UAB and Muffin Day

Our UAB arrived yesterday afternoon. UAB stands for Unaccompanied Air Baggage, for those of you who need a new acronym in your life. It's the stuff that we wanted sooner than the stuff which will come on the slow boat via China Antwerp. And too bad if you want it all right now, because you only get 800 pounds or something.

So let me tell you about UAB:

Toy trucks!

Blocks!

Fruit Snacks!

The Kitchenaid!

Powdered sugar! Brown sugar!

Paper towels!

CHARMIN!!!

I know it's only been two and a half weeks, but doing without these little things can really get a person down. And can I just say that unwrapping a bundle of real! cooking! utensils! from packing paper feels like Christmas. Sure it's just a can opener. But it's mine. And it works. Woohoo!

Only had a one moment of distress when it appeared that the pendulum to my cool living room clock hadn't made it. But Henry helped me find it in all the packing paper. And now we can know what time it is without looking for the cell phone.

Here's a small note in case any of you are packing UAB and think it will be a great idea to pack a Costco variety pack of potato chips. The little bags don't handle air pressure so well. About half of them looked like Henry had already gotten a hold of them (i.e., they were popped open). Just so you know: Doritos - not so yummy after two weeks of being open. Cheetos, though, still pretty crisp. I think that speaks to the high quality of preservatives and unnatural ingredients found in them?

My only other complaint is that the cookie sheets and the roasting pan that I love and use frequently in my American life will not fit in my cute little oven. And that kinda steals the joy away from the brown and powdered sugar for a day or two until I can hitchhike to the store and get me some cute little pans.

***

I made some muffins for Cal's class last night. I will never be able to make them again because they were a concoction comprised of a butter pecan cake mix (courtesy of the comissary), what little butter we had in our butter dish (as a substitute for oil because the only kind I had on hand was sunflower and that does NOT go well in baking), two eggs instead of three that the box called for because that's all we had, and some quantity of mushed banana (I can't be sure how much it was because Charlie was "sharing" the bananas with me as I mixed it up...)

(By way of explanation, "grocery shopping" is not the hop-in-your-car-and-go-to-the-store-and-find-exactly-what-you-need affair that it might normally be elsewhere. For starters, no car. And we'll leave the discussion of the stores and their supplies for another post. Plus, UAB was here, so I didn't want to buy a bunch of duplicate baking ingredients but I didn't have time to dig through and unpack the boxes before baking...)

So anyway, I whipped up these muffins and since I am sometimes rather cupcake and muffin challenged, I was happy that they didn't overflow the pan and weren't too gooey or resembling hockey pucks. All of which might have been possible.

Cal took them to school today. The idea being that they have been doing the letter M all week and it was culminating in Muffin Day today. Each of the kids were to bring enough muffins for everyone in the class to taste and the students would make graphs of flavors, favorites, etc. They've also been talking about their five senses this week, so they got to taste and describe the flavors. You get the picture.

"Cal, where's the container that you took all the muffins in this morning?"

"The teacher kept it. I guess I'll bring it home next week."

"How was Muffin Day?"

"It was great. I tasted two kinds of mussins: Strawberry and the ones you made."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, and Mrs. P had one of the ones you made and she said they were delicious!"

"Oh, good. I'm glad everyone liked them."

"Well, none of the kids except me got to taste the ones you made. Only the adults."

"Really?"

"Yeah, Mrs. P shared them only with the teachers."

Hmmm. Interesting.

I'm thinking my muffin invention was a success? But maybe too sophisticated for the 5-year-old palate?