On Blogging 2

I realized that my last post could have been slightly offensive, or at least slightly vague. What I meant is that what I love about blogs is the way people write about how they worked through a complex topic. I love to read about their lives as long as it doesn't read as a daily play-by-play. I love to watch as you think through the sensory details of a food, or work through the complex relationship you have to people or places or music. I love when you include lists that I can add to or questions that make me think. Basically, I love anything that acknowledges an audience, one that includes me as well as many others. I often thought of blogging the way my youth minister used to talk about prayer: Talking into the air and wondering if anyone's listening. I guess I like to know someone's listening. And I like to know you want me to listen.

Jam and Nut Tea Muffins

I think it's funny that I haven't published a post about muffins on my blog yet (at least I don't think I have). Muffins are, by far, my favorite baked good. When I'm bored, I think about muffins. When I can't think of anything to do on a Saturday morning, I bake muffins. My freezer is usually full of muffins for a microwave-and-go breakfast any morning of the week. I've even been known to bake a batch of mini-muffins for conferences or long car trips to ensure sweet goodness wherever I go. So yes, it's odd that I have yet to post anything about this centerpiece of my existence. But here it goes--the first of many.

When I want muffins, the first place I turn is this little cookbook that looks like it comes from one of those "publish your own family cookbook"-type places. The Joy of Muffins is paperback, spiral-bound, black-and-white print with no pictures except of the clip art typical of community cookbooks. And it's amazing--hundreds of muffin recipes arranged by breakfast, afternoon, dessert, main-course, etc. And they're my taste--in other words, not too sweet. Some of them, like a Colonial Pumpkin Muffin I made, were almost more suited for a dinner roll than a breakfast muffin. Which I thought was awesome! I first heard about this cookbook in a Nigella Lawson cookbook. The one day, while browsing in Barnes & Noble in Wilmington, there it was. On a high shelf, almost out of site amongst other tall, glossy, colorful baking books, it perched unassumingly, waiting. I use it all the time, but even more often, I just flip through it to put me in a good mood. Mmm, muffins.

These muffins are a bit of a departure from the recipe I was using, which was for Swedish Strawberry Muffins. I did not happen to have any Scandinavian Strawberry Preserves, or any strawberry preserves for that matter. But berries are berries when it comes to muffins. I had some cherry preserves left over from the Chocolate-Cherry Brownies (the recipe is posted on this blog) and some raspberry and blackberry preserves. The recipe also called for sliced almonds, but I had pecans, which I have decided are the most versatile nut on the planet. I used them instead of pine nuts in a pesto this week, and it was rich and amazing. I am actually out of pecans now, and I do feel like a little something is missing from my life. But these are the jelly-doughnuts of muffins. You fill each muffin cup halfway full then dollop a little jam in the middle, then fill it up. It gets all warm and gooey and when you break it open, it's a (very hot) beautiful thing.

These muffins also use oat bran, and if you're like me and get confused by all the whole grains in the grocery store (bran v. bran cereal v. oats v. oat bran v. wheat bran and so on) here's what I use. I found it at Wal-Mart, I think, so it's readily available, and I also use it in The Best Ever Bran Muffins. Another post.

Jam and Nut Tea Muffins

(adapted from The Joy of Muffins, "Swedish Strawberry Muffins")

1 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

2/3 cup oat bran

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

4 T unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup preserves, any flavor (raspberry, strawberry, and cherry are excellent)

1/4 cup nuts (chopped pecans or sliced almonds)

1. Preheat the oven to 400 F. Spray a muffin tin well with cooking spray.

2. Mix together the dry ingredients (flour, oat bran, baking powder, baking soda, and sugar) in w large bowl with a whisk.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk the wet ingredients (beat the eggs and add the buttermilk and butter). 

4. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet--stir just enough to moisten.

5. Fill greased muffin tins one-half full. Add a heaping teaspoon of preserves to the center of each, then cover with batter. Sprinkle nuts on top of each muffin, and bake at 400 F for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

6. Allow muffins to cool in pan for 5 minutes, then carefully take them out and place them on a cooling rack. Serve warm.

Makes 12 muffins.

On Blogging

I just attended a workshop (faculty development) session on incorporating blogging into the freshman composition classroom. I plan to teach a "Food in Literature" themed comp course in the spring and had been toying for months with the idea of requiring my students to write themed blogs, if not on food, then on a hobby or a passion. (Basically, anything that's not political if possible. While Barbara Kingsolver can write "Life in a Red State" as a tongue-in-cheek reference to growing tomatoes in the South, I'm not sure I want to introduce the topic of politics and food. Yet.) But I began wondering, as a result of this workshop, about the act of food blogging in the first place. A friend of mine refers to blogging as being a practice "like someone asking you to sit through their vacation pictures." To some extent, she's right. I'm not particularly interested in someone's online journal (unless, perhaps, you're someone I know and rarely see), and quite frankly, I'm not interested in their political opinions. In this heated election season especially, I do all I can to listen to what the candidates say, to read the information I choose online, and ignore the rest. I am put out enough by Sarah Palin's ridiculous "rhetoric" (and that's if winking and midwestern colloquialisms count as rhetoric); I don't want to read what everyone else thinks of it. I don't want to know if you think she's smarter than she seems. We said this about Jessica Simpson, too--think she's qualified for a national political office? I don't want to know if you think she's a moron, or even if you take the more moderate position of "I just don't think she's qualified for this office yet." It's fine for you to feel this way, and it's fine for you to blog about it. That's just not why I'm interested in blogging.

I teach my students about writing with purpose, with a strong sense of audience. That's what blogging is for me. I write about what I love--the food I love. But I don't want it to be just about me. I don't want to catalog everything I put in my mouth. It's actually kind of creepy to think that there could be someone out there who wants to know what I ate for dinner each night. But I write when I want to share something about a food I love. The failed attempts don't make it in to the blog, and not because I don't want to be honest. Trust me, I've had to throw away plenty of moldy bread, saved only because I didn't want to admit it was really that bad. I burn the last batch of almost every cookie recipe I make--I just forget they're in the oven. I recently had a series of mediocre baking attempts before I realized I needed new baking powder. I've killed yeast with too-hot water and accidentally used rancid whole wheat flour. I don't include these because I want to share some recommendations on recipes--recommendations I won't know until the loaf or cookie or cake turns out right. I know what I did wrong, I know how I fixed it, and I want to show you. Maybe be able to include a beautiful photograph while I'm at it. I mean, who doesn't find a loaf of challah soothing?

I love reading food blogs because I love to read about food. I love to read about what people like myself love about food. I don't want to know about their daily lives, unless those details enhance the recipe or their thinking about an item. Maybe I prefer abstract thought to concrete detail; I don't know. Maybe I'm just too damn academic and detached from real life. But I still wonder, why do we blog? Especially about such an intimate act as eating? What is it we want to share? To feel?