Orange-Berry Muffins

I love my apartment. For one, it's cheap considering it's a large-ish one bedroom apartment in a good area. Plus, it's an older building that's built the way it should be. I've lived in a few newer complexes with absolutely no sound proofing and it was AWFUL. But most of all, I love, love, love my balcony that faces east. It gets a ton of morning sunlight. Now that I've bought a table and chairs for outside, I can read a book in the sun while eating my breakfast. It's a weekend luxury I really enjoy.

This morning I had one of these leftover little beauties from my co-worker's birthday breakfast yesterday. I made Orange-Berry Muffins from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. These turned out a smidge dryer than I would have liked. I didn't have to use quite 3/4 cup of buttermilk and while finding an online version of the recipe I realized I accidentally left out the honey. So maybe that's my issue. Any one with any baking experience know why they were dry-ish? Not really dry, just sort of.

I also had some scrambled eggs and a couple slices of center cut bacon because the pickings at my household are slim. I'm out of bread, out of fruit and out of cereal. Once I get a few loads of laundry out of the way I'm definitely hitting up the grocery store.

Have a great Saturday!

Grilled Vegetable Sandwiches

I guess I took a bit of a blogging hiatus. It wasn't exactly intentional, but I ended up working late just about every night this week and by the time I got home, I just didn't have the energy to blog.

My real job is a full-time writer, and I write and post content to the web all day long. Sometimes, especially when I have to work late, blogging seems like a chore rather than something fun. So that's why my posting is so sporadic. I love what I do, I just don't always feel like doing it 24/7.

I'm like that about everything, though. A few years ago I worked retail on the nights and weekends to pay off credit card debt and save up a down payment for my car, and during that time I did not fold laundry — ever. I lived out of laundry baskets or I dumped clothes in drawers all balled up. Sounds insane — and it was — but I worked at an extremely busy department store clearing their fitting rooms and spent 6 to 8 hours folding and hanging clothes and putting them back on the racks. I had nightmares about folding clothes. The absolute last thing I wanted to do on my precious evenings or afternoons off was fold clothes. So I didn't. If people came over I just hid the baskets.

I've also been a slug this week and haven't worked out since Monday. I pulled some muscles the the back of my legs cleaning my carpet of all things, and I could barely move. So I took it easy until I could at least walk without being in pain. To my defense I also ran a few miles that day, walked around a plant nursery for an hour and planted flowers on my balcony. I'm still pretty out of shape.

I've been busy cooking, though! Last night after dinner I made muffins for a co-worker's birthday breakfast and made focaccia for these grilled vegetable sandwiches. I cheated and made the bread in the bread machine. I don't own a stand mixer so using my mom's old bread maker to make the dough is my little trick. It's better than nothing, and you can't beat a free bread machine.

I liked these sandwiches a lot. I used focaccia because it seemed easier than ciabatta for some reason. I do have a ciabatta recipe I'd like to try next. Not every bread dough comes out great in the bread machine.. so some day I'll have work up the nerve to make bread by hand.

I found this sandwich recipe while trying to find a similar one I made like 5 years ago. But I can't find it in any of my cookbooks and I couldn't find it online. I was just beginning to learn to cook back then so it had to have come from my Cooking Light subscription or one of the two cookbooks I owned back then.

That's one great reason for this blog. I can look up just about every recipe I've ever made. It's an online recipe file — until one of the sites I cook from starts retiring pages or the bloggers I get recipes from delete their sites. I guess there's something to be said for pen and paper.

Chipotle Nachos

It feels like it should be much later than it actually is. They let us leave at 2:30 today, which was a pleasant surprise. Too bad much of the day was stressful.

I worked off the stress downstairs in the gym before I left and even had time to get the carpet cleaner from my parents. Since I have a long weekend and all, I thought I would catch up on some overdue chores on Monday while it's supposed to rain. I can also maybe get some planting done on my little balcony this weekend. I'm planning to plant basil, maybe chives, and some other herbs.. whatever I can find. I don't have a green thumb, so I'm hoping just to find mature plants to stick in some dirt. I might buy another planter and put a few flowers in them as well. Who knows.

Last night's dinner is nothing to write about (a fried egg sandwich — my favorite quick meal) and today's lunch was a riff on this salad minus the cheese but with grilled salmon instead of chicken. It was also over arugula instead of spinach and mixed greens.

The other night, though, I did make Chipotle Nachos. They're supposed to be vegetarian, but I'm not generally a fan of faux meat substitutes, so I used 93/7 ground beef instead. It was on special this week for $2.79 a pound, which is UNHEARD of.

I used my favorite baked chips — the blue corn baked ones from Trader Joe's. Overall this wasn't terrible, but it wasn't my favorite either. I loved all of the toppings except for the beef/bean mixture. It just didn't have enough oomph. I prefer my taco meat to have a kick.

So far, I think I like the taco filling I usually make better. I could always add beans to that and cut back on the beef the recipe calls for.

Tonight's dinner is in process and I'll post about that tomorrow. Apparently I'm craving bar food because I'm making homemade pizza tonight. :)