I’ve been talking to a great aunt of mine every day, every fifteen minutes because she forgets that she’s called. Recently we discussed a tomato sandwich that she ate. She said it reminded her of my mother. Lots of foods make me think of my great aunt. The big three are fried baby catfish, tomatoes, and blueberry muffins.

My great aunt grew blueberry vines like crazy over her patio. She would harvest them, coat them in sugar, freeze them, then make blueberry muffins. They were the moistest, yummiest thing I ever ate with the possible exceptions of fried baby catfish and home-grown tomatoes.

With all this memory, aunt, food energy going around every 15 minutes, I figured I’d better make some blueberry muffins. Parrish was off LEGOing with a buddy, Jesse was working, and George and I were on our own. I recruited her for baking duty. George had her own ideas about muffins. What if we traded out the blueberries with chocolate chips? What if we traded out the lemon juice for vanilla and almond extracts? Here is what we got:

I don’t have my aunt’s recipe, but maybe I’ll get it in the next 15 minutes. Here’s the one we made up for ourselves.

Directions:

Sift in medium bowl
1.5 cu flour (I wanted to use wheat, but we had none, which made the muffins way more yummier than planned)
1/2 tsp Coke (baking soda, but not what George called it)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt.

Beat in another bowl
1/3 cu sugar
4 tbs melted organic butter
3/4 cu organic milk
2 organic bantam eggs
2 tbs organic vanilla (too strong, but wanted moisture)
1 tb almond extract (too strong, but wanted moisture).

Blend the wet mixture with the dry then add 1 cu organic, fairly traded chocolate chips. (Don’t these ingredients seem bourgeois? All the social climbers are going socially and environmentally conscious with their food.)

Fill greased muffin pan with mixture and put in preheated 350 degree oven for 20ish minutes. Cool muffins on a rack a while, then eat straight away. Don’t forget to turn off your oven. I forgot and the kitchen got quite hot. Luckily I don’t cook often enough to worry about the gas bill.

George and I are majorly self-congratulatory. We did a yum-yum-yummy job. Parrish took a bite and declared they were awful. Later he confessed that he liked the bite but wanted to protect his reputation. The next morning he requested a muffin for breakfast, so apparently he got over his “rep”. It’s cute that Parrish is self-aware, but I’d rather him be a big geek who is all himself, than super cool and hidden. I’ll work on that.

For now we will choke back what ails us with chocolate chip muffins Georgie style. The next thing on my list is to figure out what to do with the unused blueberries. Maybe I’ll ask my aunt. Is that my phone ringing?