Recently I went to the local grocery store (as always looking for a great deal). Looking around the produce section I saw that carrots were on sale for 3 pounds for a buck. Of course, into the cart they went! I love to bake so I had visions of looking through my cookbooks (at last count, over 100) thinking sure, I can find a good carrot muffin recipe, no problem. Well, after looking through several cookbooks and even getting a few more cookbooks from the library, I couldn't find one that I thought my family and I would actually eat at "Cathy's Kitchen." So, I decided to invent my own recipe! Here are the ingredients: 2 large eggs (slightly beaten), 2/3 cup canola or vegetable oil, 1/2 cup white sugar, 1/4 cup light or dark brown sugar, 1 1/2 cups peeled and coarsely grated carrots, 1 1/4 cups all purpose white flour, 1/2 cup old fashioned oatmeal, 2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Preheat oven to 375. Use a 12 cup muffin tin and put paper liners into each. Put all the ingredients into a large bowl. Mix until well blended and then put about 1/2 of the mixture into each muffin tin. Bake for about 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Remove muffins to a rack to continue cooling. I gave one to my husband and asked him to rank it on a scale of 1-10 (1 being the worst, 10 the best). He gave them a 9, and told me they would have been a 10 had they been bigger! I guess I'll need to invest in a 6 cup muffin tin that makes bakery sized muffins!!
When Dominic was diagnosed with Autism at 2 1/2, I went to our local library and took out every book I could find about Autism. Sometimes I would bring back 20 books. This was 2006, so a lot of the information was very "dated." I guess I was looking for a book that would tell me what I should do next, like a "manual." Autism doesn't quite work that way! The saying is, " if you know one person with Autism, you know one person with Autism." Every mom to an individual with Autism follows their own "path." I think as moms, we judge ourselves much harder than anyone else does. I was 41 when I had Dominic. Did he get the diagnosis of Autism because I was an older mom? because I drank a lot of pop? I could sit and think about that every minute of every day. I am pretty integrated into the Autism community around Lansing and have told more than one person that it took me about two weeks to come to terms with Dominic's diagnosis. It is so incredib...

Comments
Post a Comment