October 23, 2016 - I opened the door to the aroma of home baked muffins . . .

That’s right.  My good husband and I had a discussion earlier in the day regarding my doctor not wanting me to eat anything white as in sugar, white bread, etc.

So, he took that literally, and creatively thinking stopped in the muffin mix isle of the grocery store where he found Martha White’s Honey Bran muffin mix, her Apple Cinnamon muffin mix and her Blueberry muffin mix.   He bought one of each, came home and made muffins.  God bless him.  How he even located the traditional muffin pans in my cake pan cupboard and the little paper cupcake liners that are stashed in another cabinet is beyond my comprehension.  But, he had all day that I worked a double shift to work his magic.

After a double shift which was very tiring in a long hard week of double shifts, when I opened the door the aroma was more than welcoming.  I sniffed the air and couldn’t discern what he had made, but it sure smelled good.

“I made muffins,” he told me immediately as I was half way in the door.

“What kind?” I asked.

He listed them and then added, “You said you didn’t want any more white bread, and you know they cost less than one loaf bread.”

“Muffins,” I repeated as I walked over to the stove where a pristine dish towel was draped over the evidence.  I lifted up the towel and there were the empty Martha White mix bags under each respective pan.  They made me smile; he had taken a lot of time and effort to accomplish this. 

I sat to rest my feet which hurt from standing on them from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. with hardly a sit down all shift as he made me a cup of decaffeinated tea.  At random I picked the apple cinnamon.  I immediately noticed that it was the traditional ‘muffin’ size that you no longer see in the bakery these days.  It is the correct size – not the gigantic expensive muffins that you see in the upscale coffee shops we have these days.

Biting into it I’d forgotten how good the Martha White mixes actually are.  I remembered how I had taken a piece off the top and a piece off the side of that expensive muffin a couple of weeks ago and it was so sickly sweet and sticky to the touch that I couldn’t eat it and I tossed it. [Made me mad I had wasted almost $4 on that gigantic, coffee-house muffin.]   

Martha’s muffin was firm textured, perfectly flavored, and not too sweet and the correct muffin-sized portion.   It met all the qualification I was taught in home economics’ class when I was in High School.  [Do they even have those classes anymore?]  Yes, it was an exemplary muffin, and anyone can do it if you know about “Martha White’s muffin mixes”. 

In fact, this muffin surprise falls under the “frugal” living I was discussing a few days ago.  My husband bought 3 packages of muffins, made them and they were cheaper than the one “gigantic” muffin I had couple weeks ago.  And, then you had your choice of three different flavors – not just one muffin, one flavor.  It was a “WIN-WIN” for “frugality” and for the little muffin-face, me. [Of course, I doubt it would please any doctor, but especially mine.]

As they say here in the South, “He done good!”