Author Archives: Scribbler

Muffin Button-less Blueberry Muffins (and Wok Seasoning: Part 2 [sort of])

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I got home from work last night, ate dinner, tried to help clean up the dishes (got in trouble for doing things wrong), and realized that I was still hungry.

Not hungry hungry, like I didn’t eat enough for dinner.  Hungry as in I wanted a muffin, and I wanted that muffin now…or then…immediately….whichever one it was.

I dug through my pantry: no muffin mix.  My mom even helped me search: we unearthed mixes for brownies and nut bread.  But they wouldn’t do.  I wanted a muffin and I was going to have a muffin gosh darn it.  Preferably one with fruit in it.

After getting in trouble with the dishes, (apparently I don’t stack them properly in the dish drainer after rinsing…and yes, apparently there IS a right way) I really didn’t want to make something completely from scratch that was going to require a whole lot of clean up.  I would have done it had there been no other option, but the bigger mess was not my first choice.

So I stared at the pantry.  Gave it the old once over, and then a twice over, and after the fifteenth over (or so) a spark of insight hit me: someone out there in the universe somewhere has probably come up with a way to make Bisquick into muffins. Continue reading →

Wok Seasoning: Part 1

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I got Michael a wok for Christmas.  It’s a nice 14” carbon steel wok with one really long handle and a shorter one.

The wok in question. Note how new and shiny it looks.

The wok in question. Note how new and shiny it looks.

Between being busy because of the holidays and catching what we’re pretty certain was the flu last week we hadn’t had a chance until last night to try it out.  We picked a recipe out of Grace Young’s Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge (a really beautiful book if you’re interested at all in cooking in a wok), drove to Super H Mart (and then Walmart because pre-cooked ham was a bit too obscurely American for H Mart–no grand surprise there), and headed back to the apartment.

We thought our biggest challenge was going to be peeling and de-veining the shrimp we bought (although, considering I often find H Mart’s fish section to be a bit like a tiny aquarium, I feel really fortunate that the shrimp were already dead when the guy scooped them into the bag for us).  Michael was skeptical despite my optimism; I believe his words were, “We’re agreeing now that if this doesn’t work we’re ordering pizza.”

Oh, fateful, fateful words. Continue reading →

Picnics in December

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An odd idea given that even good old Georgia has decided to hop on the winter bandwagon.  The weather people of the world even predicted “flurries” the other day which is generally laughable.  I couldn’t tell you if said “flurries” occurred or not, because I’m generally asleep at 3 AM and not staring out the window praying for snow.

How then, did I arrive at picnics?  Well, I was writing and sometimes writing requires research so there it is.  I wanted to know what occurred at a Victorian era picnic, and I ended up discovering the same information repeated over and over thanks to Mrs. Isabella Beeton’s lovely work, The Book of Household Management.

By simply googling the subject I learned that:

  • The location couldn’t be anywhere near a precipice for fear the ladies be frightened by the scene.
  • The ground was checked to make certain no one was seated on an anthill.
  • If a woman sat on the ground a man couldn’t follow suit unless she invited him to do so.
  • Apparently people drank lavender lemonade.

While I’ll admit that adding lavender to lemonade does, in fact, sound like a mildly interesting way to drink it, none of this information particularly struck me as oh-so-fascinating.

I then decided to find something exciting about it. Continue reading →

Scribbler meets Santa!

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You can buy him at Lowes...this is the picture I had in my head...just in the form of an inflatable.

You can buy him at Lowes…this is the picture I had in my head…just in the form of an inflatable.

I totally just met Santa Claus.

Not the real one…clearly, but a very nice impersonator, and I’ve got to say that it absolutely positively made my night.  This guy had the beard, he had the build, and he drove up on a motorcycle wearing a leather jacket.  Seriously, it was a pretty badass looking motorcycle (or at least it was to the untrained eye on a dark night).  It was not a Santa kind of motorcycle, although I’m relatively certain that a “Santa kind of motorcycle” is a sleigh…

You know how every year your favorite shows put out a Christmas special?  Well, Castle this week featured, you guessed it, a Santa impersonator(or whatever it is that you call those). In the episode (which I ended up watching four separate times–not on purpose, I swear) that the Santa falls from the sky dead, and at first they think they have an ID on the body but as it turns out they don’t because his drivers license is written out to no other than…dun dun duuuuhhhhnnnn…Santa Clause! Continue reading →