Muffins, Netflix, and tea

You know. I love muffins. Muffins are yummy. You can hold them in your hand and munch on them any time. Some have raisins in them or zucchini. And some have cinnamon in them. Or maybe oat bran or bran, or bananas, or pineapple, or applesauce, or pumpkin. Or maybe all of the above together in one batch. Though I've never done that maybe I should sometimes. Might be interesting.

Often I give my muffins to people. I think they like muffins too.

I do put a lot of raisins in my muffins because I like raisins so much. Sometimes the people I give my muffins to don't like the raisins. And they pick them out. If there was broccoli in muffins I might pick that out. I never pick out raisins. Sometimes I make the recipe as called for but most of the time I don't, I change the recipe so it barely resembles the original recipe.

My muffins are almost always low fat since you don't need a lot of fat to make a good muffin. If you use pureed fruit of any kind this will always make muffins moister. Fatty muffins are gross.

I've also made chocolate muffins on occasion, in fact I have a good recipe for low fat chocolate muffins. I think they have pumpkin in them. And I think I also put chocolate chips in them too. Yummy. Nothing like a good muffin with a glass of cold skim milk made from reconstituted milk powder. Or with a decaf coffee. Or with tea. Tea is good too. In fact ever since I started watching British shows on Netflix, where they always drink tea, I've started drinking tea more often too. Hardly any calories since I use powdered reconstituted skim milk in it. Tea will make you pee a lot though.

Speaking of Netflix, why would anyone pay Bell or Rogers or whomever to provide them TV when Netflix is so good, and so cheap? Along with British shows, I'm now watching shows from Iceland, and from Norway, all really great. Except you can't multitask when watching these shows because you have to read the subtitles (even the British shows). So for instance, I couldn't eat muffins and tea with skim reconstituted skim milk in it while watching Netflix, because, well you know, that would be multi tasking.

Peanut butter oatmeal cookies

I made peanut butter oatmeal cookies one day while in Victoria. I can't remember what my motivation was. Anyway they were pretty good.

In Victoria our condo had cable TV service. At home we don't have TV service, we only watch Netflix. We don't feel the need to throw money at Bell or the other cable providers, and Netflix is way better anyway.

The only channel I did watch sometimes was the Food Network. I do like to watch cooking shows. But I would record the shows first so I could fast forward past the commercials, which seem to have increased exponentially since I last watched commercial TV.

Mind you, most of the shows on the food network are fairly useless, like Food Factory. This show tries too hard to be cute. It also shows how some products are made in a factory. I don't really care how they're made. I want to know what the recipe is. Plus, many of the products they showed being produced contained 90% sugar. Gross.

Then there were other shows that showed competitions like Chopped, which wasn't bad, but very stressful to watch. I don't want to get stressed when I watch TV.

Then there were food shows (as opposed to cooking shows) where almost no actual cooking takes place. Like one guy who goes into diners or whatever, and makes all kind of noise as he inhales big greasy gobs of whatever concoction being served. Gross times two.

I want to watch actual cooking shows. You know where someone cooks food and tells you how much of each ingredient is in it?

One show which I liked was the Spice Goddess. Bal Arneson is from India and cooks food using Indian spices. She made a macaroni and cheese recipe that I want to try. I love macaroni and cheese, and I love Indian food. Though it sounds like a weird combination to me, but I will try it.

Anyway back to the Peanut Butter Oatmeal cookies

1 cup flour (whole wheat or all purpose)
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 tsp soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup raisins (chocolate chips would be even better but it was lent and I gave up chocolate)

1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup natural peanut butter (or regular peanut butter)
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg (I would probably increase to 2 eggs as the mixture was very crumbly)

Mix first seven ingredients into a small bowl.

Mix remaining ingredients into a large bowl.

Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and incorporate. Use your hands if you have to.

Make smallish balls of dough and place on greased cookie sheet. Press down with fingers or a floured fork.

Cook for 10-12 minutes at 350 until the cookies start to brown.