When the Refrigerator Gives You Lemons

You may remember that, a few weeks ago, I went on a shopping expedition and brought home wads of stuff (yes, on the el). Among the wads was a bag of lemons. I even used a couple of lemons, to make the first round of breakfast muffins, but I had most of a bag still sitting in the refrigerator. They glared at me each and every time I opened the door, silently asking me when the fuck I was going to USE them already, seeing as how I shlepped them home on the el and all. Rather than watch them disintegrate into complete uselessness, I took them out today, peeled them, cut the pith from the peels, blanched the peels, and froze all except the bit I was going to use for Muffins: Round 2. (I also squeezed and strained the juice into a jar; I might maybe should freeze that into ice cubes or something.)

As a break from the piles of editing, I made the muffins again. This time, I used only honey for sweetening, and the chopped fruit included apricots and dates, the latter of which had to be soaked for a little while because they were so desiccated. (This turns out not to be a problem, because you have to soak the dried fruit--figs, in the original recipe--and the toasted wheat bran in boiling water.) I also added, at Friend's request, some oats and some nuts. I cut back on the total sugar, in part because of the dates (the original calls for a half cup of honey and a cup of sugar; I used 375 grams of honey, or about a cup, and no sugar), and because honey is sweeter than sucrose. I added an extra teaspoon of baking soda, as well. I also turned the oven down a bit; the original called for 400 and I baked at 350 (recipes with honey suggest this, to avoid overbrowning).

All in all, I like this batch better than the last one. For myself, I wouldn't have bothered with the nuts--they add a lot of fat and calories in general--but the oats were a nice addition. After I finished baking, I found the other thing that I'd purchased to put in muffins--dried blueberries (about $4 per blueberry, IIRC). Oh well--next batch, perhaps. They're even pretty healthy: about 200 calories per muffin, with 6.5 grams of fat and 3.5 grams of fiber. Throw in a piece of fruit and you've got a pretty good little meal going on. I'm going to need to get some wheat bran and/or oat bran to keep on hand to make these things. Meanwhile, it's been a good way to get rid of odds and ends of dried fruit and old baking supplies.

I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped this weekend, but it wasn't too bad. I'm sending two things back tomorrow, both a couple of days early; I'll need to work some tomorrow to finish the current batch of something else, as well, but all in all it's coming along.

Plus! Reprieve! The federal government informed us Friday that we have an three extra weeks to submit the narrative portion of our proposals. (The first, smaller batch of stuff, mostly forms plus the budget number, is still due on the 7th.) Of course, my boss and the head of the other unit both say they want to submit them at the old deadline, but I'm going to--politely, diplomatically--push back on that. I understand the reasons for wanting that (long boring chain of events that is contingent on submitting the proposals), but I'm not going to give on this one. I don't want to use the whole three weeks, but I'm not going to work crazy hours, either.

This isn't the post I wanted to write--I have three or four posts floating in my head, but they all require actual thinking and such, and I seem to only want to dash off updates. Ah well; I doubt anything of note hangs on whether I write a blog post of some substance or merely blather about writing and cooking and editing and baking and so on.