Home to an Empty House

Yesterday was full of travelling! We left Henley-on-Thames at 7 AM British time in order to get to the airport for our 11 AM flight. All went well with the flight and goodbyes were said to teammates in the Newark airport.

After a three hour layover, I caught a flight to Boston and then a connecting flight out to California. When we touched down at 11 PM California time, I had been travelling for 24 hours... and still had an hour to go.

Fortunately, there was a surprise waiting for me at the airport!!! Dan told me he was going to catch a flight down from Oregon on Wednesday, but he ended up booking a flight for yesterday and surprised me as I walked out of the plane. It was so nice to have him there after a really long, uncomfortable day of travelling.

It's always nice to have a man who still think you're beautiful even with bloodshot eyes and feet so swollen they look like stuffed sausages.

We arrived home to an essentially empty fridge as my parents have been off travelling Europe as well, so we had to make do with what we had. We were both too tired to do much more than munch on the two leftover apples last night, but breakfast this morning was a different story.

The only usable ingredients in the fridge were eggs, cheese and carrots (nearing their departure date). I considered omelets but the eggs were old enough that they were really better suited to baking, so I made carrot muffins.

I based the recipe off of my favorite muffin recipe, but with a lot of substitutions due to lack of ingredients. The fact that these turned out pretty well just speaks to the awesomeness of that recipe.

These are incredibly moist and very subtly sweet, with a tender crumb. The carrot flavor is very pronounced but not overwhelming. If you like raisins, a handful would definitely make these a lot sweeter. (I would recommend golden raisins.) Personally, I prefer savory breakfasts, so this was perfect.

After I'd already eaten two of them, I found almond butter in the fridge. A slather of almond butter would have rounded these out perfectly, making an incredibly nutritious breakfast.

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Not-Too-Sweet Carrot Muffins
makes 12 muffins


Ingredients
0.5c (1 stick) unsalted butter
0.66c packed dark brown sugar
0.5c water + 2T powdered milk (or use 0.5c milk)
0.25t salt
3 large eggs
1.5c white whole wheat flour
1.75t baking powder
0.25t baking soda
0.5t cloves
6-8 large carrots, grated or finely chopped in a food processor

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Melt the butter most of the way in the microwave. Stir in sugar, water, powdered milk and salt. Mix thoroughly.
3. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well.
4. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda and cloves (preferably premixed), stirring until the batter just comes to gether and there's no remaining dry flour.
5. Add the carrots and fold together.
6. Divide into muffin tin and bake for 30 minutes, rotating halfway through.
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Let me know what you think by leaving a comment or emailing me at piquantprose [at] gmail [dot] com.

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