Monday, May 24, 2010

a muffin broke my heart...

So this morning I felt a familiar pang of desire for morning tea, a coffee and a muffin was the essence of the pang's focus. I've given this particular habit the boot for a while now, bad habits die hard and this is one that regularly rears its ugly head and I usually have no problem batting it away or at least distracting it long enough for lunch time to emerge. Chocolate is another story altogether but lets stick with what I can do rather than what I can't. 


And this, my friends, has been no easy feat - I fondly recall mornings of drifting through the isles of the cafe with the heady wafts of freshly baked croissants for company to select the most perfect patisserie to pair with my latte while the baker placed a baguette in the oven so that it would be just right for lunch time...ahhh, those were the days...ok they were just coffee scrolls or donuts (with pink icing and sprinkles no less) and while I am a supreme coffee snob I would sometimes succumb to the allure of a farmer's union iced coffee (I am a south aussie after all). But this morning ritual was something the bff and I did for many a long while - there are few things we like more than chatting and pairing liquids and solids, be it coffee and cake, bellinis and eggs, alicante and, well, anything :) We were both miserable sods dragging our feet through postgraduate study and these moments in the morning became our salvation and were the beginning of the bff-ship. After we no longer worked together this ritual had a whole big beautiful life of its own and seemed to be so engrained that not completing it everyday might leave me distraught, rocking in a corner murmuring to myself.


So, back to today, I get the urge and decide that if I can find The Right Thing the ritual will be undertaken and completed. I head to my local QFC, which has a huge range of healthy, not-so-healthy and just plain dangerous baked goods. I circled the department eyeing off this, that and the other, knowing without looking further that the donuts and cinnabons-knock-offs would not fill the bill. The local baker-shelf-fillers noticed me wandering and urge me to move on and not hover around their precarious display of bagels longer than they'd like. I was undetered though, I would find The Right Thing or there would be no morning tea. And then I saw them...Almond and Poppyseed muffins, they even pass the nutritional content scrutiny which frankly, in and of itself makes these muffins pretty darn miraculous. The calorie content sealed the deal - a smallish muffin was 270calories, totally doable. 


The four pack come home with me, we made a cup of tea to make the perfect pair and oh my, we made a happy little trio. Seriously, almond and poppyseed are a match made in the muffin world. So much so, that I figured I truly enjoyed the muffin so much that another would complete the union. And while 2*270calories is not great for mid morning treat it is something that is rare for me and I wasn't looking to repeat it everyday. So I had it and I loved it - my belly was telling me it loved almond and poppyseed too and the urge was completely placated and reset for many-a-day of resisting such urges.


About two hours later I was in the kitchen and decided to put the remaining muffins in the freezer - Mr C might like them at some point or they might be just the thing for The DragonLady* when she visits. Like with everything I freeze I like to write the calorie content on the freezy bag - and did so for the muffins - I was just double checking before I wrote it down and you know where this is heading don't you...the calorie content was per serving size and the serving size? half a muffin. My little sojourn down morning-ritual-memory-lane cost me twice as much as I had thought. Bugger....




*The DragonLady is my Mum - it is a name she gave herself a long long time ago when she first met Mr C - she doesn't usually do the name justice, but the potential is there and its a sign of respect that we continue to use this truly foreboding name :) Oh, and she is coming to visit us in July/August and she is a lady with a taste for cake :)

2 comments:

  1. Love love love your voice.

    Welcome to blogging!!

    Carla

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  2. I can't believe we would sweat it out at the gym and then devour a danish and wash it down 1/2 a litre of iced coffee - Gah! We were insane!!!

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