Weekend Cooking: Savory Muffins

One of the things I'm doing while on medical leave is cooking. I really, really like to cook and bake, but only if I have plenty of time. I hate the day-to-day quick, stressed out cooking and the constant question about what we'll have for dinner the following day and if anything needs to be prepared ahead of time. This wasn't such a problem before Shane came along, but now I find it extremely important that we have a nice meal together every evening.

Where do I get my recipes? From magazines, from blogs, from websites, from cookbooks. The blogs are the hardest to track, but ever since I found Pinterest, things have become easier.

I pinned this recipe for Savory Muffins with Sweet Potato and Feta a while ago from one of my favorite food bloggers, Alanna. She blogs at A Veggie Venture and is truly inspired when it comes to putting together healthy meals that focus on vegetables. (The photo is Alanna's, from the original post with the recipe. I was too busy eating them to think of taking a photo!)

The muffins were fabulous. I pretty much followed the recipe, except I used less green onion and subbed grated cheese for the parmesan as I didn't have any. We had the muffins with this simple carrot, sweet potato and coriander soup:

Melt 50g butter in a pot, add 500g sliced carrots, 300g diced sweet potato, 1 diced onion, toss in the butter until coated. Cover and cook gently for about 10 minutes, adding a little water if necessary. Add 1.2 liters of vegetable stock, a couple of potatoes, loads of fresh coriander and simmer for about 20 minutes or until all the vegetables are soft. Whizz and serve.

We (I mean Shane) finished all the soup in no time, but we had leftover muffins that Joe took in to work - they were a hit with his colleagues too!

Since the muffin recipe came from Pinterest, this is my first 'task' for the Pinterest challenge that Trish is running in May.

It's Monday today, but I'm also entering this post into the Weekend Cooking weekly event hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

Happy Bealtaine!

(photo credit)

Today is the first day of May, when we celebrate Spring and the uplifting energy it brings with it. The day was called Bealtaine by the ancient Celts and marked the second most important festival of the year. It was all about fertility and hope, optimism for good harvest. Bealtaine is still the Irish Gaelic word for the month of May.

I like to see it as a new beginning, which seems to be very fitting for me this year, as I struggle to figure out what my next step in life should be and when I should take it. Loads of people around the world celebrate May 1 in one way or another and many of the associated traditions (like the maypole) come from long, long ago. All that energy that accumulated through time and also the energy used today must create a perfect environment for making dreams come true.

To all of you out there who can use some positive energy to introduce change into your lives, today's the day!

Pure indulgence

I just spent a few hours reading, enjoying, relishing The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. Amazing. It's a story told in words and in pictures, where the pictures are sometimes just pictures and sometimes create a mini-movie inside the book. Did I already say it was amazing?

The book tells the story of 12-year-old Hugo, an orphan who is a whizz at fixing clocks and anything mechanical. He manages to fix an automaton and through it discovers a picture that changes his life forever. It's a story of the magic that can happen in real life.

There are also non-fiction elements to it, but I don't want to talk about details because they are not revealed until the second half of the book. Just know that there is some information on the beginning of cinema and that I now need to read something on the subject.

The drawings are absolutely beautiful and I love the way each of them brings the story forward and then text takes over. Everything works so well together.

I absolutely had to jot down this beautiful and wise passage, something Hugo says to his friend Isabelle:

"I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I believe that if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason too."

I love it.

Now, why did I call this post 'pure indulgence'? Because I'm having a really bad week, which is why I'm at home able to read books. I almost fainted at work on Tuesday plus had an anxiety attack and was taken to the emergency room. I seem to be ok for now, though I have to get some tests done, but it was scary and I'm at home resting for a while. The most likely reason for it is stress and fatigue, fingers crossed that's all it is!