Brave traffic - it takes for..e....v......e......r to go a mere 1.5 miles.
We arrive home. I go up to our apartment, and Sam checks the mail. If Sam doesn't have a pressing school matter he usually turns on some music. Right now we are thoroughly enjoying Foster the People and the new Justice album. Especially Foster the People. To me they sound like a version of Owl City, except there is a whole band and the songs sound different form each other. Very catchy too.
Sam and I mill around, perusing online sites and blogs until I decide I have to start dinner or dishes. Preferably dinner. I hate dishes. We eat, and usually lounge on our ridiculously comfy couches to talk and/or watch TV or some netflix streaming.
If I'm still in the mood to exert some extra energy in the kitchen, I'll make our current food fix-blueberry muffins with streusel topping. By food fix I mean that thing that your mind dwells while in a state of hunger, as well as after you've eaten and are full. We have a pretty relaxing life right now. It feels nice.
Recent Developments
We've made some fantastic friends in our ward - the WINDERS! They are so awesome. Sam gets along great with him, and I love her. We all coerced Sam into playing (and enjoying) a card game! (believe it or not, he had fun :) We hung out with them in DC for a day and had a great time. Whitney has dark hair and looks shy until you start talking to her. She is absolutely hilarious! She went to hair school in Utah, and is currently working at a medical office here. She's got killer style and I'm hoping this will rub off on me. Her husband Aaron is a neuro-engineering grad student. He's in a math class with Sam. He can relate enough to the engineering that they have plenty to talk about, but does enough different things that he and Sam can share different aspects of what they like and what they do. Sam really misses Jeremy still, and all the car-talk, but is happy to finally have a man-friend.
Life is good. It has it's ups and downs, but for right now it's ok.
PSU craziness
I wanted things to calm down a little bit to comment on the PSU recent events. In a matter of days, this entire community has been devastated. I mean that in every sense of the word. Here PSU is a way of life, a family, it is a name, a university that people feel they represent, respect and rear their children to attend. On work Monday when all this started to unfold a co-worker broke down and cried right in the office. She said she felt personally violated. Every since she could remember she's been Penn State. She went to a game earlier in the year that got snowed on, and said "So what - I'll just wear a trash bag I'm not there for the location, I'm there for the view!" Although Liberal Arts is not associated with the football or athletic program at all, the dean herself spent hours writing personal notes to donors pleading with them not to pull funding. She asked them to remember who was benefiting from their funding-the students, and what good is coming out of the research and education they were contributing to.
As far as the "riot" there were hundreds of peaceful protests in the form of a candlelight vigil, but less than 30 people decided to do something stupid (most likely while intoxicated) and all pictures of the crowd were people that were watching. The news people in the area were have said to egged them on.
This last week there were news crews everywhere, and people quick to judge thousands of people over the actions of literally a handful of people. A call came into our office from another university. This was just a business call about some financial information. The first words from the other line were "I hear you have a lot of sex addicts out there". It's all anyone can every talk about. It's very upsetting, and very sad. It's sad what happened, it's sad who was involved, and it's sad how high up this went. It's also sad that the employees who could have stopped it were too afraid for their jobs to speak up for those who couldn't speak for themselves. It's sad. This event has a lot of time until it fully unfolds, but we all know it's pretty bad.
So as to not end on a sad and depressing note, I'll share with the world this amazing blueberry muffin recipe. I've tried quite a few blueberry recipes out there because they're Sam's favorite. A lot of the trials included fresh lemon juice and zest, fresh blueberries, butter, and careful mixing. I've tried Martha Stewart's, Pendulum Court recipes, and even Alton Brown's. I decided to try this new recipe as a treat for Sam to come home to after his San Diego trip. That way if they were really bad, he wouldn't mind because he wouldn't have eaten all night and would be touched that I tried. I thought I over-mixed the first batch and so started on a second. But they both turned out, and we went through all of them in 2 days. A dozen muffins! These are the most moist, best streusel, most delicious muffins, and by far the easiest, and cheapest.
This recipe was given by a co-worker, a friendly blonde budget-wiz woman named Brandy. If I had to eat one item every day for the rest of my life it would be these. I changed the recipe a little, and these work best with muffin liners, but oh boy I have sensual dreams about these muffins.
Makes 6 large, 8-9 smaller muffins
Timeline: Turn oven on, make streusel, put muffin liners in pan, mix dry, mix wet, mix dry and wet, top with streusel, cook & drool, EAT!
Make the streusel topping:
1/4 cup white sugar
1/6 cup AP Flour (guestimate - I halved the original recipe and it's not crucial)
1 Tablespoon butter
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Mash up the butter into the sugar and flour with a fork. Make sure there are no visible bits of butter left. This will take several minutes.
Mix dry ingredients:
1.5 cups AP flour
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
Mix wet ingredients:
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
After you run a whisk through the dry ingredients, and whisk the wet ingredients, combine the two. Stop a few strokes before it looks done. This means there will be floury parts, and wet-ish parts.
Pour 1 cup frozen blueberries in (I got these wild blueberries in a big bag at Wal-Mart) and only mix 2-3 strokes. Any more and you will have purple tough muffins!
Divide the batter evenly into 6-8 muffin tins and pour the streusel on. Don't be shy, it's great stuff and Sam licks his off the plate...
Put in oven at 350 for 25-35. Check earlier than this because I'm pretty sure my oven goes hot. To tell when muffins are done tap the top gently. If you feel it's wet and/or collapses a little at your touch they're not done. Once you feel that they hold their shape after you touch them you're good! These go well with hot chocolate, but who am I kidding - what doesn't!
Caution: don't tell your significant other the moment they're out of the oven. Sam has been too eager and burned his tongue. Then tried to take another bite and burned his tongue again. Then he gets angry because he not only has a burnt tongue but he can't even eat his muffin to make himself feel better.
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| Be careful, these quickly turn into... |
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| These! As a student of nutrition it is my obligation to tell you these are not calorie free. |
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| Sam did this shot for the camera. But he does it every single time. No joke. |
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| BTW it snowed. This was the view from our bedroom window |
