Cooking It Up and Other Fun

I can't believe we are more than half way through the week. Antalya is making good progress with the toilet training, but I don't think she will be ready to head to school on Tuesday diaper-free. I know she will eventually get it, so I'm not too concerned. I'm pretty confident that by her 5th birthday next fall we will be done with diapers during the day.

We've done our best to stay busy this week with all our usual activities which include:

painting (I am happy we have moved past face painting with Victoria):

cookie breaks on our small balcony to celebrate no rain:

indoor picnic lunch when we decided, that even though there was no rain, it still was a little too cold to spend the entire morning on the balcony with one of us only partly clothed:

and of course, my therapy, making yummy treats!

Antalya is getting really good at helping me in the kitchen. In this photo she mashed the bananas all by herself, and her stirring is now more circular instead of up and down.

We made some yummy fruit muffins, that were completely devoured within 24 hours (although that's not uncommon around here).

We used my favorite banana bread recipe and tweaked it since I was in the mood for blueberry muffins. Here's the recipe:

Lion House Banana Bread

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup bananas mashed (about 3 bananas)

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp lemon juice

2 cups flour (I use 1 1/2 cup whole wheat, and 1/2 cup white)

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

Cream butter and sugar together, add eggs, mix well. Add bananas, milk, and lemon juice. Sift dry ingredients and add to wet mixture. Grease 1 loaf pan. Pour mix into pan and bake at 350 for 1 hour.

Here's what we did differently to turn it into fruity muffins:

only used 1 banana

added 2 small apples, diced

added 1 cup frozen blueberries, tossed lightly in flour to prevent the whole mixture from turning blue.

spooned mixture into muffin tins instead of loaf, and baked for around 20 minutes.

Hope you like them as much as we did!