Food from the week..

  • Breakfast at Lavazza: potato quiche, salad with vinaigrette, cafe latte
  • Pizzeria Due: we missed eating here by about 20 min.  Had a plane to catch.
  • Friday lunch at Oasis Cafe: Beijing style.  Sesame-sauce noodles with chicken & cucumber, yam noodles in broth with napa cabbage and lamb.  Pom-blueberry Naked Juice.
  • Garden Fresh Cafe: fake "duck" made out of soy.  Amazing, from the fake bones to the fake meat to the crispy-fake skin.  Followed by fake sweet and sour chicken.  Brown rice.
  • Omelette in the making: organic eggs, milk, portobello mushrooms, chicken breast, red onion, cottage cheese, pepper.
  • Home-fried rice: Brown rice (from Garden Fresh), frozen mixed veggies, chicken, adobo seasoning.

Walking around Chicago.

Nothing too crazy today.  It was not as hot as predicted, but it did drizzle most of the day, and the evening saw thunderstorms with some pretty fantastic lightning shows.  Did some work in the morning, then brunch with an old high school friend and her baby at West Egg Cafe (got blueberry wheatgerm pancakes), then poked into Forever 21 and could not for the life of me decide on a color for this one dress, and so bought both.  Did more work in the afternoon, then had dinner in Wicker Park at a place called Jerry's, known for its oddball sandwiches.  I got the Tim R, smoked turkey, prosciutto, grilled onions, smoked gouda and asparagus on pretzel bread, with a side of mac n cheese and Thai cuke salad.  Yummy.

Hey kid, do you like muffins?

A couple weeks ago, a local farmer dropped off a tall stack of boxes at our office, each containing a dozen beautiful, organic stone fruits: white nectarines, white peaches, and yellow nectarines.  I guess it was a rather expensive marketing strategy.  I ate all the white nectarines because they were so luscious and sweet.  But the others I had trouble finishing.  So I started trolling AllRecipes.com for something that would put these fruits to good use.

Someone had suggested a peach/nectarine crisp.  While I love crisps of all kinds (especially peach), I thought this was too obvious, and it's hard to get myself to eat too much crisp.  I wanted something more useful and unexpected.  And I knew I had my answer when I came across this recipe for peach muffins.

I read through a good number of reviews before deciding which tweaks I would make to the recipe.  I decided to add 1/2 c. milk (adding milk is always a good idea!), replace some of the cinnamon with nutmeg, and put in 3 c. of fruit instead of 2.  I also halved the sugar because I don't like really sugary sweets, and the extra fruit would add enough sugar.  I baked at 400F for about 21 min.  They came out perfectly delicious.  The only thing I regret is forgetting to add chopped pecans, which would have made my muffins transcendant.

Also, you might enjoy www.muffinfilms.com.  It was just one of the many ways I procrastinated in college.  I recommend the films 'Psst...,' 'The Muffin Tree,' 'Muffinless,' and the genius 'Bluebirds in Spring.'