Bloggy Debts and Muffineering

I missed Love Thursday yesterday, which is a bummer, but I have had tons and tons of stuff to do, including some jewelry, both stuff I was itching to make for its own sake and commissions to shop for and get going on. 

Looking at that last sentence, I realize that it's a good thing my career does not require me to avoid dangling prepositions.  It does require me to spend money, though.  Because I have the world's greatest friends, I sold a third of my inventory the first week my Etsy shop was in business, and yet I have already spent on new materials for future projects three times as much as I've earned so far.  Fortunately, as I said, some of those future projects are paying commissions, so hopefully I won't turn out to have been a complete idiot business-wise.

Oh, well.  Only time will tell.  And meanwhile, at least I'll have boxes and boxes of pretty, pretty things even if I do turn out to be a complete idiot.  That's some consolation.

I love the pretty, pretty things.   Love them.

(Investment and gambling and naked addiction.  That's my life in art in a nutshell.)

Regardless of my supply debt, I have over the past months accumulated some bloggy debts, some of which can only be paid with photographs, one of which will also need a muffin recipe.

First and foremost, as you may recall, I planted four specimens of something very odd-looking in my yard last fall.  As part of my NaBloPoMo '06 effort, I held a contest to see who could identify it from the way it looked when it went into the ground.  The winner was the lovely and talented Bethieee!

The prize was a painting I have yet to create.  I promised to paint the mystery plant (Eremerus Bungei, aka Eremurus Stenophyllus) in bloom, if it bloomed, outside, while it was blooming.  The plant, or at least one of the four specimens I planted, is expected to bloom sometime in June.  June looms.

I just want to reassure Bethieee (and anyone else who might be waiting to see what the plant looks like and maybe even a scan of the painting if I find the nerve when I get around to making it) that I have not forgotten this promise.  I also wanted to offer a little progress note.  Here's what the specimens closest to my front steps look like right now:

Little ways to go yet.

Notice how many, er, native plants are sprinkled in between the eremeri?   This brings me to my next debt.

Long ago, the lovely and talented Jana of Pilgrim Girl posted a list of (what she felt to be) her flaws.  I know; who knew, right? 

Now as admirable as this gesture was, I don't feel any need to emulate it!  My flaws tend to be fairly obvious; no list I could make would result in revelations to others, but more likely in a long train of reminders about what I'd left off.  However, Jana's was an amusing list and a bold gesture, and in response to one item on it I was moved to mention how I like to garden around my weeds "native plants," implying how little urge I feel to remove them and a distinct tendency to rationalize value their presence.  (I'm not alone in this.)  Now also in response to her hilarious honesty, and also because she's always showing us beautiful pictures of her own garden, here are some photos just for Jana (though you can certainly look, too, even if you're not she) of some of the species I garden around:

Common barberry, vicious sticking spines and all -- hence the "bar" in its name and, I suspect, the plethora of blood-red berries in the fall -- blooming in serene arches above a forest of non-native lilies of the valley and distinctly local dandelions with their own blossoms closed against impending rain:  (Click to enlarge.)

Common blue violet, seen here growing intertwined with returning iris shoots and blooming in a white-to-purple gradient which occurs as part of the range of normal colors locally:  (Click to enlarge.)

Next is some ground ivy.  This is a native plant I conscientiously encourage to overtake as much of the otherwise unplanted areas of my yard as possible.  It is short, so it does not harbor mosquitoes; it doesn't cause rashes; it requires absolutely not one whit of care; and it is endowed with both adorable foliage and lovely, tiny, purple flowers that the bees enjoy.  Another name for this plant is "creeping Charlie."  (Click to enlarge.)

Finally, something not yet in bloom.  This is Virginia creeper, also known as "woodbine," wending its way up the genteelly decaying stockade fence.  It is a very nice vine with discreet white flowers in season, berries for the wildlife, and gorgeous fall colors, and it also takes zero maintenance.  Though we seem to have a little more of it every year, and I do nothing to stop its spread, I believe it is prevented from entirely overtaking our yard by the brevity of our summers.  (Click to enlarge.)

Eh -- give it a hundred years or so.

I have one more debt that I remember.  It was going to be my Love Thursday post for yesterday, had I done a Love Thursday post yesterday.  The love connection was my search to rekindle feelings enjoyed with a lost love.

The lost love was a particular type of muffin.  The debt over this muffin was incurred when I responded to a Love Thursday post of the lovely and talented Sognatrice about her illicit love affair with strawberries.  You can read both tales, the "sordid" and the sad -- all of it ultimately quite sweet and tasty, of course -- in the body and comments of her April 26 post.

Go ahead.   This post will still be here when you come back.

Okay, so now you know all.  You know of Sognatrice's love of strawberries, a love that flaunts the traditions of her fiancé and his family.  You know of my search for the perfect zucchini bran muffin, the bittersweet memories I hold of that one perfect zucchini bran muffin I enjoyed only briefly in Santa Cruz decades ago, and why I have sought its like for so long only to decide that I would simply have to make my own, all by myself, if I could just figure out how.  You also probably read about how my boyfriend didn't think much of my latest efforts along these lines, fairly straight out of Betty Crocker's Cookbook, but found he could enjoy them much better with strawberry ice cream on top, and whipped cream out of a can on top of that.  And if you read all that, then you also read about how I had further refinements to make to that recipe before I would be satisfied, and my promise that I would post the "final" recipe (if there is ever such a thing) here when I got it to a place that satisfied me.

You can never return to a lost love.  It is a mistake to try, because things can never be the same, and you would not even want them the same, even though you might think you would, because you have grown since then and simply wouldn't fit.  It's a mistake as well to look for someone just like the lost one; it's unfair to the would-be replacement, and unkind to yourself as it devalues both this moment and your memories by turning one into vacuous dissatisfaction and the other into ideal fantasies that may never have happened precisely the way you think.

Therefore, while I cannot say that this new muffin is identical to the muffin that so captured my heart in my youth, I still feel successful in my quest.  I actually think this one might be better.  Like the Santa Cruz version of memory but unlike the Betty Crocker version of three weeks ago, it is dark, mysterious, and spicy, and very, very much moister.  It has something the old love did not, redness where there was blackness, crunch where there was uniformity save the occasional raisin.

Here is my new love muffin, my new zucchini bran love muffin.  I think it's perfect.  You are welcome to tinker with it, though, if you don't agree (not like I was really expecting you to ask my permission; we are muffineers, after all, creative forces of the lightly greased cup, and I respect the passion that fires your own eternal quest for your own personal muffinistic perfection).

Sara's Version of the Classic Zucchini Bran Muffin

(All ingredients should be organically grown, of course, except the salt and baking soda.  Please tell me I didn't need to say this.)

1 medium zucchini (about 3/4 lb.), grated
1/3 C honey + 1/3 C evap. cane juice + 1/6 C blackstrap molasses
1/3 C canola oil
1 T vanilla or the scraped out guts of 1 vanilla bean
2 jumbo eggs
1½ C whole wheat flour
¼ C oat bran
1 t baking soda
½ t salt
1 t cinnamon
½ t cardamom
¼ t ground cloves
handful of hand-crumbled pecans
handful of big, plump, dark raisins

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. Grease 12 muffin cups and set aside.

3. Whisk together flour, soda, bran, salt and spices and set aside.

4. In a separate bowl, mix zucchini, sugar, oil, vanilla and eggs. Then dump in the dry ingredients and gently but thoroughly blend. Then blend in nuts and raisins.

5. Distribute batter among the 12 muffin cups, then bake for 25 minutes or until tester comes out clean.

6.  Remove from muffin cups as soon as you can do so without breaking them.  Serve them as warm as you possibly can, either plain and steaming or cracked open and topped with something creamy and sensuous like ice cream or neufchatel.  If there are any left, don't feel bad; you can have them for breakfast.

There.  I believe that settles all debts, except for search engine questions I must answer.  Look for those next week.

Comments

[sognatrice]

Oh how I love when you grace us with your posts! Consider your bloggy debt to me (if there ever was one) completely paid off. I can't wait to scrape out the guts of a vanilla bean. I mean that in the nicest way, of course.

[Sara]

hahaha

You know, there's probably a formal cooking term for that specific procedure. Alas, I am not a formal cook. (You probably guessed that already.)

Now there are lots of things to do with the scraped-out hull. I usually keep one in my sugar (evaporated cane juice) jar, though not in my turbinado tub. The lovely and talented Eggbeater is a formal cook, however, when she wants to be, and she has a very good and helpful post all about what to do with the vanilla bean:

Vanilla Beans: Pastry Tip #481

I say "guts"; she says "interior." Whatever.

There's no way to do this that isn't ultimately nice as far as I know. But I am a crazed vanilla fiend.

[lindsey]

hi i was out in my garden seeing how my seedling were coming along and looking at this "weed" that i had scooped up off the side of the road and planted last year. it has become so vibrant and healthy and has wonderful purple flowers > so i searched weed with purple flower and came up with your blog thanks so much !!! i love creeping charlie