Autumnal Bliss

Gingerbread man tree stump!!

As you may have noticed by my last post, I am very excited to experience the autumnal bliss of living in the North. I am busy planning day trips we may (or may not) be able to take in the coming weeks to see the foliage. You see, Matt's work schedule varies from week to week which makes it difficult to plan anything in advance. And as I will soon join the workforce as well (with a truly unremarkable job as a waitress to fill my time and buffer my bank account until I manage to finagle a career out of this economy), our ability to venture out into the Washington wilderness will be severely limited. On the other hand, it is going to continue to get colder as the season progresses so I probably won't want to be outside that much anyway.


One thing that I do have planned is filling my kitchen with fall food goodies! Apples, squash, pomegranates, and cranberries. Salted Caramel Mochas, Peppermint hot chocolate and Pumpkin Spice Lattes. Ahhhhh, seasonal treats! The other day, I added a new recipe to my autumn arsenal - Sweet Potato Muffins. A few leftover sweet potatoes had me searching the internet for ideas, until I ran across a muffin recipe and smushed a few versions together into the following recipe.

Sweet Potato Muffins

12 muffins 

Ingredients:
1 1/2 - 2 cups mashed sweet potatoes
2 eggs

1 cup white sugar (or brown sugar if you have it, which I didn't)
1/2 cup oil
3 tbsp milk
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg (or to taste)
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon (or to taste)
1/4 tsp ginger (optional)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grab your 12 muffin tin and line it with muffin wrappers or lightly grease the tin. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. In a smaller bowl, gently beat the eggs then add the sugar, oil and milk. Mix wet ingredients to combine then add the mashed sweet potatoes and continue mixing to combine. Finally, pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. The batter should be pretty thick and with some lumps. Pour into muffin tin and bake for about 35 minutes.


Just as an aside, Matt ate three of these muffins in quick succession right after they came out of the oven because he loved them so much. We quickly polished off the batch by the third day of our muffin's short lives. When I first made this, it was late at night and I was on a baking frenzy. I just hope I managed to give you all the right recipe notes...I'm making these again tomorrow so I can verify everything (Oh, darn!). If you make a similar dish or have any good ideas about this one I would love to hear about them! I read a suggestion to use 1/2 pumpkin puree and 1/2 sweet potato =D

Anyway, Matt and I still regularly venture out into the state park wilderness in the immediate area. Here are a few pictures from our last trip:

Coastal beach on the Puget Sound.

A sad beached jellyfish the size of my shoe. I (gently) kicked him back to the water.

A random treehouse built into the shoreline trees on a public beach.

And of course, I had to venture up! Neat place, but it
didn't improve the already awesome view.

The forest side of the shore was a wall of some clay-like substance. It
appears to be the preferred place for adolescents to graffiti.

The trail we took leading from the beach into the forest.

And here I am on the trail reppin' UTD Soccer!

A mushroom colony that gives me the urge to hunt for smurfs.

And here is the Matt man in all his goofy glory!