Muffins and a day with my mama

So Sunday, I decided, was muffin day.  We don't go to work until 1 o'clock on Sundays, so I almost always have time to fix a little something for breakfast.  Usually it's pancakes, but this Sunday I decided on muffins.  I just took my old stand-by blueberry muffin recipe, omitted the blueberries (Blake always says I ruin lots of perfectly good baked items by putting fruit in them) and tweaked 'em to be vegan.  They were deee-licious and kind of reminiscent of little individual coffee cakes.  The recipe goes as follows:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp. ground flax seed mixed with 3 tbsp. water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup soy or almond milk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
 Cinnamon sugar for topping

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together the flax with the water in a small bowl and let it sit while you gather the rest of your ingredients.

 Combine your dry ingredients (including the 1 tsp. cinnamon) in a large mixing bowl, then mix in your flax mixture, oil, milk and vanilla.

Mix together with a wooden spoon, being careful not to overwork the batter.  The batter will be thick. Fill muffin tins (sprayed with cooking spray or lined with paper liners) about 3/4 of the way full.  Sprinkle the top of each muffin with about 1/4 tsp. or so of cinnamon sugar. Bake for about 20 minutes.  Cool in pan for a few minutes before removing from pan to cool on a rack.  This should get you exactly 12 muffins with about 150 calories and 5 g of fat each.

I split mine in half and topped with some fresh berries.

We were off on Monday so I spent most of the day at my mom's house.  The majority of the morning we spent on the back porch, drinking coffee and admiring the backyard which is in all of it's late spring/early summer glory...

 We were also kept company by my mom's cat, Stinky, seen peering over the table at me here...

 I decided to make us a vegan lunch as I had a recipe I wanted to try that I knew my mom would probably appreciate (even though she's not vegan).  Piedmontese peppers were the dish, and they go like so:

Slice 2 yellow, orange or red bell peppers (or combination thereof) in half from top to bottom.  Pull out the seeds and ribs being careful not to destroy the peppers.  Lay them on a baking sheet and salt and pepper the cavities.  Dice up (not too finely) 4 cloves of garlic and sprinkle evenly into the peppers.  Slice about a cup or so of cherry or grape tomatoes in half and fill each pepper with the tomatoes (cut sides of the tomatoes up).  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and drizzle each pepper with about a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil.  They should look something like this:

 Put them into a preheated 425 degree oven and roast for about 30 minutes.  Then lower the oven to 350 degrees and continue to roast for 45 minutes to 1 hour.  Once they're done they should look like this:

 I also sauteed some sliced garlic in olive oil, added about 4 cups fresh spinach, cooked it down and tossed with bowtie pasta for an easy side.

 We ate the whole lot with some of my mom's homemade bread to sop up all of the yummy, oily pepper juices.  Yuuu-uuuum!

 Coming up tomorrow, my adventure in jam-making, and a fantastic vegan lasagna!