Blackberries!

The blackberries are ripe.

We picked a ton of them today.

We are freezing most of them so there will be a plenty of blackberry pies, jam and scones all winter. I clean them and then lay them out on a cookie sheet to dry. If you freeze them on the cookie sheet before transferring them to containers they won't stick together.

Do you have any favorite berry recipes?

Yum!

Simple Things

Some days it's the simple things that make me smile.

Like daffodils on my sink

The bubbles created when refilling my dish soap

And making chocolate chip banana muffins with my little one

Serious Yum

Happy Tuesday!

Bran Muffins!

Every once in a while I feel as if I'm in a cooking rut, so I look around for some new recipes to liven things up. Usually I find them on allrecipies.com.
Bran muffins are not at the top of my woo hoo list, I'm more of a chocolate cream cheese muffin kinda girl, but this recipe had a really high rating on the web site so I figured I'd give em a try. And I could use a little more healthy (or healthier) in my life.

They turned out to be pretty dang yummy. I did do a couple of substitutions: instead of oil I used some all natural applesauce, and instead of raisins I used trail mix chopped up a bit (the trail mix had chocolate chips in it and i took 90% of them out)
I don't like fake sugar, and I don't think it's healthy, at least not any healthier than the real stuff so if a recipe calls for sugar, that's what it gets.
They were a hit with the family even the 5 year old came back for seconds!

I also made some Italian sausage soup and biscuits. Yum! I know,sausage and biscuits are not exactly healthy, but I've got bran muffins to make up for that.

Apparently Cupcakes = Sunshine

So I made that other post earlier today about how it's all grey, and where has the summer gone and waa waa waa.
To fend off the grey day and entertain ourselves my 5 year old and I made cupcakes and guess what?
SUNSHINE!!!