Saturday Experiment: Nutella Swirl Muffins

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "What kind of Google fail caused my search for 'Winter Gazebo Maintenance' to land on this page?" (hint: remove the quotation marks.) 

Alternately, if you actually came here on purpose (which is unlikely), you're thinking, "This chick who makes lentil soup that tastes like dirty water experimented in the kitchen? What kind of disaster was that!"

Well ye of little faith (and ye of the winter gazebo maintenance), let me tell you it was awesome! It was the best thing I ever did. Nothing will ever compare to my Nutella Swirl Oatmeal Muffins. Nothing!

Except maybe the dirty water lentil soup I'm making right now.

Is this sink or swim?

*sigh* It sounded like a good idea at the time. I saw this recipe online for Nutella Swirl Banana Muffins where you just made banana muffin batter as usual, dolloped Nutella on the top of the batter once it was in the pan, and then swirled the Nutella into the batter with a toothpick.  It sounded so simple:  I could just swirl Nutella into any muffin and have a tasty, wavy gravy, Nutella treat.

Alas, that was not so. First of all, oatmeal muffin batter is kinda thick. Second of all, because it's been cold, my Nutella was kinda solid.  The result was that I couldn't actually swirl the Nutella into the batter. Instead it kinda just mushed into the top of the muffins. 

The result was oatmeal muffins with gross-looking Nutella tops. You should be happy that I don't take pictures of my food before it's eaten.

It wasn't bad. I washed it down with some coffee. Spousal Unit liked them, but Spousal Unit also drinks almond milk. 

Fortunately I only ruined half the batch of muffins. I just put chocolate chips in the other half and called it a day.

It's Oatmeal and Vegetables, It MUST Be Healthy!

The snack closet was full of Veggie Straws again.  After many weeks of having only multigrain crackers and granola bars (not the tasty ones, the healthy ones) and Motts Fruitsations, today the snack closet offered up Veggie Straws.  You could actually hear people give little cheers upon opening the closet.  They'd open the door, expecting some kind of high-fiber hell, and instead exclaim, "Hey!  Veggie Straws!  Awesome!"

It's a very sad day when Veggie Straws cause that much excitement.  Of course there were also revoltingly bad-for-you "granola" bars.  You really didn't want to read the ingredient list before taking one.  I did and discovered that they contained shortening (SHORTENING!). I put the bar back, thus depriving myself of a "yogurt dipped" "chewy" bar.

I can feel myself getting healthier.

I ended up just having my homemade oatmeal-chocolate-chip muffin.  And some Veggie Straws, because you need your veggies.  I had actually wandered into the break room when Burton, the Senior Product Manager, was telling Arthur, the Senior R&D Manager, that the Veggie Straws must be healthy because it said right on the bag that they were "Garden Vegetable" flavour.  Then he started reading the ingredient list: They're made with potatoes, spinach powder and tomato paste.   We all agreed -- well all except for Arthur, who eats only whole grains and no animal fat -- that the Veggie Straws were very healthy.

And  of course I had coffee.  I've finally figured out how to bend Silvia to my will, but more on that another day.

Breakfast, Lunch and The Redemption of Silvia

I am going to admit something:  I don't care how much everyone says that oatmeal is filling and full of protein and complete and whatnot, but it doesn't fill me up.  I'm, like, hungry about ten minutes after I've eaten a big bowl of the stuff.  So this morning, with my oatmeal and OJ, I had scrambled eggs.  Hopefully the oatmeal's cholesterol-busting abilities negated the cholesterol from the eggs.

OK, oatmeal, mop up that cholesterol!

But whatever.  I wasn't hungry until lunch, which was a good thing because the snack closet was totally bare.  I'm talking all-the-Ritz-crackers-are-finished bare.  I'm talking people walking in my boss's office mid-meeting to eat the chocolates on her desk.  BARE!

A guy brought in a whole apple pie and it was gone in less than 5 minutes.  By the time the people who weren't in the breakroom got the email announcing the pie, it was gone.

Morning brew, water, lunch, snack and afternoon espresso.

For lunch I had leftover fig, mascarpone, parmegianno, prosciutto and honey pizza that I obviously didn't make myself.  I mean, who the fuck keeps mascarpone in their fridge?  And would you buy mascarpone just to make a pizza?  No. Oh, if you don't know what mascarpone is, it's this cream-cheesy Italian cheese that is probably as fatty as butter.  No amount of oatmeal could have undone the cholesterol in that pizza.  

I finished the meal with some crackers I had brought from home (in the paper plate) and an espresso I made using Silvia and the cheap-o Aiello coffee I bought at the grocery store next to the office.  Anyways, I have determined that the problem really is the Black Cat coffee because the cheap-o coffee made a really good espresso.  I even made one for the guy who used to sit in the cube next to me.   Yeah.  Desktop Espresso looked kinda lonely today.

In which I finally eat something that isn't a grilled cheese.

I finally had something beside grilled cheese for breakfast.  I go through these phases where I'm like "I LOVE grilled cheese!"  or "I MUST have a hard boiled egg to get enough protein for my day!"  My grilled cheese phase is over and not just because I've run out of cheese, though that's pretty motivational.

Anyways, I made oatmeal.  Like real oatmeal, not the stuff in the packet where you add hot water and get a gooey, gummy mess.  There's plenty of that stuff in the office snack cupboard and the only people to eat it are the Gym Guys who believe it's actually equivalent to real oatmeal.

But I digress.

I made oatmeal.  I mixed large flake oats (for texture) with quick oats (for creaminess) and cooked them for about 10 minutes.  I added tonnes of salt and then smothered the whole thing in maple syrup for a sweet'n'salty breakfast.  I washed it all down with some apple juice because we ran out of OJ.

For lunch I has lentil soup with popovers.  Popovers!  They're really easy to make.  And they're really tasty and buttery and make an excellent vehicle for lentil soup, provided your lentil soup tastes of something.  It's actually tough to make lentil soup taste of anything except dirty water.  You have to add in tomatoes and balsamic vinegar and, if you're not opposed to eating animals, prosciutto or speck.  And it absolutely needs salt.  You can't go low salt with lentil soup.