It's been a rough couple of days here in the Not Betsy household, between coming down with a monster of a cold and finding out that our six-year-old air conditioning unit needs to be replaced.  So, I did what I always do in tough times...bake.

Yes, I love to sew, it's my most favorite thing in the world to do right now, but baking was my first love.  I've been baking since I was a little girl, under the tutelage of my mother, who learned from her mother, and so on.  In our family, baked goods have always been something special; never something that came from a box, always something that was made from scratch.  I can remember when I learned that the way we baked in our family was not exactly the norm; my best friend's mother suggested that we make brownies during a sleepover when I was 8, and she pulled out a red box of Betty Crocker brownie mix from the pantry.  That was probably the moment I turned into a baking snob.  I'm kidding...mostly ;)  I'm just the kind of dork who enjoys baking from scratch.


Here in Florida, it's blueberry season.  Our local blueberry farm opened up for picking last week and we trucked over there on the weekend and picked ourselves 6 pounds of gorgeous blueberries.  We've been going there since the munchkin was barely walking, and he's become quite the blueberry aficionado over the years.  Now, the munchkin would be a blueberry-a-tarian, if we would let him, but us grown-ups prefer our blueberries tarted up a bit.  Enter my blueberry muffins...

I've been making blueberry muffins since I was a little girl, but it wasn't until the last two years that I had to tinker with the classic family recipe.  See, my husband is painfully allergic to all forms of dairy, so he has to steer clear of milk and butter - you know, the good stuff.  And my family blueberry recipe called for milk, as well as butter, to create a rich muffin.  Thankfully, through some trial and error, I've reformulated the recipe to not only taste fabulous but also to not contain one ounce of dairy.  Do yourself a favor and make these muffins this weekend, even if you can only find frozen blueberries - trust me, you will be a happy camper :)

Blueberry Lemon Muffins

Makes 24 muffins


2 cups all-purpose, unbleached flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
Zest of one large lemon
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
1 cup milk (I used soy here, but regular milk works well here too)
1 T apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups blueberries (frozen or fresh)

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Prepare two standard sized 12-cup muffin trays either with Pam or muffin liners.

2. Add sugar, oil, milk, and vinegar to one large bowl and whisk until well combined.  In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients and lemon zest with a fork.

3. Dump your dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix gently.  Don't overmix - you'll create tough muffins.  A few streaks of flour are okay here.

4. Add your blueberries and fold gently into the batter, again being careful not to overmix.

5. Fill muffin liners/cups approximately halfway full and bake in your preheated oven for 20-22 minutes.  Allow muffins to sit in tray for five minutes after they come out of the oven, then transfer to a cooling rack to finish cooling, although these muffins taste fantastic when they're warm!  They also freeze well.

Happy Friday to you all, I hope you have a great weekend!

It's amazing how quickly something can stop being a habit after being a habit for so long.  The last couple of weeks, I've fallen off the WiP Wednesday horse, but today, I'm trying to climb back on and get back in the swing of blogging again.  I think the last couple of weeks, I've been grasping at straws of what to blog about, as I work on some behind-the-scenes projects that I can't share for a while, but I've decided that regardless of what I'm working on, I can still write.  When I first started blogging, I found so much enjoyment just in writing, and somewhere along the way, I think I got a little bit off-centered with my writing, focusing so much more on finishing projects than on enjoying the process and writing about the process.  Speaking of progress...here's what I've got going on this week:

New York Beauty swap - I've moved these blocks around a few times, and I just can't seem to decide how I want to finish this one up, so I decided to make a few more blocks to see if that helps me out.  I decided that I wanted to make a mini, and use some tiny quarter blocks in the corners of the mini, so I shrunk the templates by 50%, and attempted to make a corner block that failed miserably.




The tiny paper piecing was a cinch, but I was totally defeated by the tiny curves.   Just not enough fabric to work with!  So, I'm heading back to the drawing board, trying to figure out what kind of border to add to this mini to make it pop.  Maybe I'll freehand some other kind of paper pieced border, we'll see.

Brooke's block for {Sew} Beautiful - Brooke has asked for Mod Mosaic blocks, using a gradated color plan she shared on her blog.  I think this is going to be really stunning.  My color pack is green, so I'll be working from yellow to green to green-blue in my block.

The munchkin's new quilt - The munchkin announced at lunch a few weeks ago that his quilts are too big.  That he wants one he can snuggle up with like his Grammy blanket, a ratty old blue fleece blanket my mother gave him.  He has asked that it be a superhero quilt, with lots of blue (still going strong as his favorite color!), but that's about as far as I've gotten with him.   So far, I've pulled together these fabrics, working from a Batman-inspired color scheme.

Patchwork Wheel scrap quilt - I know I said I was going to wait on this, but my one Patchwork Wheel block looked kind of lonely, so I decided to make a few friends for it :)  I love how simple this block is to make, and how cool is looks when you start putting blocks together.

And last but not least, I can share one tiny (and I do mean tiny!) snippet of a project I've finished up that I'm hoping you'll see in a few months.

Now, you know the drill - write up what you're working on and share it over at Lee's for WiP Wednesday.  Scoot on over there to see lots of other great bloggers and what they're up to this week.

Hard to believe it's April already, isn't it?  Did you see Amy's fab post yesterday?  If not, hop on over there and check it out.  Totally awesome. :)

No April Fools' pranks at my house this weekend, just a nice visit with my mother and a bit of sewing.  Not too long ago, I received a gorgeous bundle of Oakshott shot cotton fabrics.  I had no idea what I was going to use them for at first, but I knew I was looking forward to trying them out.

 
I stared at them for a while, and this weekend, I felt compelled to whack into them and start using them.  My friend Amy asked me to join in a small New York Beauty swap between friends, and I just had a feeling that these shot cottons would be gorgeous as part of a New York Beauty mini or pillow.




As I paper pieced my little heart out with these beauties, I marveled at just how gorgeous they were.  Practically iridescent, these fabrics changed colors every time I moved the fabric, almost shimmering in the light.  Not only that, they're super soft.



It's been a while since I've done intense paper piecing, but I've had fun so far, working on these little quarter blocks.  I'm not quite sure how many more blocks I'm going to do just yet, but I'm playing around with the layout, trying to decide what I like best.




The other highlight of my weekend was seeing my dear husband tackling the crazy invasion of pollen and leaves in our front yard.  I've never seen so much pollen in our yard in all the years we've lived here; it feels as if our huge oak tree has an endless supply this year!  I sure hope we've seen the worst of it by now.



The mailman also made my day this weekend - I got some gorgeous bee blocks in the mail from my friends in the {Sew} Beautiful bee.  For my turn last month, I asked them to make up one of three blocks I designed, strictly using squares of different sizes, to create a quilt I'm calling Squaretastic for now.  I will be sharing tutorials with you guys for the three Squaretastic blocks at some point, as soon as I find some time to make some blocks of my own.



All in all, definitely a good weekend.  What did you do this weekend?  Did you do some sewing?  Happy Monday!