One of my favorite times as a little girl were Sunday mornings in the spring. Trees surrounded the windows, and birds were always chirping a chorus when I walked into our kitchen. One year, we had a returning visitor, a little yellow parakeet who had presumably escaped his home not too long ago. He watched from a branch as we ate breakfast together and laughed; he seemed to enjoy his new liberation from the confines of a little wire cage, and we enjoyed seeing his bright feathers peeking in through the windows. I liked to think that after his time at our window, he migrated south, maybe to Miami, where he met lots of other free-spirited and colorful birds :)

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The best of these Sunday mornings were those when I made doughnuts with my Mom. We'd use tubes of Pillsbury Biscuit dough, twisting the cardboard cylinder until it popped open. The dough came out in little pre-cut circles, and we'd lay out each one and cut it into quarters, then roll each quarter into a ball. My Mom was in charge of heating the oil in our big ole' Fry Daddy. I'd hand the dough balls to her, and she'd toss them into the oil to fry. She pulled them out minutes later, and right when they were cool enough to handle (I burned my little fingers many-a-time in anticipation of that moment), I'd toss them into one of three tupperware containers, each one filled with a different sweet mixture, and I'd snap the lid closed and start to shake away. One container was filled with powdered sugar, one with granulated sugar, and one with granulated sugar and cinnamon, my *favorite!* At last, I'd pull the sweetened doughnuts out of the containers and place them onto one of our white plates, licking my fingers as I arranged them into a little pyramid.

These muffins remind me of those mornings in Illinois...my Mom at my side in the kitchen; my Dad in the family room, reading, the newspaper spread out in front of him; and my brother upstairs, still snoring, deep in slumber, slowly waking as the smells of doughnuts and scrambled eggs and bacon wafted up into his bedroom from the busy kitchen... :)

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Doughnut Muffins
Adapted from recipe by Downtown Bakery in Healdsburg, CA

Makes 12 standard or 24 mini muffins

Muffins
12 Tbs. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 scant cup sugar
2 large eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
½ Tbs. plus 1 tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. baking soda
1 scant tsp. salt
½ tsp. nutmeg
½ cup plus 1/3 cup milk
1/8 cup buttermilk

Dipping Mixture
8 Tbs. unsalted butter, melted
1 cup sugar
1 Tbs. cinnamon

To make these *deeeelicious* muffins, position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat it to 350ºF. In a stand mixer or a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until just mixed in. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg. In a small bowl, combine the milk and buttermilk. With a wooden spoon, mix a quarter of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture. Then mix in a third of the milk mixture. Continue mixing in the remaining dry and wet ingredients alternately, ending with the dry. Mix until well combined and smooth, but don't over-mix. Grease and flour a standard-size muffin tin or two mini-muffin tins. Scoop enough batter into each tin so that the top of the batter is even with the rim of the cup. Bake the muffins until firm to the touch, 30 to 35 minutes if using a standard-size tin, less if you’re using mini-muffin tins.

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Now comes the fun! Melt the butter for the dipping mixture. Whisk together the sugar and cinnamon. When the muffins are just cool enough to handle, remove them from the tins, use a pastry brush to brush them all over with the melted butter, and then roll them in the cinnamon sugar.

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Finally, serve them on a pretty little old-fashioned tray and invite your friends over for brunch!

maybe it's the caffeine or ther weather, or maybe i really am just high on life lately. these past few days i have found it harder than usual to sit at my desk and work ... there are so many ideas running through my head! i am so grateful for all my blessings right now: a loving family who i'll be seeing in chicago in a month and a half; my friends, some of whom i'll be crusing on bikes around the ocean with this weekend; my job (i know! i can't stand it, but it's a peach of a situation, really) which pays the bills; my apartment which now smells like donut muffins that i made last night; and so on ... thank you, universe.

more later..

"There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior

like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us."

- RW Emerson

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart, and his friends can only read the title.

~Virginia Woolf

I can always count on the OBUGS kids to brighten my days. On Friday, we harvested radishes, played with millipedes and worms, and learned how to peel and chop garlic. Mary, the little one on the left, is my favorite! She's so goofy and sweet.

The rest of the weekend, I spent time outside, with friends, and cutting up linoleum blocks (and my fingers while I was at it). I only permantently injured one finger on this design below! I call it 'Viva la Chainring.'

On Sunday, my friends and I grilled some Swedish Fish for dinner at Mosswood Park in Oakland...we eventually grilled some pretzels, Sweet Tarts, kettle corn, cheetos, tortilla chips and gingersnaps, too, but the fish were the biggest hit, by far. When thrown into the burning embers below the grilltop, they emit a beautiful smell! Fantastic.

That evening, Kirk Cameron and the Growing Pains (my kickball team) lost yet another game. I pitched pretty well, but my kicking was regrettable. Even the flag I made and flew for our team didn't help us out. We are just not good. But it was fun nonetheless :)

To my blog readers who are prim and proper, I warn you that the following post may be graphic and upsetting to you. You may not want to read on. I will use language you may never have heard me use; I will show a level of comfort with a low-brow lifestyle that may alienate you; I will, essentially, be me ... and I just wanted to warn you :)

First, it is of utmost importance to announce that the Oakland kickball season has begun. About twelve of us gathered at Mosswood Park in our fair city on Sunday evening for the season opener. Assisted by cans of PBR and swigs of whiskey, we raucously competed for two hours on the baseball diamond, kicking up dust, whipping balls at one another, and heckling the willies out of our competitors.

My team was decimated by the other team, which was stacked with experienced players and various small children from the neighborhood who spontaneously joined the game. It really wasn't fair to my team, but we stuck with it. I got some bruises and pulled a few muscles, but I'll be back next week...wiser and ready for some serious game.

Secondly, I got to play with cow dookie last night!! In my Urban Agroecology class, we built a compost pile: straw, manure, soil, coffee grounds, water, straw, manure, soil, coffee grounds, water...you get the idea. In the weeks to come, we'll stir up our (hopefully seethingly hot) compost bed and eventually start using the compost in the garden that we are building at Merritt College.

More on urban farming soon........

It's done, folks. And it tastes DAMN GOOD. You can read all about Cycle Brewing Co-Op's 28-Day Ale earlier in my chronicles...but in short, this was a ladies-only brew made from the blood, sweat and tears of Holly, Sam, Alicia and me. We had a bike-in release party at Holly's and basked in the glory of homebrew success :)

These past few weeks have been revelators. I'd been doing what I'd already done, and thus feeling like I'd always felt...and I began to feel just so beyond where I've been. That previous sentence either says a whole lot of something or a can full of nothing, I'm not sure which. For some time, despite welcoming some changes, I haven't welcomed certain changes that upset the comfort, freedom and predictability in my life because those things, frankly, have become really addictive. Anymore, though, these stabilizers don't feel right; with my daily paid work, I feel wasteful with my energies and inhibited in my creativity. Surely I can be putting myself to even better use for the greater good!!! I'm worn out from the laziness and disconnectedness that this corporate American life promotes, and even sets as an ideal. I've learned that the best way to get myself out of ruts is to innundate myself with fresh people and environments. So, I started volunteering after school with a group of kids on Fridays in West Oakland in their garden as part of OBUGS; I signed up for a class in Urban Agroecology at Merritt College, the curriculum of which includes developing a sustainable campus in the Oakland hills; I did a little volunteering with Revolution Foods, a group that provides healthy school lunches to several elementary and high schools in the East Bay; I took my first banjo lesson and have been practicing every night since; I contacted old friends who I've been wanting to talk to for a long time, and most importantly I started making plans for an *epic* affordable summer adventure.

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So far, my plan is working pretty well...I've redirected myself and that I'm gaining speed in the right direction :) I'm sure there will be speed bumps along the way, but I'm ready and willing to deal with them!

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On Friday, the OBUGS kids and I harvested collard greens out of their school garden and cooked them up for an afterschool snack, and we concurrently potted some flowers from the garden so that the kids could transplant them into their soil at home. We did a little investigation around the garden and found, in a dark corner, a whithering Lemon Verbena tree. After I taught them how to crush the leaves between their fingers to get a more intense smell, they were amazed and immediately demanded that we water the tree and bring it back to life! My garden coordinator and I are going to plan an Herb Walk for one of the days where we go through the garden and introduce the kids to all the scents and sights and textures of the various herbs we have growing there.

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As for the epic summer adventure, I'm still planning the details...but I divulge that it *will* at least include a banjo, lots of soil and shovels and working with my hands, plenty of farmer's markets, time spent in the northern reaches of California and possibly on some rivers in Colorado, a long-overdue visit to my grandma out in her old steel-mill town in PA, a whole lot of working with things that light my fire...and a whole lot of meeting other people who are similarly passionate...at last!