Saturday Morning

... is merely a couple hours already gone, but how I liked it. Freshly baked bran muffins, a smearing of butter, a dollop of mirabelle jam. A huge mug of tea and me on the sofa. All very simple, but needed. A couple of hours all to myself.

There's a whole lotta going on. Mostly in my head, but man, is it busy up there. I'm "working" (in quotation marks 'cause it's more a matter of looking over people's shoulders, really) the hospital again this semester, and it's not only taking up a lot of time - the time I usually spend blogging, cooking or thinking about blogging or cooking - it's also hi-jacked a huge part of my brain capacity. Because I have to keep re-thinking all the things I learned. And because all of a sudden, it seems there's only an extremely limited time left before... Before I'm done. Seriously. And that, my friends, I have no idea how to deal with. For some reason, I never saw it coming.

So forgive, once again, the quietness around here. I'm all well, just busy elsewhere. Sometimes in scrubs, and very seldom, lounging on the sofa with a mind-buzzing and spinning head. And bran muffins.

Bran Muffins from Home Baking by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

I am no expert on bran muffins, in fact, I only ever tasted the ones Cathy made for me and Martin when we visited her, a year back. Cathy's muffins got me hooked, and now I finally found the bran at home, I can make some myself! Her recipe includes shredded wheat biscuits, which I can't find around here - so I went for this recipe instead. Yummy, indeed!

makes 10 medium sized muffins.

1 cup sour cream
1½ cups wheat bran
1 large egg
½ cup whole milk
1 tablespoon molasses
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt

Blend sour cream and wheat bran. Add the egg and the milk. Leave to soften and blend for 30 minutes to one hour.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 Celcius). Grease a 12-cup regular muffin tin. Stir molasses and brown sugar into the bran-mixture. In a different bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add this to the bran-mixture and fold in until combined. Divide the scoopable, but not pourable, batter into 10 muffin tins. Bake for about 25 minutes.

As soon as they're baked, turn out onto a wire rack to cool and firm up. Eat as desired - mirabelle jam is a treat!