Banana-Pineapple Muffins

Our new house has fruit trees in the yard, hooray. Here's DH picking soursop. They're too big for our pole-picker, so he figured he should climb up there after them:


But seriously, how many bananas and soursop can two people eat? If these all ripen at once we're in trouble


I already had too many yellow ones on the counter. This was handled by making banana-pineapple muffins.


Loosely based on my TNT (tried and true) Banana Cake. We had some not-so-fresh fresh pineapple in the fridge, so I added about 2 cups of that, then cut way back on the liquid ingredients, used only about 1/4 cup safflower oil for fat, and cut sugar in half (figuring bananas and pineapple are both sweet).

The muffins turned out fine, but not quite worth making again, so I'm not posting a detailed recipe. You can taste both fruits in good balance, but with so little fat and sugar they're kindawimpy. Some chopped pecans would have been a good addition, but I didn't have any on hand. I've been eating these cut in half and smeared with cream cheese, because otherwise even two of them just don't add up to breakfast.

another move

I knew as soon as I knew we were moving (again) that May would be consumed by planning and packing, June by moving, outcleaning, and unpacking, and that July would be a mad scramble to catch up on everything that got pushed to the back burner during May and June because moving is such a flippin' time-and-energy eater.

I'm pleasantly surprised that, as we edge into the end of July, I'm on the verge of feeling caught up. Yay.

And double, triple, quadruple "yay" that finally we are in a house that we love and want to stay in forever. Don't know how or when we'll be in a position to buy it (for now, we're renting) but that's the plan.

There are so many "best parts" of this house, but one is the kitchen. Bright, spacious, incredibly functional, plenty of storage and counterspace for all of our many appliances. After the horrible kitchen in the previous house -- dark, poor use of space, horrible spidery musty cabinets I couldn't bear to put my dishes in (note to owner: good appliances alone do not make a decent kitchen!) -- it is such a joy to be in this one.

I haven't done much creative cooking lately (lots of the same old, same old meals around here), but have a few items to share, coming up.