Getting back into the cooking and baking of things

There isn't as much professional work for me these days so I have been spending more time in the kitchen. Tristan is still too young to help me out without making a huge mess of things so I try to cook or bake while he is napping or in daycare. I thought about letting him have his own corner and sift flour or something but then I thought about all the things that could go wrong e.g. him not staying in the corner and running around the living room with flour. If our place wasn't carpeted and was easier to clean up, that would be less of a problem. Then there is him not wanting to listen to us even when we yell and it's just too dangerous to be operating an oven with him around. We have baby aprons for him too and I am really looking forward to the day we can use them!

Back in my younger, more energetic days, I would spend all day in the kitchen cooking. I would wake up in the morning, start preparing food, take a break for lunch, then cook some more until it was time for dinner. It wasn't that I was slow. I would just cook way too much food. Why? Because I grew up with a family that cooked a lot and ate a lot. I had to learn the hard way how to cook for just two people. Ok, I didn't do this every day but I spent a lot of time cooking or doing things related to cooking such as looking at recipes, grocery shopping etc. I was a cooking geek, especially when I was a stay-at-home housewife.

On friday, I made blueberry-banana muffins. I'm not a muffin person but I made them for Jean-Louis. I was going to make tarts because it was quick and easy but he said he wasn't much of a tart person. It turns out that muffins were just a little bit more work to make and it was well worth it. The recipe I found was yum! Not only that but there is whole wheat flour in it and I only used 1/3 cup of sugar in the recipe for 12 muffins.


The ingredients made it sound pretty healthy so I actually tried to offer it to Tristan but he refused to taste it. I removed the top part since it had nuts and more sugar but I think he would have refused the entire thing as well. He has never had any sweets besides arrowroot biscuits. I think if he had tried it, he would have asked for more but now that I think about it, gooey blueberry muffins really don't look appetizing to people that have never encountered it before. At 20 months, Tristan is a picky eater and is refusing to eat foods based on just their appearance. It's funny because I had the video camera ready and everything and he just looked at it and then tried to throw it around. Ugh!