one of those days and a recipe

It’s going to be one of those days.  You know the ones that I speak of, right?  I think it has been one of those weeks actually…The hubs is traveling today for work.  See he telecommutes, but once in a while he needs to make his way 3 hours down the highway for a visit with his office.  It makes for an extremely long day for me, and him I’m sure, although I don’t have the opportunity to go out to lunch with friends for an hour and chit chat about Jersey Shore…

Without fail, whenever Matt travels he gets up early, like 4:30am, so he can make it to the office at a decent time.  Without fail, whenever Matt wakes up at 4:30am my babes decide they should definitely be awake by 5am (and that is with me telling Emma to go back to bed 3 times).  So we drag ourselves out of bed and head down stairs.  Luckily I thought ahead and made pumpkin muffins for breakfast.  I roasted the 2 teeny tiny pie pumpkins we were able to glean from our garden on Tuesday and stuck it in the fridge. Recipe below.

Now I am alone with the kids for the whole day, until after they are supposed to be in bed (although I usually let them stay up until Matt gets home on these days, it seems only fair).  I have my stack of books to read, some crafting supplies at the ready, and a secret stash of never-before-seen-by-my-children movies.  I am hoping for 10am nap time 🙂  Did I mention it is pouring outside?  Guess the park is out!

I should mention that having Matt travel once a month isn’t a big deal at all, obviously, it just throws off our rhythm, and sometimes it takes a couple days for us to get it back.  Any tips when you have no car for a day, and two very active children that need to run free for large periods of time?

Pumpkin Muffins

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
~2 teaspoons of cinnamon
~1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
~1/4-1/3 cup of sugar
1 cup milk
1/4 cup oil
1 beaten egg
flesh of one small pie pumpkin, or half of a larger one, or one can of one pie pumpkin

Mix all dry ingredients with a fork, then mix milk, oil and egg in another bowl.
Make a well and add wet ingredients, stir until combined.
Fold in pumpkin.
Place in greased muffin tins.
Bake at 400 about 10 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Makes about 12 muffins.  These freeze great as well!

This is my go to muffin recipe.  Take out the pumpkin and add blueberries if it isn’t quite fall in your neck of the woods.  These are also good with just cinnamon and nutmeg, or with chopped apples.  I’m not so good at measurements…so if 2 teaspoons of cinnamon seems like too much for you add less, or you can do what I do, add cinnamon and nutmeg to the dry ingredients and wait until it starts to look more like wheat flour instead of white 🙂