Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins

I've been on the hunt for my own oatmeal blueberry muffin recipe ever since my daughter and I devoured some at a play date. I asked the mom for the recipe but her second baby was due to arrive at any minute, so she never got back to me.

I really like this recipe that I found. It comes from Company's Coming Cook for Kids which I borrowed from the library. I think they are just like the play date muffins we adored.

Before this recipe, my oatmeal muffins always came from a mix. And what's in those mixes anyway? Why do oatmeal muffins need soy products in them? It's so much better to make muffins from scratch.

The original recipe calls for dried blueberries but I have no idea where to buy dried blueberries. I substitute fresh or frozen.

Don't make the same mistake I did the first time I made this recipe and blend the berries with the batter in the electric mixer. The berries disappeared and the batter turned bluish purple. My daughter was skeptical at first but realized they tasted the same. It's better to fold them in by hand at the last minute.

The recipe also calls for buttermilk, another item I never buy. Instead, I do what my mother taught me--I add a cap full of white vinegar to regular milk to sour it.

Ingredients:

1 cup rolled oats (not instant)

1 cup buttermilk

1 cup flour

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

1/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 F.
2. Line 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners, or grease.
3. Combine all ingredients in electric mixer, except blueberries. Mix until combined.
4. Stir in blueberries by hand to avoid tinting the batter.
5. Scoop into muffin tin, until 3/4 full.
6. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until wooden stick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean.

* To make mini muffins pictured above, I filled each muffin cup with a liner and a tablespoon of batter. And baked them for 10 minutes. It made 44 mini muffins.


Inspiration: Company's Coming Cook for Kids, page 19.

Persimmon Salsa

This recipe makes some very compelling salsa. The taste is fresh, sweet, and spicy all at the same time. I first tried it at the grocery store and I was hooked. The grocery store chef was trying to promote persimmons, something I had never heard of before.

Persimmons are an orangey-yellow tree fruit that resemble a tomato. It tastes more like a nectarine but looks a tomato. I didn't buy persimmons that day but I took the recipe.

The only downside to this salsa is the cost. Persimmons at my grocery store sell for $1.69 each and this recipe calls for six. And maybe it's because I'm a novice but chopping the ingredients by hand took a long time. My husband and I kept joking "Still chopping...." But the salsa is worth it. I was worried we'd have to can some of it because it makes so much, but we devoured it within days.

This would make a great contribution to a potluck too.

Ingredients:

6 Fuyu* persimmons

3 tomatoes

2 limes

1 red chili pepper ( or jalapeño pepper)

1 bunch of green onions

1 small stalk of celery

1/2 cup of tomato sauce

1 tbsp of salt

Directions:

1. Dice all ingredients and add into a bowl.
2. serve with Tostitos scoops.

* Most grocery stores sell two kinds of persimmons: the Fuyu, the kind you can eat right away, and the Hachiya, the kind you can't. If you bite into an unripe Hachiya persimmon, it is if you just drank six cups of extra strength tea, says Tony Tantillo, The Fresh Grocer. Read more about it here.

Inspiration: Longo's Grocery Store.