Using What I Have Journal Entry #5: Why I Fill My Freezer with Muffins

In using what I have mode, I've noticed patterns emerging. And yes, this is another muffin post. But instead of the same muffin every day, it's about having different muffins every day.

Also, this isn't all from one week, but it could have been, because it's different every day.

When it's cold, I love baking. I tend to bake more than I can eat, and the freezer serves me well. The freezer also gets to adopt bananas that I haven't eaten before they were too ripe for me to enjoy otherwise, and it holds goodies like frozen berries, too.

Now that it's a lot rarer for it to be oven weather--and oven weather is decidedly on the way out--I've been having a lot of my default warm weather breakfasts: A muffin with a smoothie. But there is so much room for variation in a muffin and a smoothie! When the mornings are cooler, sometimes I change it up with some sort of warm soy milk based drink. It works. It's not exciting enough to show you most of the time, but it works!

We start out here with a mango citrus smoothie (mango, clementine, banana, vanilla, and soy milk) with a chocolate chip avocado muffin. I had the muffin with strawberry preserves (not pictured), because the jar was calling to me.

Then, we have a kiwi apple juice smoothie (which also involves banana and soy milk), which helpfully finished off some apple juice in the fridge, alongside a banana tahini muffin. I had the banana tahini muffin with chocolate tahini when I ate this because it somehow needed it.

Next up: A berry-banana maca smoothie in a glass way too large for it (consisting of banana, frozen mixed berries, maca powder, cashew butter, vanilla, and soy milk) and a peach basil muffin. I'd forgotten how amazing the peach basil muffins were, and they did not get any jam or other spreads, because they were so delicious on their own.

On a chillier morning, when I had some coconut milk left over in the fridge, I added the coconut milk to a soy-based spiced pitaya latte which was largely improvisational. It included cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, vanilla, and maple syrup in addition to pitaya powder. I topped it with a garnish of blue spirulina powder, but I did a terrible job with that and it got clumpy, so I ended up just stirring it in and having a slightly purple drink. It doesn't matter, because it tasted good. That accompanied some mango and a chocolate chip cranberry muffin. No complaints about this aside from my clumpy spirulina.

I had made a larger batch of the pitaya latte than I wanted to have in one day, so I had the rest the following day with no spirulina. I also had more mango, but this time also added kiwi, and my muffin was a gluten free double chocolate coconut one.

I love muffins, and I miss not being able to bake a fresh batch now, but that cool weather will return in a few months. In the meantime, I get all the benefits of my winter baking. Here's to past me putting away food like a squirrel! It has really made for some easy, delicious breakfasts.