A Tale of Two Muffins

A bit ago I was looking for an old recipe in an old seldom-used recipe box. I ran across a very old stained piece of paper, and discovered it was a copy of muffin recipes from the book The 8-Week Cholesterol Cure. Twenty-eight years ago I worked with a young woman whose very thin mother had very high cholesterol, and they were trying to lower their cholesterol with some of the recommendations in this book. She said the muffins were tasty and low calorie, so I made a copy and tried them out. They were good! So twenty-eight years later I made them again, and they are still very tasty. Only about 120 calories per muffin. This book is still in print, but the muffin recipe is all over the internet, so I thought it would be okay to share it with you. I made Banana Nut Bran Muffins, but the book has many versions of different flavors.

Then, a few weeks ago, I picked up the box of Kodiak Power Cakes mix again and looked at it. Hmmm. 1/2 cup of mix with 1/2 cup of water, and you’ve got pancake mix. The list of ingredients is relatively short, its high in fiber and protein. I succumbed.

Holy Moly, these are VERY good pancakes. 190 calories for three pancakes with 15 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber. So far I’ve had them with a tsp of butter and SF syrup, and with walnuts cooked in and topped with my banana mash syrup.

On the box they also have directions for using milk and/or eggs to make higher protein pancakes. And, they had a muffin recipe. One day I decided I could adjust that recipe a little bit, and tried it. These are also very good banana nut muffins! Very different than the previous muffins, which are very much a bran muffin with bananas. These taste more like commercial muffins, light and fluffy, and pretty sweet. These muffins come out to about 150 calories each. My Kodiak Banana Nut Muffin recipe is here.

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Here and There

First of all, thank you so much for all of the encouraging comments on my last post. Each success story builds my confidence and erodes some of my trepidation for my knee surgery. I do have a plan now. I am going to keep my schedule open in March and April, hoping that there will be a cancellation so that I can get in then. Otherwise, I will wait till the end of July so that I can get my chicks raised to a safe age.

After visiting one “rehab” center, which was nothing more than a nursing home (depressing) I formulated a plan to come straight home and recuperate. I would have to pay a co-pay for the nursing home, and I thought to myself, I bet my “babysitter” (takes care of the little girls when I travel) would be very willing to be on call for me for a couple of weeks. Yes, she’s very willing to do that for me. In addition, I talked to my BF, who is going to come down from Oregon to take care of me the first week. I know me, and I know I will recover much better at home than in a hospital setting. I am very exercise-motivated.

Speaking of exercise motivated… I never shared my “Christmas presents to me.” I needed new walking shoes. I looked and looked and tried on quite a few shoes. But none felt as good as the shoes I already had–Saucony Kinvara and Asics Gel Nimbus. Both are very expensive. And of course, a close second to comfort was the COLOR of the shoes. I started searching eBay. With some good tips from my brother, and knowing from Shelley that running stores sometimes take returns on barely used shoes, I got some great bargains. First, I got these Asics Gel Nimbus at less than half the price of new:

I liked them so much that I decided I could afford to get a second pair, this time the Saucony Kinvara. I have an excuse for needing two pairs of running shoes. One of them is mostly for walking on my dirt road. And the second is just for going to the gym–no need to track my dirt into the gym 🙂 That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

Here are pics from a couple of recent trips:

I went to Anaheim for our now-annual rug hooking retreat. My best rug hooking friend now lives in Austin, so we both flew in. Of course, this year we landed smack dab in the middle of one of the biggest rain storms in Southern California history! We drove around all day Sunday in pouring rain. We were both pleasantly surprised at how slowly the So. Ca. drivers were driving on the freeways!

Monday we took our annual trip to Crystal Cove.

There was just enough of a break in the storm to give it a try. It was windy and cold, and there was some rain. But we enjoyed our shared breakfast of beignets and chilaquiles. And then I sat on Bette Midler’s porch and watched (Crystal Cove is where they shot part of the movie Beaches.)

While Mary Lynn explored the beach.

And here’s the real reason we went to Anaheim–rug hooking!

I had a hair-brained idea that if I went to a chicken show, maybe I could find some chicken breeders that I could buy my chicks from earlier than the May 22 date that the hatchery had given me. No such luck–its just like dog shows. I think it would cost me a fortune to buy chicks that way. But here are some fun pictures of some of the breeds of chickens I plan to get:

Polish:

Blue Cochin:

Buff Orpington:

And some funky little roosters (that I am NOT getting)

And now I am home for a bit. Do you all know about the RAIN we’ve been getting out here? Its pretty crazy. After four straight days of rain, I took the dogs for a walk, and wondered, where’s that sound of running water coming from? Well, it was just a rivulet of rain running straight down the middle of our dirt/gravel road. A neighbor stopped to tell me we had gotten 10 inches of rain in four days. I live in the mountains, so am nowhere near the evacuations that are happening. But there are a lot of mudslides along the roads. We’re having a nice sunny break right now, but this weekend another big storm is expected! Hope you all are staying safe and dry!