Day 141

It's a beautiful 60 degrees today with a bit of gloom. Like my son, I appreciate a gloomy day since it makes me look forward to the sunny days even more. He on the other hand, just likes gloomy days better than any other day. As you know, I've been missing cooking and so I am cooking this weekend. Having had a couple of extra days off makes me feel like I can invest the time it takes to cook something good. First, let me say that I stayed in bed, on purpose, until after 10am! Yes, and it was lovely to do. After arising and feeding the masses with sausages and eggs for breakfast (breakfast is my favorite meal to cook, by the way) I started the planning for the rest of the day and tomorrow. I'm baking a ham tonight so that we have a great evening meal, leftovers for lunches next week and a nice ham bone for my pinto beans tomorrow. Yummy!! However, I also wanted to bake something. I briefly entertained baking some sweet muffins, but decided instead on the savory variety to go with Chili I am also going to cook today. So, here are my favorite corn muffins to serve with Chili. (I don't know where I got the original recipe from, but I made changes, so it is an adaptation of someone else's recipe!)

Chili Cheese Muffins

1 cup yellow cornmeal

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese (I like medium Cheddar)

1/2 cup taco sauce (use picante if you like, I did with this batch)

1/3 cup sour cream

1 egg, lightly beaten

3 tablespoons corn oil (or whatever fat you have and like)

1 can (3 ounces) chopped green chilies, drained

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease a 12 cup muffin tin and set it aside.

In a large bowl combine the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt; stir in the cheese. In another bowl, stir together the sauce, sour cream, egg, oil and chilies until well blended. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients; add the wet mixture and stir to combine. If the mixture is very dry, I add more sour cream or sometimes a little milk or buttermilk. The mixture is a heavy batter what with all the cheese!

Spoon the batter into prepared muffin cups; bake 20 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of one muffin comes out clean.

Allow the muffins to cool for 5 minutes in the tin and then remove the muffins to a wire rack to finish cooling. Serve them warm or store them in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Allow the muffins to reach room temperature or warm slightly before serving. They also freeze well.

As I said, these muffins are great served along side a nice steaming bowl of your favorite chili!  My son always asks for seconds!!

The rest of today will be spent doing things to get ready for my sister's visit next week and more cooking. It's been a long time since I baked a ham, so I'm sure you're going to see pictures of that, too! Along with the ham, I'll be serving Roasted Baby Gold Potatoes with Onions and Broccolini and German Carrots. I hope it all turns out good!

Today so far, I've eaten two slices of Pumpernickel toast, a flour tortilla with some butter and half of one of the Chili Cheese Muffins. All bread!! Watch out everyone, I may actually be a hopeless case!! No, I haven't been for a walk yet, but the day is still young. I'll do my best to either get outside or on the treadmill. I did take good care of my skin this morning and teeth, so there is some good in the day.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out the blog. I hope you found something interesting here. Until tomorrow when I'll likely share more about cooking, chores and life, sweet dreams, Sweeties!!