muffin monday

Washing walls (and painting them- I'll show you later this week!), tilling the garden, steam cleaning all of the window tracks, cleaning out cars, laundry, lesson planning...it was a productive weekend for us.

Carl is doing a bit of traveling for work this week. Knowing that I'll be flying solo for a few days sent me scrambling back to the kitchen to get some meals ready before he leaves.

I set Hannah to work on making muffins.

We gathered/measured the ingredients together.

I found a great one bowl "base" recipe that makes 12 muffins. We decided to make two batches of carrot/raisin and one batch of blueberry. So we had 3 bowls going. Honestly, it just is so easy doing it this way. It really doesn't take any more time to make 3 batches than it does to make one. Everything is out anyways. Why not just make a mess once instead of multiple times throughout the week?

I left her to assemble each batch,

and scoop them into the paper liners. She loves working in the kitchen- but can be a bit possessive. She fended off the other interested people passing by that tried to get in on the action. "No, you can't help! This is MY project. Maybe I'll let you eat some when they are done." 

We froze these raw in their pans, and then popped them out and into freezer bags. Then, in the mornings, we just pop them back into their pans and bake them! I like them better this way rather than baking them first and then freezing them. I think it's a texture thing.

I also made/assembled 5 dinners, boiled eggs for snacks, chopped veggies for quick munching, and made yogurt. I just cannot tell you the amount of stress this erases from my life. Everything feels so much lighter knowing that dinner is covered for the week. 

It wasn't all work this weekend. We watched this movie with the kids, and this one by ourselves. Which provoked the purchasing of these from zappos and this from itunes.

Yehaw! We're off and running!