A Happy Accident

I subscribe to Light & Tasty magazine, and received my new issue the other day. As usual, there were a lot of tasty-sounding recipes, but a pancake recipe caught my eye. I had almost everything but needed to get wheat flour and wheat germ. Saturday I went to the store with list in hand, and purchased those items as part of my shopping trip.

I go to make the pancakes Sunday morning, and find that I bought wheat bran instead of wheat germ. So I made regular pancakes instead, and debated what to do with the wheat bran. There was a recipe for muffins on the package, and they sounded interesting, so what the heck. And I'll admit, I wanted to use the new oven!

I will humbly say, the muffins were awesome! As the name implies, they were very moist, and they baked up big and fluffy. Out of the dozen, there are two left, and one of them is going to be my desert. If you like bran muffins, check out this recipe. I did make one change-I didn't add the raisins, and I didn't quite have enough nuts, but that didn't detract from the taste at all. Thanks Bob's Red Mill for the marvelous muffins! And maybe next week I'll try those pancakes.

Moist Molasses Bran Muffins

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup Wheat Bran

1 1/2 cups Whole Wheat Flour

1/2 cup Raisins (Unsulfured)

1 tsp. Baking Powder

1 tsp. Baking Soda

1 cup Milk

1/2 cup Molasses (or Honey)

3/4 cup Applesauce

1/4 cup chopped Nuts

2 Tbsp. Oil

2 Eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 400�F. Combine wheat bran, flour, baking soda an baking powder. Stir in nuts and raisins. In a seperate bowl, blend applesauce, milk, molasses, oil and egg. Add to dry ingredients and stir just until moistened. Spoon into greased muffin tin (or paper muffin cups) and bake for 15-20 minutes. Makes 12 marvelous muffins.

Wired for Travel

I took a quick trip to Milwaukee this weekend. This was the longest I had driven by myself-previously my longest trip had been from Champaign to Valparaiso, IN for business. That was about a three hour drive as opposed to the 4 hour drive (with stops) to Milwaukee. This trip also marked the first time I have driven through Chicago. Usually I make Mike take that leg of the journey. Although admittedly I took the tollway instead of the loop, but still! It actually gave me a lot of confidence.

The other things that gave me confidence were all of my gadgets. Let's see, I had my iPod hooked into my car stereo, so I had plenty of tunes to listen to. Nothing says keeping yourself company like singing "Radar Love" at full volume! And in case I got a phone call (or needed to make one) while driving, I had my bluetooth firmly in my ear so I wouldn't have to distract myself by fumbling for the phone. Since I was taking the tollway, I also had the IPass so I wouldn't have to slow down to pay for tolls. That saved my change for the City of Champaign's downtown parking changes, but that's another story. And last but not least, I had Garmin Nuvi. Ah, Garmin, you are so good at telling me where to go! And your guidance was especially helpful coming back when I was in the wrong lane and missed my exit to 57. She guided me back to the interstate no problem!

Did I really need all of those gadgets? Well, outside of Garmin probably not. But they sure made life and the drive much easier!

Vacation Fun

Mike and I are on vacation this week. Originally, we were going to go to Toronto and see Rush (one of our favorite bands), but instead we decided to stay home and remodel the kitchen. It's something we talked about doing for a while, and we finally decided it was time to do it. The only thing that is staying the same are the cabinets. Everything else-floor, countertop, sink, faucet, appliances (whoo-hoo!) are new. It's not finished yet, but it will be soon. We forgot to take some before pictures for comparison, but I think we have a few pics from a couple of Thanksgivings ago that show the "old" kitchen, so those will have to do.

It's not all work though. Over the Fourth of July weekend we went to Chicago. No particular reason other than to get out of town and spend time in one of our favorite cities. We saw the fireworks at Navy Pier, drank a lot of beer at Rockbottom and Fado's, did a little shopping, and ate our way through (and got sunburned at) the Taste of Chicago. My favorites at the Taste were the Sweet Baby Ray's meatballs and the pad thai at Star of Siam. Star of Siam is located by this really cool bookstore called Afterwords, and I've been curious about it. I think we will definitely eat there next time we're in town! We also did some dreaming about what it would be like to live there. More expensive, and we wouldn't be able to live like tourists, but there are so many things to do and job opportunities! There are also enough parks and open areas that I would be ok not having a yard (I think!).

Tomorrow I'm heading up to Milwaukee for a quick trip, while Mike will stay here and hopefully get some much-deserved couch potato time. This week has gone by much to fast, and it hasn't helped me that I've had phone calls from work on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Maybe next vacation my phone will mysteriously stop working......