 

Reflection

The next theme at Three Creative Studios' Quilt Challenge 2010 is 'reflection'. I'll be reflecting on this as I ponder ways to meet the challenge.

Rhthym

I'm so pleased to have finished the 'Rhythm' Quilt Challenge! With so much going on right now I was worried I wouldn't find enough sewing time but the time was found and a quilt was made. With 'rhythm' in mind, I made several sketches, most of them inspired by the idea of electronic machines that register beats and sounds. I appliqued the pieces in place with a blanket stitch and then quilted all the orange and yellow pieces. The red band was left unquilted. I was happy to finally try some free form circle quilting along the two long borders and then did some vertical quilt lines on the shorter borders.

I'd show a few of the photos of construction but when my computer died so did my Photoshop and I'm now trying to learn to use Gimp. I hope my learning curve gets better!

Note of interest: Sue has created some wonderful little keychain books and is giving them away from her blog. I have one of Sue's books and one of her journals and they are fabulous!

Computer Problems and Quilts

I wonder if the reason that I feel so frustrated with computers is that I didn't use a computer until I was in my thirties and I didn't experience the internet until I was forty. So I remember a much simpler life when I fit tea breaks into my work day instead of fitting work into my computer day! This frustration has come from my last week of computer failure, trying to semi-keep up on my husband's tiny little notebook (I can't imagine trying to use a phone to check the internet or mail!) and finally going out and buying a new computer. Then it has been a couple days of trying to install old programs (and I've discovered that some of my old programs like Photoshop Elements are not compatible with Windows 7) and trying to figure out how to get my email. I'm almost there now and found some time to start turning one of my many sketches for the quilt challenge into an actual quilt. Above are my fabric choices and a couple of the shapes. I hope I find time next week to get it all put together and quilted.

Hope you're having good computer days!

South Park and The Garden

Ever since we moved into our house in South Florida we've been trying to make the yard special; another room of the house. We had a landscaper redo some of our yard shortly after we moved-in about eight years ago. But much of what was planted didn't suite the location or perhaps we didn't water enough. My husband is big on environmental issues and doesn't like to water often. He has since spent a lot of hours reading and learning about native yards. I thought he could just go ahead and landscape our yard himself, but he thought it best to find a landscaper who works with native plantings. He was right, and after much searching we found someone who put in the time and lots of effort to get our yard just as we had envisioned. Well, actually not as we had envisioned because it turned out much better than either of us thought it could! Below is how our wildflower garden looked when it first went in. I was happy!

 

But it has grown more than I imagined it could!

On the south side, which used to be totally plain and unused lawn, is where our landscaper created a surprize with lots of native plantings. I had mentioned that I would like to some day have a veggie/herb garden so she created this fabulous space where we can gradually add our little garden and in the meantime the native plants will grow without all the water that most landscape plants require.

My first experiment with the herb/veggie garden is doing pretty well. It looks like next week we should have our first green pepper and perhaps if I wait a little longer, first red pepper! And we are finding new uses for fresh basil .... our latest favorite is as a topping for baked potatoes with a little olive oil and pepper.

Thanks to Jane our landscaper! (Indian Trail Native Nursery)