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Austin City Limits Music Festival

September 18, 2011 By 1 Comment

You didn't get to Heaven but you made it close

We arrived for this Life List item on Thursday and have been putting in 16 hour days ever since. I’ve overloaded my iPhone’s battery for two days in a row attempting to tweet, Instagram and FB all my experiences and thoughts. Austin City Limits Music Festival is an overwhelming experience, as most music festivals probably are. 70,000 people a day, about 7 stages rotating from 11 am to 10 pm, mostly half simultaneously at any given moment. I’ve never seen what 70,000 people look like and I’m not convinced I ever want to again… There. Are. People. Everywhere. But I’m glad I’m here.

I’ve discovered some excellent music and gotten to hear some old favorites live and in person.

Highlights from Friday were:

Brandi Carlile! #aclcase @CaseMate Ray.

 

 

 

 

 

(Brandi Carlile and Ray LaMontagne)

And after my phone died: The Cave Singers, Santigold, Bright Eyes and Coldplay.

Highlights from Saturday will have to wait. Sleep becons.

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Overzealous

September 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

There’s a new market in town called Sunflower Farmers Market and they carry a lot of produce and hippie food. I noticed the other day they had quinoa on sale for cheap and when I was again in the neighborhood I swung in to grab some of that cheap miracle grain.

Only I pulled the lever too hard and dispensed four pounds of bulk quinoa into my baggie. I shrugged at my mistake, tied off my vessel and finished my shopping with it perched on my hip like a Grain Baby.

Once I returned home a new situation arose. I have no containers in which to store four pounds of quinoa. Luckily, I found one that stored three and a half pounds of it just fine.

3.5 lbs of quinoa in a bear jar. That's how I roll.

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: ,

Failure Muffins

September 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Another Saturday came to pass and I decided muffins must be made. Because that’s how my kids know for sure that I now only love them, but am a passable mother. I assembled the usual* suspects…

IMG_3636

*I see at least 4 things in this pic that ended up not being a part of the recipe.

As the measuring and mixing went down I decided to adjust the recipe on the fly as a way not only to reduce the sugar in these muffins, but to illustrate that things don’t always have to be perfect. Lost in this clever thought of mine, about how we can start at one place and end up at another…and better for it….I noticed something weird. My muffin batter looked like pie dough.

IMG_3645

Ha, I thought. I patted it into a dish, adorned it with blueberries and sugar, shoved it in the oven and started over assuming I had been so lost in thought the first time around that I’d doubled the flour or something.

As I was saying, I started over….and the same thing happened. As 40,000 pounds of carbs happily baked away, Mr. Google revealed that blueberry muffin batter is often thick so that the berries don’t sink to the bottom. Huh.

Well, there you go.

Failure Muffins

  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/3 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 cup milk
  • 1 cup fresh blueberries
Preheat your oven to 400. Fill your muffin pan with 6 liners and spray them with oil. Put the 1st 4 ingredients in a bowl and stir. Use a 1 or 2 cup measuring cup (the latter will give you more room to stir), add the oil, egg and the milk until you have 1 cup of liquid. Mix, then stir into the dry until there’s no more dry. Batter will be thick and confusing (much like my mornings before coffee). Stir in the berries. Scoop batter into muffin cups and bake 20 minutes or so.

IMG_3652 IMG_3655

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