I had a few ripe pears laying around and decided I was going to make ginger pear waffles for breakfast Sunday; however, Brad decided he likes muffins better than waffles for breakfast.  Thus, I began the search for a good ginger pear muffin recipe.  The only vegan recipes I came across had 1/2 cup of oil.  Talk about fattening…  So, I modified this recipe to suit my needs.  I think my version blows the other one out of the water.  Well, I never tried the other, so I can’t say for sure.  I’m just guessing!

Anyway, these muffins were amazing.  And you never miss all that oil…

Vegan Ginger Pear Muffins

Yield: 12 normal or 6 jumbo muffins

1.5 cup all purpose flour

0.5 cup whole wheat flour

0.25 cup white sugar

0.25 cup dark brown sugar

2.75 tsp baking powder for high altitude (1 TBSP for normal elevation)

0.5 tsp salt

0.25 tsp cinnamon

1″ grated fresh ginger

0.25 tsp nutmeg

0.75 cup soymilk

1 peeled, cored, grated pear

2 TBSP canola oil

1 large pear, peeled, cored, and diced

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Oil muffin tin of choice.  

Combine flours, baking powder, and dry spices in a large bowl.  In a medium bowl, combine sugars, soymilk, grated ginger, grated pear, and oil.  Add wet ingredients to dry and mix just until combined.  Fold in the diced pears.  Scoop into muffin tins.  Bake 20 minutes for normal sized muffins or ~35 for jumbo.  (I only made the jumbo size, so I can’t vouch for the 20 minutes on the normal sized.  What can I say…  I like large muffins!)  Let muffins cool in pan for a few minutes, then move to a cooling rack.  You don’t want soggy muffins.

City Park at Sunrise

Originally uploaded by Christy Payne.

Brad came in for a visit this weekend. He is less than three weeks away from finishing school as well!

Anyway, last night we were sitting around eating dinner and watching a movie and hear this crazy noise. He goes to check it out, and lo and behold, it has snowed nearly 2 inches since we came home. The “crazy noise” was someone shoveling the sidewalk, but it’s not a common sound for a southerner like me.

The funniest part is that Katie asked me to take photos of all the snow the night before when we were chatting. I’m all like, “The snow is almost all gone. It’s just really cold here.” So apparently, mother nature wanted Katie to have her pictures of the snow. Although, I thought there was just a bunch of snow in Portland.

    An unprecedented two posts in a week’s time? I never thought the day would come!

So my first full week of work was a seeming success. I didn’t break anything to my knowledge, and was only tempted to surf the internet during my lunch break. I have way too much to learn about oil and gas processing and being a real engineer to waste any time right now. Oh yeah, and there’s free coffee, hot chocolate, and mocha out of one of those dispenser machines. You can’t beat that. Actually, the coffee’s not the best, but when you’re trying to stay awake because you get up at 5am, it works.
My stuff is completely unpacked, and nearly everything is in its place. The moving company is coming to pick up all the boxes and paper on Wednesday, so then I can finally use my back sunroom. Then I promise I will take photos to post on Flickr.

I credit this productivity to the lack of cable TV, which will take a nose dive tomorrow as the cable man should be coming to connect my blissful Food Network. I haven’t actually watched the Food Network in a year and a half, so I hope the programming hasn’t gotten any worse. As long as Alton Brown is still there, I’m cool. I had a dream that I got to meet him last night. Of course, he loved me being a chemical engineer and all. There wasn’t much to it except for our mutual admiration. Maybe one day we can meet, and I will steal him away from his wife!

Speaking of food, I may be making some vegan jelly donut cupcakes tonight or tomorrow. I’m thinking about going to this potluck music show that Jeremy Averitt, of Cookeville notoriety, pointed out. I need to get out and meet people outside of work.

This is for Ariel… I’m pretty sure she’s the only one reading this. Well, and Ross, of course, because he is forced by Ariel…

So, long story short… In the more than year since I have posted, I have finished my Ph.D. and moved to Denver. I started my new job with Big Name Engineering Firm on Wednesday, and I have to say it is very nice to not be a grad student anymore. Not that being a grad student didn’t have it’s perks (i.e. a flexible schedule to do as you wish during the day)… I have been doing mostly little programming tasks for which no one else has time. Not a bad gig… It’s better than writing manuals, which is what I was told I would do until someone had time to take me into their project.

I still have to get my stuff unpacked. It didn’t arrive until the day I started my job. Once I get things squared away, I will take photos of my new abode. I should have taken a photo of the outside the day I got here. There were at least four inches of snow on the ground. It’s nearly all melted though. Except for that alley I tried to drive through last night and almost didn’t make it out of… The ice between the tire grooves was taller than the clearance of my car!

I promise, Ariel, I will try to keep up with this blogging thing again. Oh yeah, I found out the beer festival thing sells out months in advance, so if you want to go, we need to be prepared.

I don’t have much to say. Same old stuff mostly… I went to Portland last weekend and ran my second marathon. My time was 20 minutes faster than the first. If I keep shaving twenty minutes off of each marathon, it will only take me three more to qualify for Boston. That’ll take some serious motivation to run fast on my part though. I’d be pretty content to get to a 4 hours marathon. Maybe someday…

There’s this new cookbook devoted entirely to vegan cupcake recipes, and I want it. Although, I’m torn on whether to purchase it or not. If I buy it, I will surely bake more cupcakes. At the moment, however, I am making an effort to eat fewer desserts. Like say, once or twice a week instead of once or twice a day… It can’t hurt to have it to look at right? And I can give away my treats if they turn out…

Why are there some people you can never forget? It’s not that you want to remember them. Just that they made such a significant mark on your subconscious that years pass and you still have dreams involving them.

In a complete and utter tangent, have you ever cooked beets before?! They are beautiful! As far as taste is concerned, they are not my favorite veggie, but they look absolutely gorgeous on a plate. However, avoid getting them near anything you don’t want to have a fuchsia tint for a couple of days. Sorry for the lack of photos. I need to buy new rechargeable batteries for my camera. My old ones refuse to hold a charge for longer than a few minutes.

The FDA finally approved the UVA blocking sunscreen ingredient Mexoryl. It has been around since the early 90’s in other countries! I wish I could hear some arguments as to why it took so long for the US government to approve it. Perhaps oncologists were lobbying against it because they might lose too much business then abruptly stoped after they realized lazy Americans don’t regularly use sunscreen anyway. I can’t wait to give the new product a try. I hope it isn’t too greasy.

At least in the molecular simulation world…  I have been at a conference in Blaine, WA for the past couple of days with bunch of molecular simulation experts and students.  It seems as though I have either met everyone before, students at least, or I know them through a friend.  The very first night at a social event I was approached by a guy from U. Warwick.  He is apparently a friend of a close friend of mine I met two years ago in Wales (I am speaking of you, Rob).  And yet another guy attending this conference I met two years ago at the same workshop in Wales.  This guy’s girlfriend, whom he also met in Wales, will be working down the hall from me at Vandy very soon as well.  And if that weren’t enough, the same random Greek fellow I roomed with at this conference three years ago has returned.  It’s all so…  Incestuous.

In other inane conference news, I made my very first trip to Canada yesterday.  Well…  I wouldn’t really call it a trip so much as an excuse to say I have been to Canada.  We had a couple of hours yesterday afternoon to “mingle” and discuss important scientific topics with fellow scientists, so a group of very “dedicated” scientists (I include myself in this.) made a trip to Vancouver to discuss our issues.  Strangely enough, it took three times as long to get into Canada than to get back in the US.  The US border official told us our story was crazy enough that it had to be true, so he let us into the country only checking our passports and the foreign students visa waivers.  Apparently a chatty Irish driver who doesn’t remember the names of all the people of four different nationalities in the car is a good story if you are looking to gain entrance to the US.  I suppose it did help that they had already been in the US.

Ever had a Lara bar? They’re probably one of the tastier “energy bars”. Along with Clif bars, of course… Well, I found a recipe, well not so much a recipe as general guidelines, to make them.  They are insanely easy to make and slightly cheaper, though you don’t have the nice packaging.  If you have a food processor and like energy bars/granola bars as snacks, I highly suggest giving these a try.

Now, on to my vegan coconut cupcakes to counter the healthful snack…

I went for one of my training runs today after having missed my run yesterday. No worries though… I only missed three miles which I am sure I made up for by walking everywhere in DC the past couple of days. Anyway, I headed out the door knowing that it might rain on me. I have been rained on before while running, but in times past, it has always been cold. Most of the runs I have done up to now have been in the late fall or winter. Aside from running in Albuquerque last summer where rain wasn't a problem… Needless-to-say, I didn't really enjoy running in the rain. Well, that is a thing of the past. I was about halfway into my seven miles today when hit with a massive downpour. The raindrops were so large that they were initially painful. I just happened to be coming up on downtown when this happened so the sidewalks quickly cleared of tourists and businesspeople making navigating the usually crowded area significantly easier. Not only did the rain make it easier to get by, it also cooled down this inferno we call Tennessee. The only downside to running in the rain seems to be the exponential increase in catcalls and stares from creepy men with nothing better to do than wait out the storm. Strange… Oh yeah, and sloshy feet when it stops… So what I have been trying to say is I think I have made friends with the rain. At least temporarily…