Avocado Corn Muffins

from this recipe



I love muffins for breakfast. It's such a treat! I love making them. I love muffin tops. I love muffin stumps. I bought a giant muffin tin because I can happily eat one giant muffin, but I feel like a fatty if I eat 2 or 3 small muffins... even though a giant muffin is about three and a half small muffins. Judge. Whatever.

Heather made avocado muffins a while back. I always meant to try making them, but I never did (and I still haven't!) My friend brought me ten avocados and I had to use them up before they went bad... hence the avocado pesto from last week. I'd had a hankering for corn muffins and thought... well avocado goes with corn! I like that this recipe uses avocado in lieu of butter or oil. There isn't much flavor from the avocado but the muffins have a really smooth texture and a cool green color. The original recipe isn't very sweet, so I increased the sugar. I also used some whole wheat flour in some sort of healthy attempt.

Ingredients
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1 large ripe avocado (I used 2 small)

Directions
1. Preheat your oven to 350. Grease and flour a cupcake tin, or line with cupcake wrappers.  This will make 3 large or 10-12 small muffins.
2. In a medium bowl, mix the dry ingredients.
3. Add the eggs one at a time.
4. In a small bowl, mash the avocado with a fork until it's really smooth, you really don't want any avocado lumps at all.
5. Add the avocado and milk to the flour egg mixture and mix well.
6. Scoop into cupcake tins, you want to fill the tins almost to the top to get a nice round delicious muffin top. Sprinkle some sugar on top if you want.
7. Bake from 20-30 minutes or until tops are firm and slightly golden. Remove from the tins immediately. In my opinion, muffins taste better the next day, not right out of the oven. The flavors melt together. So bake these at night and eat one for breakfast the next day!

Microwave Stuffed Peppers

I bought all these ears of corn (25 cents a pop!) for a BBQ and then ended up not using them... I've been trying different ways to use them, other than just off the cob. I really love fresh corn, but it's so much better BBQ'ed than boiled. I started boiling one, not sure what else I was gonna make. I looked around in my fridge and found a green pepper and scallions. (I never actually use a whole bunch of scallions before they go bad, so I love to throw them in things!) I thought that stuffing the pepper with corn and scallions would be awesome. I have to admit I have never made a stuffed pepper before and I have no idea what should go in them/how much liquid/how long to cook/whatever...



I had this idea to bake it, that sounds good, right? But I didn't even turn on the oven until I'd made the stuffing... And so I decided instead to broil it. But then I realized I had to be somewhere in 30 minutes, not an hour and 30 minutes like I had thought for some reason. So there wasn't time to even broil it! Instead I microwaved it and just hoped for the best.



Actually, I really, really liked the way it came out. The egg and pepper cooked fully but the scallions and garlic were only partly cooked which kept them spicy. The only thing I didn't really like was the pepper skin. I know its technically possible to remove pepper skins by roasting them but I've never done this. I don't know if the pepper will lose its rigidity after doing this, and I think the stiffness helped make it not be totally messy in the microwave, so I don't know if it's worth trying to remove the skin.



Ingredients (makes one stuffed pepper, so scale up if you're feeding more than just yourself)
1 ear of corn (or ~1/4 cup of frozen or canned corn if you're not using fresh)
4 scallions, trimmed to get rid of the floppy end parts
2 large cloves of garlic
2 Tbsp pine nuts
1 egg
2 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese (plus a little extra for topping)

salt, pepper, oregano
1 large green or red bell pepper

olive oil

a few pinches of bread crumbs (optional)


I had put the pepper on foil when I was planning on baking it... doesn't this look totally not delicious...

Directions
1. Boil the corn for 3 minutes. After it's done, immediately remove from the water. Once it's cool enough to handle, slice the corn off the cob.
2. Put scallions, garlic and pine nuts in a food processor and pulse a few times. You want this to be minced, but not paste. If you don't have a food processor, then do this by hand.
3. In a small bowl (or a medium one if you are making more than one serving), beat the egg.
4. Mix the scallion mix, corn, and parmesan cheese into the egg. Season with salt, pepper and oregano.
5. Slice the top off of the pepper and remove the seeds and core.
6. Rub the outside of the pepper with olive oil.
7. Place the pepper in a small microwave safe bowl. Try to keep the pepper standing up.
8. Pour the egg/veggie mix into the pepper.
9. Sprinkle the top with parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs.
10. Microwave on high for 4 minutes. If your microwave doesn't spin on it's own, I'd suggest rotating it a quarter of the way every minute to make sure the egg gets fully cooked.
11. (Optional step but I think it was good!) Remove from microwave and place on an oven safe pan or dish. Broil for 1 minute to brown the bread crumbs.