Blueberry Muffins

We've been on a bit of a muffin jag here. Muffins, muffins, muffins. Nice word.
I got the basic recipe from this website (see photo for my efforts), but to be honest, we found it a bit bland. We use it as the basic recipe though and the proportions work well for 6 muffins. Having experimented with chocolate and ginger, blackberry and orange and others, we have now found the perfect muffin combination. We like blueberry, poppy seed and lemon zest muffins. Bearing in mind that, as stated, the basic recipe comes from the website above, here comes the Big Teddy Twist Muffins (makes a generous 6):

Dry ingredients:
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1 1/2 cups plain flour* (we use unbleached which works really well for muffins; nice, earthy taste)
3/4 cup sugar (we use vanilla sugar which is just sugar kept in a box with a vanilla pod)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons poppy seeds

* as an option, you can substitute one tablespoon of flour with a tablespoon of ground almonds...adds to the earthiness

BT Note: If you are adding a dry spice such as cinammon, add it with the dry ingredients.

BT Note: A cup is, by and large, 4oz (112 grams) but really, if you just pick a small mug or average teacup and stick with it, it should be fine; it's all about proportions.

Wet ingredients:
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1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg (our organic eggs are pathetically small yoked but it doesnt seem to matter)
1/3 cup of milk
1 cup of What-You-Fancy (for our recipe, 1 cup blueberries plus the lemon zest and plus about 1 tablespoon lemon juice...the recipe is quite forgiving; you can go a little bit over the cup without problems)

Method:
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Preheat oven to 400 Farenheit/200 Celsius/Gas Mark 6
Grease a muffin tray

BT Note: These muffins rise well and the amounts used means there will be some spread at the top. Therefore, grease the pan along the top, between the holes, as well.

Sieve flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Stir in poppy seeds and ground almonds if applicable. (If using a spice, sieve it with the flour, to get even distribution). Make a well or hollow in the centre of the dry stuff.

In a separate bowl, whisk milk, egg and oil together enough to make sure the egg is no longer visible. Add the cup of what-you-fancy and mix in.

All at once, pour the wet ingredients into the well in the dry ingredients. Stir together until just combined. The mixture should be lumpy so all you need to be sure of is that the flour has mixed into the wet completely. If your mixture is too dry (flour still visible) add a small splash of milk.

Spoon the mixture into the muffin tray, being sure to share out any larger items, like blueberries, evenly.
Place in the oven for 20-25 minutes et voila! Big Teddy Twist Muffins are yours to enjoy. Almost. Leave the muffins in the tray for about 10 minutes as it makes it easier to remove them. Use a knife to loosen around the edges and they should just lift out. Allow to cool. Or not..

St Patrick's Weekend

We hung a tricolour (Irish Flag) from our balconey for the weekend. Friday was St.Patrick's Day and Alan went to work as normal...We took it easy enough that night knowing what was in store. Saturday was the England v. Ireland rugby game in Twickenham. We went to McKibbens, an Irish pub, where they have the satellite channel Setanta, which was showing the match. See below for ice sculptire outside the pub. It was a great match and Ireland narrowly won, in the last two minutes. Heady stuff. The rest of the day was a write-off with drinking and revelery continuing into the night.

On Sunday we went to the St. Patrick's Parade in downtown. It snowed, inevitably and despite the cold, the crowd was large and the atmosphere good.




























The last photo is the float from the Winston Churchill pub...unbelievable!!

Last Weekend on Mount Royale

These snow shots are likely to be the last of the winter since we had a massive thaw the past few days. Today, the sun was actually hot and I went out without a jacket. I cleared up our small front garden; the amount of dog poo in it was really something. Rather optimistically, I sowed some flower seeds. Let's hope this sunny spell won't be a false dawn.
Anyway, last weekend on Mount Royale, we came upon a Woodland Jumping mouse. I heard a rustle and this little guy popped out from under some leaves. He ate some exposed moss beside a little stream and then lept about four feet into this hole in the snow. The photos aren't great but hopefully you can see how round and mousey he looks in the first photo while looking quite rat-like when stretched in jump.
The book said that these mice hibernate until April so the warmish winter had obviously woken him up early.












Finally, here's a photo of some squirrel paw prints in the snow. you can see how they move directly from tree to tree. See too how they move in little jumps keeping each pair of paws together. The distance between back and front paw marks show how they too really stretch when moving.

Chute Montmorency

When we went to Quebec city the other weekend, we took some time to go the short distance outside the city to Chute Montmorency, a 272 ft (83 m) high waterfall. We had seen it in the summer but it is almost more impressive in winter as it's mostly frozen. It is actually higher than Niagra, but as you can see, nowhere near as wide.












This is a photo of me, Big Teddy, ace photographer, in the car park at Chute Montmorency. Like the hat? Well, too bad, as Alan, clothes thief extraordinaire, borrowed it last week and left it in a taxi. Below that is a picture of Alan walking on water. Yes, it's not just for deities...

Alan's favourite pastry

Here's a picture of Alan's favourite pastry. I realise it looks a bit like a photo from a 1960s cookery book and therefore not very appetising but what can you do? The pastry is filled with custard and has a handful of fresh blueberries on top. Mmmm. It comes from what is absolutely the best bakery in Montreal- Premiere Moisson. "Premere Moisson", according to my giant French/English dictionary, means 'First Harvest'. Glad that I finally looked that up, it's been annoying me for some time and 'moisson' isn't in my pocket dictionary. Premiere Moisson have a couple of locations in the city. The one closest to us is on Av. Mont-Royal, just down from the metro station. We buy bread, jam, cakes, quiche, sausages and ham from them. They ain't cheap but their produce is superb. For example, you could eat 3 or 4 of their small, very rich chocolate cakes and not feel ill. A strange commendation perhaps but what I mean is that because they don't use the usual mix of additives, emulsifiers and so on, their products ALL taste homemade. Ahh, good health in a box...perfect.

Who said Pigeons are stupid?

Out walking down Av. Parc the other day and, passing by the cinema, saw these pigeons huddled on the grid over the metro. There was serious warmth coming up from the station and you can see the pigeons were very cosy, all fluffed up. There were strong winds that day, blowing snow over the street but the birds felt their exposed spot was more than compensated by the open-air radiator they had found. Two drawbacks came to mind: 1- the amount of pigeon poo in Parc Metro must be really something and 2- when the pigeons move off the grid, for food, they won't feel the benefit of their feather coats as they go into the cold. Oh well, nothing's perfect...