Monday 1 October 2012

Questions, answers and a recipe.

Oooops!
One of my readers told me that the plant I presented on my previous blogpost,this plant in the picture, is called poke sallet and I looked it up! Thank you Denise!
And what did I find? First that it's toxic and poisonous! Then that I can eat the leaves if I rinse them well and boil them three times(well I am not planning to!). That the black seeds are deadly poisonous for the mammals(including humans?) and that one can use them to make a dye or ink. And that the Constitution of the United States is written with this type of ink!
So far so good!But what I cannot understand is what this plant is doing in my balcony. According to my dear Wikipedia it grows in the States,the tropics, Latin America  and China!So?What a mystery!
Anyway I told hubby,my son and my mum about it so that we have no accidents but I will have to be very careful with visitors. I don't want to pluck it out. It is so beautiful and anyway maybe it is rare to be found in Greece!
I had a question from Lisa about the sea glass star I posted in the previous blogpost,too. It was made by a sea glass friend, Lynne and sent to me as a gift. You can find lots of beautiful sea glass things in her etsy shop called oceansbounty.
I also had questions about how I make my muffins so I decided to give the recipe here. It was first sent to me by my friend Marabeth but I have made so many different kinds so far. The secret is to use whatever you have at home so that you don't waste food!
These are my latest batch with chocolate chips and marshmallows(I had some leftover from the summer barbeques and didn't want to eat them just like that!)

 And these were the previous ones which were savoury with left over cooked vegetables and cheese. They were absolutely delicious!
And here is the recipe.
Ariadnes muffins

Based on Marabeth's recipe.

Ingredients
2 cups flour
Half a cup of sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
Half a teaspoon of salt
¾ cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil (or olive oil)
1 egg (or 2)

Extra materials
Chocolate drops, pieces of apple and cinnamon, mashed banana, raisins, grated walnuts, jam, strawberry pieces, coconut, cocoa, vanilla, lemon or orange juice or whatever you have at home.
Preheat the oven at the up down to two hundred degrees. Put a little vegetable oil in each muffin tray or a piece of paper.
Mix in a bowl all dry ingredients, in another all liquid materials. Add the dry materials in liquids. Mix well with a fork.
Add any other material that you want as chocolate drops or pieces of fruit.
Put a large table spoonful into each compartment of the muffin tray.
Bake for about 20 minutes.
It makes twelve cupcakes.
Raising the quantity of the extra material you can make up to 24 pieces.
If you want savoury cupcakes reduce the sugar in half or less, increase the salt and add cheese, ham, boiled sausages cut in pieces etc.


I hope you try them and enjoy them!
I'd love to hear any other versions you make or what extra material you add!


2 comments:

Lisa said...

I am going to try the muffin recipe. It looks so delicious, will let you know how it turns out.I have been looking for a good muffin recipe. Also the plant in your picture grows all over here by the side of the roads its weeds here.

Sonia / COZY MEMORIES said...

Hello Aridane,
the plant you're showing is Phytolaca americana, I had tried to dye with it back in 2009, you can see my blog post here : http://naturallydyeing.blogspot.fr/2009/11/p-h-y-t-o-l-c-c-a-m-e-r-i-c-n.html
It was unsuccessful for me, but maybe for other people it had been successful.
Your muffins look so good, thanks for sharing your recipe. They are so versatile & easy to make, aren't they ?
xoxo