Muffin Top

Not much knitting progress this week.  It was an extremely busy week at work.  I came home exhausted every night.  After dinner all I could manage was to stare at the TV. 

I now have a new favorite show - The Big Bang Theory.  I have absolutely fallen in love with it.  This is typical of me.  I catch onto shows long after they've begun.  This show is in its 5th season, so I have a lot of past episodes to view.

Since we are on the topic of nerds, I got my geek on last night.  It was a perfectly clear night so I took my telescope out front and pointed to Jupiter and Venus.  My telescope needs some adjusting and I need practice with it.  I believe I saw several of Jupiters moons casting shadows on the planet's surface.  Or it could have been Venus with some space junk in my line of site.  I'm not exactly sure and I got too cold before I could figure it out.  At any rate, it was exciting.  In a couple days Jupiter and Venus will be right next to each other.  Unfortunately, the prediction is for rain that night, so I don't think I'll get to see it.

Another obsession of mine is Pinterest.  If I made even a fourth of the food I pin, I'd be over 200 pounds by now.  I did come across a recipe that I pinned:  Apple Butter Muffins from Recipe Girl.  Since I made apple butter last fall, I figured I'd try these.  They were absolutely yummy.  They have allspice in them, which complemented the cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg I had put in the apple butter.  They baked up beautifully.  I used Alton Brown's muffin method to preheat the oven to 25 degrees below the baking temperature and then set it to the correct temperature when the muffins go in the oven.  Since ovens cycle, this gives the muffins an initial blast of heat to work with the leaveners to allow the muffins to reach their maximum potential.  The result was a beautiful muffin top. It was a great way to start my Saturday:  a yummy muffin (or 2), a cup of hot tea, the newspaper to read, and the sound of early spring birds outside. 

Now I have to get off by behind and work on my own muffin top.