Experimental Baking #5, and Quinoa Curry with Carrots

 I like cooking things nobody else in the house will eat.  That's sarcastic, but I do like to cook some odder things.  And I like to experiment freehand baking, while I'm already up and at things, and see how my chemistry brain works out.

Strawberry Muffins 

1 cup flour

1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg

.5 teaspoon cream of tartar

.5 teaspoon baking soda

.5 teaspoon salt (would add a shake more next time)

1/2 cup of white granulated sugar soaked overnight in a handful of fresh strawberries from the garden, cleaned and chopped.  (I'd add several more tablespoons of sugar next time if I were baking this recipe with it.. but it is our standard preservation method for strawberries from the garden that are not eaten immediately)  This batch was not 'sweet'..more like an oatmeal muffin, so it would take more sugar to sweeten it up to most people's taste, or maybe some honey - that is worth further pursuit.

about 3/4 cup of milk

1 fresh chicken egg

1/2 stick butter

Stir together the flour and other dry ingredients well so there is no clumping.

Melt the butter in a microwave safe bowl.  Cove the bottom of each large muffin cup with a tablespoon plus some of melted butter.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix the milk with the remaining butter, add egg and beat slightly.  Add the strawberry mixture to this.

Place muffin pan with butter into the oven.

Mix the wet goods into the dry goods   Use an oven mitt to pull the hot pan out before the butter has browned much - spoon about two large tablespoons of the mixture into each muffin cup.  

Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes give or take or until the outsides have really browned (use a butter knife to check) and a butter knife through the center of the largest one  comes out clean.  Remove from oven.  Let sit for a minute, then take each one out of the pan and place them on a clean cloth or paper towels. 

Quinoa and carrot curry with mushrooms

Somebody I know had posted that they had gotten couscous in their grocery order and didn't know what to do with it.  I know it isn't the same thing, but I thought 'I have quinoa in the cupboard and no one else eats it'.  Today seemed like the perfect day to do somethi8ng with it.  I also had carrots, and lots more in the garden that were not picked yet, and parsley that I had dried the other week, and the can of mushrooms was sitting next to the bag of quinoa.  So, I made a lunch I know everyone else would cringe at - but it was good.  The bluetick coonhound approved, too.

1.5 cups of water

peeled and chopped fine large carrot

small can of pieces and stems mushrooms with broth

a dash of chicken bouillon powder

I rinsed a 1/2 cup of quinoa in the pan twice and drained all the water  then added about 1.5 cups back and the mushrooms and the carrot.  I brought that all to a boil and then put a lid on it and reduced it to LOW.  (At this point I t hought, hey I'm up and doing things, and started mixing the strawberry muffins above).  After the quinoa had expanded most of the way and the cut carrot pieces were soft (about 10-15 minutes stirring every so often, keeping as much steam in as possible), I took 1/3 of a Golden Curry cube (which is 1/4 of a sealed package inside the bigger box) and stirred that in with a small handful of my dried parsley from the garden this year that I have been keeping in the freezer.  Then, after that had broken down, I turned the heat entirely off, added about 1/4 cup of dried mashed potato flakes, stirred it up and left it sit with the lid on while I finished with the muffins and popped them in.  By the time the quinoa had cooled down and finished it's expansion with the potato flakes, the strawberry muffins were getting closer to finished.

I put half of each food up in the fridge, so each recipe was 'small' ingredients but still a lot for one sitting.