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.

I Refuse to Stop Taking Pictures of My Empty Plates!

The office (well, the whole building) receives The Globe and Mail newspaper daily.  It gets left in the breakroom where everyone reads it over lunch or snacks or other breaks.  It was a good newspaper a couple of decades ago, but has since become a bastion of dumbass in a sea of stupid.  Their "Life" section is an especially poor example of what constitutes journalism, with crowd-sourced advice columns and reader-submitter "essays" about how having knee surgery made them appreciate gardening. 

Today, along with a story about how Beyonce is breastfeeding or something, there was an opinion piece about how everyone needs to stop taking pictures of their food unless they have something interesting to say about it. 

I don't know what this guy's problem is, but I'm not going to stop taking puerile pictures of plates just because he told me to!  In fact, I'm going to take more!  And say less!  There!  How'd you like that, silly Globe&Mail guy?  Pfffffffffffffff!!!!!!!!!

Philosophical Food Blogging: Guess Who's Not Coming To Dinner?

If you're not imaginary and you have actually read this blog regularly (as opposed to accidentally landing here because Google went berserk and returned this as the top link when you searched for "winter gazebo maintenance"), you may have noticed that I haven't posted anything lately.  That's because I had a deadline looming, I had to move cubicle and I was spending my free time with the Silvia.  

Cup of mystery

But now I have time to tell you what I ate, but you probably don't care.  Nor should you.  Because I could totally be lying to you.  How do you know that I'm not totally making up what was in these empty plates and containers?  For example, I ate some Veggie Straws in this paper cup the other day.  (Veggie Straws are what you eat from the snack closet once the chips are done.  When the Veggie Straws are done, you eat the Ritz crackers.  When those are done, you start prowling the cubes for random food on people's desks.)  But maybe I didn't.  

Maybe I'm just pretending that this cup was full of Veggie Straws to make my life seem more mundane.  Because you'd be more likely to believe that I ate Veggie Straws out of this stupid paper cup while discussing memory leaks with a developer rather than the truth:  That it was full of marshmallow and popcorn Jelly Bellys that I ate while discussing the Cirque Du Soleil with a guy in Support who's also an amateur opera singer (he's a "true tenor").

Bad dahl or a clever decoy?

This other container contained red lentil dahl with rice and yogurt.  There wasn't enough water in the rice and it came out gloopy and partially burnt.  There was too much tomato in the dahl, so it looked like globs of orange stuff.  The yogurt was OK, though, as it was store-bought.  But maybe I'm actually a better cook than I'm letting on and the dahl was super-flavourful, the rice was perfect and the yogurt home-made.  You will never know.