Recipes Gone Wild

While flipping through Twitter during my lunch break this week I came across this article/recipe from Greenpointers.com. Greenpoint, Brooklyn is actually closer to our old neighborhood, Long Island City, Queens, than our new one in Brooklyn. While living in LIC I loved running over the Polaski Bridge, taking in the views of the NYC skyline and Welcome to Brooklyn sign, into Greenpoint, Brooklyn and then back to LIC, Queens. I hear Greenpoint has recently experienced a surge of young people (and the gentrification that comes with them) thanks to the HBO show Girls that is said to be set in Greenpoint.

Anyway, considering our own recent squirrel-in-bird-feeder incident and Jen's love of baking, this article seemed to hit home with us. The muffins sound right up our ally too. We haven't made them yet but plan to and we'll let you know how they turn out...

Posted by Libby V
The other day I got an alarming series of texts from my friend Camille. She had just baked a batch of muffins, cooled them, and set them on the countertop in ziploc bags while she stepped out to run some errands. Upon returning home, she entered her kitchen and glanced around. Something was wrong. Granola crumbs littered the floor. She heard a rustling, and surveyed the room. It was then that she locked eyes with her intruder— a fat squirrel, having entered through the open window, now huddled under the kitchen table, seemingly trying to calculate the probability of successfully dragging a Ziploc baggy full of muffins and a package of sprouted chia-goji berry granola out the window without being eaten/killed/captured and/or losing his loot.

After a tense moment of deliberation, the squirrel decided none of it was worth risking his life (maybe scones, or croissants, but not muffins), and the li’l’ guy dropped his bounty and darted back out the window. Camille stood in the crumby aftermath, stunned. Of course Greenpoint squirrels want to munch on whole-grain muffins and sprouted chia seed-goji berry muesli. It’s a wonder Mr. Squirrel wasn’t doing a juice cleanse, or perhaps he was trying to squeeze in a grain binge before an upcoming detox. Camille was only more stunned to find him BACK on her windowsill a few days later as she ate her morning toast at the kitchen table, his paw pressed against the glass as though to say…Hey pretty lady, you got any more muffins?

Hey—Squirrel’s gotta look out for number one. Winter’s coming, and if you’re a forager (like our neighbor, Mr. Squirrel) you know it’s time to store a little extra energy for keeping warm. It’s also time to turn on the oven and make your home smell like toasted wheat. I asked Camille to share the recipe that Fats Squirlio couldn’t resist. A timeless classic in the world of muffinology—The Morning Glory Muffin. We used to get these at the grocery store all the time when I was a kid. Much like carrot cake, these muffins are a sweet and irresistible treat, but also have some real nutritional goodness, like vitamins A and C (thanks to the carrots, apple, and OJ). She found her recipe in the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking Book. If you make them, then you can share them with friends, or squirrels, or squirrely friends. Whatever you want. They’re your muffins! 


(Squirrely) Morning Glory Muffins
Makes one dozen

Ingredients:
1/2 cup raisins
2 cups Whole Wheat Flour (or a 50/50 mix of white and wheat if you want them a little less hearty)
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups peeled and grated carrots 1 large tart apple, peeled, cored, and grated (or leave the peel on; your choice)
1/2 cup shredded coconut, sweetened or unsweetened
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup sunflower seeds or wheat germ, optional
3 large eggs
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup orange juice

Directions:
1) Preheat the oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a 12-cup muffin tin, or line it with papers and spray the insides of the papers.
2) In a small bowl, cover the raisins with hot water, and set them aside to soak while you assemble the rest of the recipe.
3) In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, spices, and salt.
4) Stir in the carrots, apple, coconut, nuts, and sunflower seeds or wheat germ.
5) In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, vanilla, and orange juice.
6) Add to the flour mixture, and stir until evenly moistened.
7) Drain the raisins and stir them in.
8) Divide the batter among the wells of the prepared pan (they’ll be full almost to the top).
9) Bake the muffins for 25 to 28 minutes, until they’re nicely domed and a cake tester inserted in the center of one of the inner muffins comes out clean.
10) Remove from the oven, let cool for 5 minutes in their pan on a rack, then turn out of pans to finish cooling. Wrap any leftovers airtight, and store at room temperature for several days; freeze for longer storage.

About Libby V Libby VanderPloeg lives and makes work in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She grew up in Michigan on the edge of the Great Lakes dunes, and has lived in Chicago, New York, and Stockholm. Her work comes out of her deep affinity for storytelling, music, letterforms, printed ephemera, and wildlife. None of these works could have been made without the world's finest brioche and several good, strong cups of coffee.

Squirrel Feeder

My mother loves all things flora and fauna. She’s also a very thoughtful lady. When she visited a few weeks ago she saw firsthand our lack of her favorite things. If you mention liking anything plant or bird- related (even if you also explain that you have no place for it in your NYC-sized apartment sans outdoor space), you can expect a box of whatever you admired to show up at your door. A big box.

After all the trouble she goes through, enthusiastically packing up little plants, soil, moss, or perhaps even a bird feeder with a bag of seed, we hate to let her effort be for nothing. So last week we cluelessly “planted” and arranged plants on the radiator under our kitchen window where they can get lots of light (then dry up and die when the heat gets turned on) and installed the bird feeder on the fire escape outside the window where we could admire the birds (or not, as it turned out).

Sunday afternoon, while running some errands after church, I received a voicemail from our landlord. She said that some of the bird seed had fallen onto their deck below and that we’d have to take it down. Although we’re technically not supposed to have anything on the fire escape, she seemed pretty calm so I didn’t think it was a big deal.

When we finally got home and I looked outside at the bird feeder, I thought that our landlord must have already come upstairs and emptied it because there was barely any seed left. Nope. It turns out, what we’re assuming was a squirrel, jumped onto our feeder, sending about four cups of bird seed onto their deck. This may not seem like big deal either, but any seed left on the ground will attract mice and we don’t want those.

On the phone she definitely under-stressed just how much of a mess was made. By the time we got home they had swept and washed away most of it. I know it was a pain in the a$$. We still offered to come down and clean up their deck then made sure to get every last little seed off the fire escape. They said not to worry and that, “our hearts were in the right place.” I would say I would give feeding the birds another go with something squirrel proof but let’s be real, squirrel proofing is a misnomer. When on a mission, there is no stopping a squirrel. That squirrel was a brazen and cunning thief, singularly focused on gorging itself on our bird seed.

Monday morning while walking Pup I noticed a squirrel in the tree outside our apartment. It looked pretty guilty so I gave it the stink eye and pointed it out to Pup so she could bark and chase it away. Sure, squirrels can be a lot of fun to watch but I’m starting to see them through Pup’s eyes, as evil tree rats. 

Maybe I'll get my revenge with one of these... so funny!