Our favorite muffins

My girls are always delighted when I make these pumpkin muffins.  We had these with our soup tonight.  I found the recipe on the Internet and I'm sorry I don't remember where so I could give credit.

Pumpkin Muffins with Cinnamon-Pecan Streusel

1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup pumpkin puree

Cinnamon-Pecan Streusel
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
4 Tablespoons butter or margarine
3/4 cup chopped pecans

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 350F.  Grease 18 wells of regular size muffin tins.
2.  In a stand mixer or mixing bowl, combine the butter or margarine and sugar until smooth.
3.  In a mixing bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt.
4.  Add the eggs, 1 at a time, to the butter and sugar mixture.  Stir after adding each egg and scrape down the sides if using a stand mixer.
5.  Next stir in about half the flour mixture, until smooth.  Then add half the milk and stir until smooth.  Repeat with the other half of the flour and milk.  Finally, mix in the vanilla and pumpkin puree.  Mix until just smooth.  Pour into the greased muffin wells.
6.  In a small mixing bowl, combine all the streusel ingredients and cut the butter in with a fork, table knife, or pastry blender.  Once it is crumbly, sprinkle all of the topping over the 18 muffins.
7.  Bake in the preheated oven for 21-23 minutes.

Makes 18 delicious and perfectly moist muffins.

Do you know this variety?

Unfortunately this butterfly was not alive when the girls found it, but it is beautiful anyway.

Anyone know what variety it is?

Added:  word has it this is a Giant Swallowtail, one of the largest butterflies in our area

Elder Oaks's talk at General Conference

This is Elder Dallin H. Oaks, an apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  On Saturday afternoon he gave a very interesting talk about protecting our children.

His talk is summarized as follows:

Children are highly vulnerable. They have little or no power to protect or provide for themselves and little influence on so much that is vital to their well-being. Children need others to speak for them, and they need decision makers who put their well-being ahead of selfish adult interests.

We are all under the Savior’s command to love and care for each other and especially for the weak and defenseless.
 

 

This is a 0:46 excerpt from a longer talk and I wish everyone would take his words to heart.

Meal Plan Sunday

Monday:  fast food, take out, or something from the freezer

Tuesday:  cheddar broccoli soup, muffins

Wednesday:   hamburger/green bean/mashed potato casserole

Thursday:  Breakfast for dinner--quick dinner (Girls' Activity Day)

Friday:  Pizza

Happy birthday, Bill!

Dh got up early today and went hunting.  When he came home he grilled up the burgers and we had a good BBQ picnic lunch here at the house.  In the evening he brought several friends home with him after the men's meeting (LDS Church General Conference this weekend--the guys have a men-only session on Saturday night) and we had huge banana splits AND birthday cake.  It was great!

What do you notice about the Barred Rock (black and white) chicken?

Does this picture help?

Does she look mad as a wet hen?  We were outside eating our burgers when we heard a squawking from the pool.  We ran over and this chicken was in the water!  She swam along the side of the pool but couldn't get out, so dh reached in and grabbed her.

We usually (like 99.8% of the time) have our pool covered with a safety net, but it was off because the girls went swimming earlier and we hadn't gotten it back on yet.  To be honest, I never thought of it as keeping chickens out of the pool, only children.  I think she leaned in wanting to get a drink and went all the way in.

Poor Toek was pretty indignant.

Getting ready for dh's birthday

Tomorrow is Bill's big day and I'm preparing as much as I can ahead of time.

We have three things to prepare:

• birthday cake
• a hamburger bbq lunch
• a banana split party

Here is the cake part of the German chocolate cake.  It's from scratch, of course.  I'll make the coconut-pecan filling tomorrow.

Next is one of our family's favorite picnic sides which is nothing more than Cool Whip, drained fruit cocktail, miniature marshmallows, and dry Jello mixed together.  It's best when it's made the day before and refrigerated.

 

The rest of the luncheon's supplies are in the fridge and freezer.

 

This looks like two jars of the same thing, but they're not.  The one in the Kerr jar is homemade hot fudge topping and the one in the Ball jar is butterscotch topping.  They're for the banana split party. 

 

 

 

In addition to the toppings I made, I bought premium vanilla ice cream, and also chunky strawberry ice cream and "Death By Chocolate" ice cream. Oh, and some pumpkin pie ice cream just because I couldn't resist. I don't know if anyone will want that kind of ice cream in their banana split. I got several big cans of aerosol whipped cream and will chop some walnuts to go on top.

 

 My fridge yielded some maraschino cherries and a couple of partial jars of ice cream topping, and my counter has 5 bananas in a bowl with "banana split" written on the skin in red Sharpie.  

 

The banana split party is my tradition after the priesthood session of LDS General Conference every April and October. I put it on for my family as well as anyone Bill brings home with him after the priesthood session.

 

And I made a nice cinnamon apple cake just because autumn has come!

 

School's out--a trip to the zoo

The girls are on Fall Break this week, so we went to the zoo and had a picnic today.

Although it is autumn here, it's almost 90 degrees today and that's cooled off from earlier this week. 

While we were watching the new baby zebra . . .

. . . we watched a robber squirrel.

It was in the tortoise area and it was stuffing greens into its mouth as fast as it could.  And it turned out to be a good idea!

The robber squirrel hid behind a branch and didn't come out again until the tortoise moved on.  It seemed to know it was a thief!

One of our favorite sections of the zoo is the elephant area.  We like it because there is a lovely habitat for the elephants as well as an education area the girls really like.  I watch the elephants, they play in the education area.

Our zoo had three baby boy births the last week of August.  The zebra was one, and this cute flamingo was another:

I never knew baby flamingos were gray.

 



I always like to take a few pictures of the girls so in a year or two or twenty I can marvel at their growth.  Here is Elizabeth on our favorite brass sculpture:

And Sophia . . .

. . . and all three girls.

At the egg:

And finally, my tiger girls:

Sinking to a new low

When I have super-busy weeks with work, family, and volunteering, this is what dinner sometimes sinks to:

That's fresh potatoes that will be mashed with the potato nuggets in the can to make a hybrid fresh/packaged pot of mashed potatoes.  The mashed potatoes are the side for the gravy with sliced turkey (truth in packaging).  That's it.  My family felt lucky that there were fresh potatoes!

I'm really disappointed!

My friend invited me to sing in an women's choir loosely associated with her children's school.  I've been longing to sing in a good community choir again after my excellent experience singing in the Gallup Community Choir for four years.

[This isn't actually my choir but I couldn't exactly take my camera along on a first visit now, could I?]

Everything was great until the conductor mentioned, kind of in passing, that it was, "Eighty bucks for ten rehearsals."  UGH.  I had asked my friend if it was a for-profit choir and she said she didn't think so.  Unfortunately, no one had told her it IS a for-profit choir.

My view is that if I'm going to volunteer to sing, I want the conductor and pianist to volunteer as well.  I don't want to have to pay to volunteer, even though I enjoy singing.  I don't mind buying my own music or making a donation to give the conductor and pianist a gift on performance night, but I don't want to pay an up-front fee.

So, even though I enjoyed singing tonight, I'm not going to continue with the choir.  I hope my friend does though, so I'll have an excuse to attend the concert at Christmas time.

What's wrong with this picture??

This picture was taken at Walmart about two weeks ago.

This is NUTS!!!