Muffin Wednesday: Cranberry Orange

A bunch of meetings and such got in the way of Muffin Wednesday yesterday. So we had Muffin Thursday today!

I pulled some whole cranberries from the freezer to make Cranberry Orange Muffins from Sally's Baking Addiction. The recipe went together quickly and easily and created this beauties:

YUMMO!!!

I whipped up these alone because Jasper had brought me a cookie kit from his CE2 internship at Scratch and Grain. So after the muffins were out of the oven, Jasper and I made chocolate chip cookies.

He humored me with a photo :)

These were also quick and easy - especially since all the ingredients are premeasured for us. Jasper learned to use a cookie scoop and made perfect cookies for our enjoyment! 

:)

Nos. 36 and 37

My most recent reads were Joanne Fluke's Key Lime Pie Murder and Ellie Alexander's Meet Your Baker.

No. 26 was another in Fluke's Hannah Swensen series - always an entertaining mystery:

No. 37 was a new one to me. I found a stack of these at the THS Band garage sale and decided to give them a try. The Bakeshop Mystery is set in Ashland - and in modern day with cell phones and everything ;)

I finished this one in my tent at the coast. A good day :)

Muffin Wednesday: Coffee Cake

Muffin Wednesday is back!!!!

Baking muffins with my students was a pretty big deal in the past. But with duties added to my plate, it sorta fell by the wayside in recent years. But this year, we're making it a priority again!

Today, Beto and I whipped up some coffee cake muffins from a Scratch and Grain mix. The local business, featured on Shark Tank, is one of our internships, and they sometimes send over kits. Yes, please! This was the Organic Coffee Cake and Muffin Kit - just add milk, egg and butter.

Beto learned each step, from measuring butter to greasing the pan to stirring the batter and crumb topping. Then we shared with our friends: 

Yummo! A tasty treat for a fall-like morning in CE2 :)

No. 35

No. 35 was The Alpine Legacy by Mary Daheim:

Another fun mystery set in Washington. I love all the Pacific Northwest references :)

DACA Community Forums

Do you need information about DACA? Two community forums are coming up - including one next week at Tigard High School.

Legal experts will be available to answer general questions.

Garlic Festival 10K, pancakes and a tiny parade (8/12/17)

It's now September, so of course I'd better talk about a race I ran in August. Ugh. Where has the time been going?!?

Brad was out of town on a canyoneering trip, and I was bored. Summer plans just kept falling through, and I was desperate for something fun. The weekend of August 12 offered a bunch of different race options in our area and also at the coast! Since I was home alone, I figured I might as well pick one :)

I decided on the Garlic Festival 10K in North Plains. I've seen this advertised for years with this cute little elephant garlic:

The course was a simple loop around Pumpkin Ridge Golf Course:

I'm prepping for a hilly half in October, so the elevation profile seemed like a good training run:

I arrived nice and early, parked a couple blocks away in a neighborhood, and walked to the starting line. I hit the porta-potties before the line grew and did a little warmup jog. The weather had been super hot, but, fortunately, Aug. 12 was cloudy! I can handle hot a lot easier when the sun isn't beating down on me! I even felt a couple rain drops on the run :)

I wasn't there to race, just to have a structured training run. I kept the pace comfortable, my main goal just to run the entire hill. And I did it - no problem!

Coming down the backside of the hill, I cranked up the speed a little. I always take advantage of gravity :)

With less than a mile to go, the course went gradually uphill - nothing big, but enough to tire me out in the final stretch. The photog caught me working hard:

A thumbs up, even though I was running out of steam:

Eryn came to join me for the Garlic Festival after and was waiting at the end:

There was a woman ahead of me in a purple tank top. I turned the corner and dropped it down a gear... and I took her right at the finish line :)

 

All done! Finishers got medals, socks and elephant garlic :)

 

I finished in 57:16, a 9:13 average. That's good enough for 76/207 overall, 31/123 female and 8/25 female 40-44. For a training run, I'll take it! I hadn't raced in a while, and it felt great to pin on a bib and stretch my legs a bit.

The race was put on by ORRC, which always does a great job! They offer quality races at good prices. This was well organized and well supported, and the course was great. I would definitely recommend this race.

After I cooled down, Eryn and I went to the pancake feed at the senior center. It was perfectly small-town :)

 

Ha!

Then it was time for the parade!!!!! We found a spot on the curb right outside the senior center. A few floats went past:

Then the elephant garlic man:

Handing out GARLIC!

A tractor:

And a cement mixer:

And about 5 minutes later, here came Grand Marshall Kenny:

Kenny zoomed around the street on his scooter. And then it was over. Um... we almost died laughing.

Eryn and I were sitting alone on the curb, and people kept throwing candy our way. Because no one else was around, and we didn't want the candy to rot in the street, we collected this whole pile:

After the parade, we followed the crowd to the festival and checked out the vendor booths. We really wanted to try the "world famous" garlic mashed potatoes and garlic ice cream, but we were STUFFED from the pancakes. Next year!

We both bought books at the used-book sale and then called it a day, happy with our small-town adventure :)

Happy September!

:)