Sunday, December 30, 2012

Over the past month or so, we have many goodies come into the house, especially a great variety of muffins; banana, carrot, bran, muffins that I call ‘pretty muffins’.  They are absolutely delicious, have some fiber in them, but the type Munching Myrtle likes.

Because I was looking for some heavy duty fiber and filled with protein recipe, a lovely friend Ruth from Mount Forest sent a bag of what I call Ford Tough Muffins – they were big, they were dark, they were dense, they were not sweet, they were not pretty, they were exactly what I needed…….they were FORD TOUGH!!  I loved them (old gal Myrtle did not!).

So when I told Ruth how I felt about them, she said she would make another batch this week-end.  Since she is probably the busiest woman I know, I suggested Bob would like to learn how to bake, so could she send me the recipe and we would try to make them on our own.  She agreed.

So not only did the recipe arrive via her husband, but ALL THE INGREDIENTS arrived with him!  I couldn’t believe this woman!  So Bob turned from Bob the Builder into Bob the Baker.  Apparently the recipe is huge so I suggested we (I’m using the word ‘we’ again) make the whole recipe, give half to Ruth and her husband and we keep the rest.  His response was ‘let’s see how it turns out first’.  Smart man!

It was obvious the recipe had been copied many times, comments written on the paper were ineligible but we went with the typed part.  I remember years ago trying to learn how to make tea biscuits from my mother-in-law and part of her recipe was ‘lard the size of an egg’.  I was pretty young then and I thought ‘the size of an egg?’ – extra small, small, medium, large, extra large…………what the heck is that?

Anyway, teamwork was on – me reading the recipe and Bob doing the work. His biggest hurtle was when the recipe called to make a ‘well’ in the dry ingredients before adding the wet ingredients.  He had no idea what the heck THAT was.  I just suggested he think of mashed potatoes before adding gravy to them.

Anyway, all carefully  mixed and into the oven they went.  When he pulled them out, they were delicious BUT THEY WERE PRETTY MUFFINS!!!!!!!  So obviously the little scratches written but ineligible on the recipe were the secret that turned them into FORD TOUGH muffins!  I do recall seeing ¾ cup scratched fairly close to the molasses, so maybe that was the secret.  We got quite a giggle when we set them side by side.  The colour was different by at least '50 shades of grey/brown'.

Anyway, a phone call today to pick her brains will probably repair the ‘problem’.  I think Ruth is a ‘lard the size of an egg’ type of baker and improvises as she goes.

I wasn’t sure how much longer the old gal  Munching Myrtle was going to hang on, mumbling, complaining, worrying, so tonight we gave her one of the PC Cheesecake On A Stick All Chocolate items.  Well, she was such a happy little camper that she was trying to get to the phone to personally call Galen Weston to thank him.  After all, he did fly to Newfoundland to distribute them to customers, (according to the commercial anyway) so thought he should take her call!  Well, we stopped her from doing that but she KNOWS there is another one sitting in the fridge, think it has something to do with butterscotch so she will just have to have a little patience and wait for that one.  She is definitely learning patience, or at least trying to (with a lot of complaining…….).

Changing the subject………..blame the steroids…………………

Going back to my teen years I remember having problems with my fingernails, trying to get them stronger than paper.  I could always bend them backwards, hated them because they looked so terrible, tried adding something to my orange juice every morning, tried lots of other methods to get them to look nice, etc.  So later in life, for over 30 years, I went every 3 weeks to get ‘fake’ nails.  I hated to take the time but my nails then usually looked normal – like the nails belonging to other people.  Well, 3 years ago I stopped doing that because they kept falling off……

NOW…………….probably because of all the constant protein being put in my body………….for the first time in 69 years, I HAVE NORMAL FINGERNAILS!  I know this sounds silly to men or to ladies with normal nails all their lives, but to me, it is like a miracle.  They are hard and beautiful!  Isn’t it amazing the things that make you happy……

So today, I’m thankful for FORD TOUGH muffins and REAL fingernails.  What more could I ask………………

Hope you have FORD TOUGH day – after all we are a FORD family……………………