Pretty bad, huh? I’ve posted about these muffins before and have used my new recipe card app to write out what I did the time before this. They came out pretty well in that version but still didn’t have the rise I wanted, so I tried yet another combination of leavening with the awful result you see here. They tasted fine, but boy! People had to be pretty hardy to risk eating one. I made four dozen of these things for the Easter breakfast at our church Sunday and only brought home about a dozen, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Still and all, though!
Although I am trying to stay away from most refined carbs, that avoidance doesn’t mean that I can’t eat bread. I just eat good bread! I’ve ranted and raved about the joys of grinding your own wheat in the intro to the cookbook, so I’m not going to repeat myself here.
Although I’ve temporarily discontinued my posting on the “Intentional Hospitality” blog I’m still cooking away. Last night I provided the desserts and punches for my church’s Christmas banquet. This turned out to be yet another one of those “I-thought-I-was-going-to-have-an-easy-time-of-it-but-I-was-wrong” episodes in my life. I had made my famous orange-almond biscotti before the Cherry Creek Chorale’s concert over a week ago with the intention of putting them together into tree shapes held together by frosting, but I just ran out of steam and time, so I ended up putting the baked biscotti into the freezer with the intention of building the trees for this party.
Not a huge event. I wasn’t putting on a wedding, or a political convention. History was not going to be changed in any way if we ran out of food. (It might have been if someone had gotten sick from the food, but that didn’t happen.) We probably ended up with around 100 people, and while the last 10 or so people didn’t get any salad everyone got a burrito. And there was plenty of dessert. All in all a very successful evening. People lingered and lingered, always a sign of a good party.
I tried out this recipe when we had a bad snowstorm and I had to make do with what I had on hand, including some boneless chicken thighs. I will say again: stop buying boneless chicken breasts and buy these instead. They are so much better and cost so much less. They are every bit as good as white meat and they don’t dry out. If you think your family won’t eat them, just serve them up and don’t say anything. I can (almost) guarantee that no one will know the difference except to say, ‘Hey Mom/Honey, these are really great!”
Last of three posts on the role of celebrations in our lives. I mentioned earlier, and perhaps many reading this post already know, that Jesus’ first recorded miracle occurs at a wedding celebration: “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples” (John 2:1-2 ESV). So, just to point out the obvious, Jesus and the disciples aren’t hermits; they aren’t cut off from society. They’re invited to this occasion. Jesus doesn’t rebuke anyone for spending all that money on a feast. He contributes to it, and in a high-quality way; the governor of the feast says, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now” (v. 10). I mentioned in 
So, here’s the second of three posts this week on why people need celebrations and how to get the most out of them. I’m writing this as I sit at our dining room table with some of my favorite in-laws, my brother- and sister-in-law and my father- and mother-in-law. (We are eating a late lunch to feed the poor starving visitors who weren’t fed on the plane. Be sure to read the hospitality blog tomorrow to get the recipe for the wonderful chicken salad I fed them.) The siblings-in-law just got into town from Seattle for a wonderful eight days which will include some special get-togethers including Christmas dinner, a big birthday dinner for Carol (since her birthday is Dec. 30th), and a pizza party for Monday Night Football. Is all this really necessary? There’s expense and effort involved. Why bother?
I guess you could call me a kind of volunteer unofficial events planner. (I wonder when the term “events planner” entered the world’s vocabulary.) I wrote a previous post over on the hospitality blog about the 
I would highly recommend these muffins, and you could leave off the topping if you want them to have less sugar. The amount in the muffins themselves isn’t too bad. You do have to measure a fair number of spices and grate apples. I kept trying to talk myself out of putting in the apples when I made this recipe for the first time, as I didn’t want to bother, but I decided I’d better go ahead and include them and I was glad I did. The combination of the pumpkin and the apple is really good, and the apples are probably counted as part of the liquid in the recipe. So it’s kind of a pain, but worth it. These probably aren’t muffins that you’d whip up for a regular weekday breakfast, but they’re very nice for a special occasion.