A good muffin recipe is a good buttermilk muffin recipe!

I have a basic muffin recipe I got from... I have no clue where I got. It's been too long ago.  It's the kind of recipe where once you have the batter made you can add whatever you want to it. I like to add one of the following:

• cranberries
• cranberries and white chocolate chips
• almonds
• blueberries
• chocolate chips
• mint chocolate chips
• butterscotch chips

These are easy to make, too. 

• 1/2 cup buttermilk (or plain milk)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon baking POWDER
• 2 cups flour
• your choice of goodies

Get the batter into the muffin tins, bake at 425F for 7 minutes, then turn the heat back to 350F and bake for another 13 - 15 minutes. You know your oven. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR until the time is up. Cool, eat, or freeze. 

I like to make two batches and freeze them, and they freeze perfectly. A muffin is a good breakfast or late night snack (sometimes). 

There you have it. It's time to get the second batch out of the oven. Enjoy!

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, rural living, baking, muffins, country lifestyle, convenience food, recipes, a writer's life, chocolate chips

January: A difficult month

2023 Begonia cuttings

I've always found January a difficult month to navigate. So much of my time is spent waiting, waiting, waiting on the days to lengthen and the outside temperatures to moderate. As a gardener, I'm eager to get seeds planted. As the caretaker of this particular plot of land, I'm eager to begin the yearly task of picking up sticks. As a canner, I'm eager to get a variety of soups and such into jars. And yet, I struggle with being motivated in January. I'm eager to do something simple such as take my poor bored dog for a walk in the woods, but the forecast is for rain, and that would be cold rain in January. 

No. I'm not going to reach for chemical aids. Being impatient has only one cure and that is to find a better use of my time every day, make a plan, and stick to it. 

If only it were that easy.

There are any number of things that need doing, but I burn to get outside into the fresh air. I know better. Being out in the drizzle won't make me sick with a cold, but it won't help my achy, aging joints at all. It would be even worse for my seven-year-old dog whose bare paws contact the wet ground. 

Whether or not it's too early for it, I did another round of begonia cuttings. I now have eighteen red and eighteen white starts. I want to add color to my vegetable garden this year and the begonias are a good way to do that. I also have a pack of marigold seeds here (somewhere in this house!) and I'm very tempted to start those as well. Marigold seeds can be started in trays six weeks before the last frost. Well, I have a greenhouse now. I think I'll start them inside and transfer them to the greenhouse around April 1. I'll only be out $1 if it doesn't turn out well. I think that's an acceptable risk. 

I recently reorganized the freezer, as much out of boredom than necessity, and I need to make a few breakfast items and tuck them away. I make a French toast casserole that freezes well. A 13x9-inch cake pan yields portions for five breakfasts. It's been a while since I made scones, and one batch provides four breakfasts. We recently purchased an air fryer and we want to try our hand at making donuts. It wouldn't take much to do some baking and get a few breakfasts ahead. All I have to do is to go do it. 

The view out my sunroom office windows is rather drab, but even that opinion needs to change. The earth needs the rain and a break from the sun. I can almost hear the trees slurping up water. They'll need it soon. Loki the Cat took a stroll through the backyard. He didn't stay out long. He found a good spot for his "outside activities" and made a beeline for the door. Now I have a lapful of damp cat. It's of no matter. I'm finished blogging for now.

It's time to go make myself useful to myself. I guess I'll add a bag of flour to my shopping list. In this day and age, it wouldn't do to allow the pantry to get low. 

The Lady of the Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, baking, January, gardening, rural living, country lifestyle, home food preservation, a writer's life, begonias, cuttings, marigold seeds, country cats, black Labrador Retriever

Fruitcake

It seems that here at Holly Tree Manor, we're all about food these days. When we're not watching our carbs, we're talking about all the good holiday food in our future. Covid 19 be damned, we're having turkey! And stuffing! And pumpkin pie! And bourbon sweet potato pie! And fruitcake!

Yes, I said fruitcake. We like fruitcake, and the more bourbon it has in it, the better we like. 

We grew up in a different time. Our maternal grandmothers had a profound influence on us. Their grandmothers made fruitcakes when finding the candied fruits meant making your own. Those influences are still part of us. We like to carry on the old traditions even if we don't have anyone to pass them down to now. It's just the way it is. 

Until this year, I'd never made a fruitcake from scratch. It was simpler to purchase one and take it home and soak it in real bourbon. But last year we were disappointed with the offering we found, even after giving it a good, long whiskey bath. So this year I located the candied fruits, which provided a recipe, and I got to work. The end result is good but still doesn't take like my grandmother's fruitcake. 

I blame the store-bought candied fruit. For my next attempt, I'm going to get dried fruits, chop them, and let them soak in the booze for several days. Then I'm going to make the fruitcake in the Instant Pot. That should make it really moist. We'll see. 

And maybe we'll actually do something exciting that is not food-related before the end of the week. But I doubt it. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

A Blue Ribbon result

Here on the manor, we have what we refer to as breakfast adventures. We love to try new recipes that sometimes even work! We've watched cooking shows for years on networks, and now we watch a lot of cooking channels on YouTube. 

We like YouTube better. Fewer, shorter ads, and you can back up to rewatch if necessary.

Back in the day, we used to watch Paula Deen, and then her sons, Jamie and Bobby. Both had their own shows, but we feel Paula was always better. But Jamie had a couple of recipes we tried and kept, one being a sausage breakfast casserole. 

The casserole is a basic sausage, milk, onion, pepper, cheese, and egg liquid concoction poured over bread, and baked. We changed a few things, such as we don't use an entire onion (it would send both of us running for an antacid) and instead of using whole slices of bread, I use bread cubes.

Here's the thing. We hate to waste anything. You know how you get down to the last two slices of bread in the loaf and no one will eat them? Here's what you do. 

Save the loaf wrapper. Cut the bread into cubes, drop back into the wrapper, and freeze. Keep adding to the wrapper every time you get down to those last slices and pretty soon you will have a loaf of bread cubes. When that happens, it's time to make breakfast casserole or a French toast bread pudding. When we do that, it means three breakfasts go to into the freezer for the future. Cook once, eat four times. What's not to love about that? 

This morning's casserole came out perfect! I was both surprised and pleased with how well it baked and even more pleased with how it tasted. Will it turn out that way the next time? Probably not, but that's okay. Life on the manor isn't measured by achieving perfection. It's measured by the appreciation of both success and failure. 

That's why country living is the only way for me to live. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Perpetual vanilla

Vanilla extract used to be affordable. "Used to be" being the operative phrase here. I could go to the grocery and purchase a little bottle for about a dollar. All of a sudden, it's $30 for about twelve ounces! 

It has become time to make my own.

When you make homemade vanilla, it's a perpetual product. By that I mean you purchase the beans once and you're done buying beans. It's not a joke.

Purchase ten vanilla beans. I paid $30 for ten beans so it is a one-time investment. Buy a 750ml bottle of vodka. With the vodka, you can get as expensive a bottle as you like, but I stayed to the less expensive brand, mostly because I had a bottle already opened, but still about full. Then drop in the vanilla beans and put the bottle in a cupboard for six months. At the end of the six months, you'll have vanilla extract. 

You don't have to use the alcohol bottle. You can put this in a Mason jar or any airtight container, but it should be glass. And airtight. Airtight is important. I chose to keep it in the booze bottle just because I did. No real reason. 

This is how the perpetual part comes into play. You'll need a smaller bottle to decant whatever amount you feel is appropriate for your usage. After you decant the portion for use, top off the vodka in the steeping bottle and set it back on the shelf for another six months or more. 

The vanilla beans will keep flavoring the alcohol for years and years. As I write this post, a famous chef has said her vanilla beans have been active for twenty-five years! 

I may not live another twenty-five years. I hope my young cousins will keep it going. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor

Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Some time ago, the spousal unit and I agreed we needed to change some of our eating habits. I can't recall exactly what it was we learned about food additives and preservatives that brought about the discussion although it was likely on one of those exposé newscasts.  Our decision has led to a lot of experimentation in cooking and baking. 

We're not total fanatics about cutting additives out of our food. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to know that in our situation it's unlikely to happen. We're not raising our own chickens (yet), raising a beef cow (yet), or growing all our own veggies (yet). Chickens bring in the foxes, three wooded acres isn't right for a steer, and there's too much shade for a big garden. That's just the way it is. I am not selling the manor, either. We bow to practicalities. 

Starting small and working forward, we agreed to forego any and all store-bought cookies. We love, love, love cookies and so this means I'm going to be baking a lot of cookies. 

I bake a batch, divide them into dozens, and freeze them. Storing them in the freezer in the basement helps slow our consumption, too. 

On a recent Saturday night, he wanted cookies and we were all out. I checked the pantry and determined the only cookie I had ingredients for were oatmeal cookies. My check also revealed half a bag of white chocolate chips and a partial bag of Craisins. So I tossed them into what was the standard oatmeal cookie dough and discovered one of our new favorite cookies. Serendipity at work.

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor