Anytime Muffins: For snacking or breakfast

Anytime Muffins

2 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

1 egg, slightly beaten

3 tablespoons melted butter or margarine

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Sift flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a bowl.  In a separate bowl mix the milk, egg and butter. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until flour is moistened. Do not over stir.  Pour into greased muffin pan.  Bake for 16-18 minutes.  Makes 1 dozen.

Recipe is from a cookbook compiled by our ward congregation a number of years ago.  These muffins are simple and basic.  Great with butter and honey and/or jam or plain!

Sunday Randomness #25 More Peaches

The continuing saga of canning peaches...  We bought some more peaches for canning around the first part of October-this time the variety is known as Angela peaches.  The finished bottles of Angela peaches are pictured above-the picture was taken downstairs in the storage room-hence it is not as clear and sharp as the Rosa peaches picture.

They had orange and red skins but a slightly more yellow interior than the Rosa peaches.  Size-wise they are very similar-averaging the size of a softball.  The Angela peaches are also free-stone but they had to be slightly pried from the center of the peaches.  They also required a longer boiling water bath-we scalded them for a full minute rather than 30 seconds and I still had to cut away peach skin.  And the third but most deciding factor that will strongly influence whether we buy them again in the future is taste.  The Rosa peaches were sweet, juicy and had a touch of tangy flavor whereas the Angela peaches were just blah in comparison.  They were still far above store peaches but the Rosa peaches (despite their great tendency to bruise easily) were a grade A peach for canning and Angela peaches I would probably knock down to a B-.

On a side note, my parents canned Elberta peaches this year which probably would get a A- to B+.  The Elberta peaches are more lemon in color both in skin and interior but they are a bit too tart for my taste.  The Elberta peaches are free-stone and the skins slip off easily.  They are also smaller in size-on average about the size of a tennis ball.

Author #112: A new take on an slightly old poem by Julia Donaldson

Alfred Noyes first published his poem, The Highwayman, in 1906 in a Scottish magazine.  Julia Donaldson published The Highway Rat in 2011 with illustrator Axel Scheffler.  Julia's version makes us laugh, Alfred's version makes us cry.  And Loreena McKennitt's song of the Highwayman is one of the most simpatico examples of how to  bring poetry out of obscurity.

Ms. Donaldson's book is a clever new take on the poem with the romance portion now between a rat and food.  I love how she starts the book:

 "The Highway Rat was a baddie.

 The Highway Rat was a beast. 

He took  what he wanted and ate what he took.

 His life was one long feast." 

 The book chronicles the Highway Rat's food thievery-he wants something sweet to eat but gets all manner of other food instead of treats.  This is definitely a book worth reading to find out the humorous  and "poetic" ending for the Highway Rat.