Apple muffins and Trader Joe’s
We have a lot of apples in the house right now and have had a lot of apples for the past month. Since I’m home with the boys enjoying a long weekend I took the opportunity to drink 3 double-shot lattes and then I made some apple muffins. Once we were fueled with caffeine and carbs we headed out to run errands and go shopping.
The new Trader Joe’s is on Monroe Street in Madison. There is plenty of on-street parking and even though construction is still on-going it wasn’t too bad. The store is spacious and well laid out. I bought some artichokes and raspberries from the produce section, organic orange juice, milk, and 1/2 n 1/2 from the dairy aisle which is also where I found the European-style butter Plugra. The cheese area was too packed but I did manage to pick up a Cotswald from Glouchester and a lovely little cheese from Ireland that was wrapped in a pretty green wax. The nut and snack area was not so crowded and I chose some Tamari almonds and Wasabi almonds. I use to buy nuts at Willy but the prices were really high and the freshness in question so I turned to NutsOnline which is great. I’ll have to take more time to compare prices the next time I go to TJ’s.
The juice aisle had my all-time favorite, Gravenstein Apple Juice from Sebastopol, California. The Gravenstein Apple is included in the Slow Food ark. It is an irregular shaped apple with a short stem and the trees produce ripe apples at different times during the harvest period. It is also a delicate and highly perishable apple. In California it was available maybe once a year at the farmer’s market. I think much of them are pressed for juice and it is delicious.
Then came the condiment, sauce aisle. I was really hoping to find the Trader Joe’s Muffaletta spread. We use to buy it in SF and toss it on linguine for a cheap, fast dinner. They didn’t have it but there was olive brushetta, and sun dried brushetta, and tapenade, and pitted Kalamata olives, and unfiltered extra virgin olive oil, and sweet red peppers, and pesto. It was a very successful trip and the boys loved it. It is great to have a Trader Joe’s back in our life. We also bought some prepared and packaged sushi that was in one of the cold cases on the left as you enter, just past the flowers. It was horrible and yes, we should have known better, but it looked pretty. But it was bad, bad, bad.
Next stop was Capital City Comics at 1910 Monroe. Alex hit it off with the gentleman in charge and by the time I caught up he was set up with a copies of The Walking Dead and Civil War.
I was waylaid by a store I passed, A Stone’s Throw, because of the hoodies I saw in the window. It is a great store with lots of good microfiber clothes.
That’s it. Don’t forget, on Saturday night we’ll shut out servers down at 10:00 p.m. The blog will be parked at my ISP so you can view it, but you won’t be able to post comments. We do this to avoid any Linux or BSD headaches with the time change. Enjoy the muffins.
1 and 3/4 cup of unbleached flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup 1/2 n 1/2
1 egg
zest of half a large lemon
1 teaspoon vanilla
Preheat oven to 400. Combine the first 5 ingredients. Combine the remaining ingredients. Combine the wet and the dry, spoon into lined muffin tins, and bake for about 15 minutes.
comments
Leave a Reply
