nog night

Alexa and I have been doing an annual eggnog taste-test for a few years now.  This year we enlisted our trusty partners to scour the city to find as many brands as they could (and funnily enough, our local grocer carried basically all of them).  This was a 'blind' tasting - mainly because we realized in years past that we had prejudices against certain brands, and could also guess based on the color and 'look' of some of them.  Ty and Jon also went to new heights this year by offering a 'palate cleanser', which we have not done in the past, but seemed to work quite well.  Our rankings came in pretty closely, with our top two choices being the same, which were Southern Comfort's Original Eggnog, and Horizon's Lowfat Eggnog - both of us had a very tough time making the call between those two.  

On a side note, Alexa's 'Worst' and 'Best' eggnog were the same one.  The guys had selected Silk Nog (Soymilk Egg Nog, for those who are unfamiliar) for one of the contenders, and realized right before giving it to us that Alexa doesn't do well with Soy, so they inserted one that she'd already had.  I was tasting the the Soy Nog and couldn't hide my shock and dismay at the taste/consistency/overall unnaturalness of it, and it somehow affected Alexa while she was drinking hers - which was the Southern Comfort - which she later chose as the best.  Anyway, we found that pretty funny.  

Big thanks to our testing administers, Jon and Ty for making it such an enjoyable night.

'tis the season muffins

I wanted to use up some leftover cranberries I had from Thanksgiving, so that's how this recipe came about this morning......

oven 400 degrees

1 1/3 cups a.p. flour

3/4 cup rolled oats (not instant)

1/3 cup vanilla sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp or so of orange peel 

1 beaten egg

3/4 cup milk

1/4 cup cooking oil

1 heaping cup of cranberries (i used frozen and they worked perfectly)

handful of finely chopped pecans (or any other nut on hand)

heaping teaspoon of dark brown sugar

grease a 12-muffin pan - you only need to grease 9 of the 12 to make proper-size muffins.  combine all dry ingredients (including orange peel) in one bowl.  combine the egg, milk and oil in another bowl.  dump the egg mixture all at once to dry mixture.  stir until just moistened but don't over-stir - batter should be lumpy.  gently fold in cranberries.  plop into 9 of the muffin cups.  combine the pecans and brown sugar (using hands i think works best - distributing all the brown sugar evenly) and sprinkle the mixture on top of each muffin - generously.  bake for 20 minutes or so until golden.  cool in muffin cups on wire rack for 5 minutes before removing from pan.  serve warm with butter, jam, or whatever floats your boat.

ho ho ho