Family Dinner: one of the sacred times where everyone in a family sits down to eat together. In my family it’s a time where we sit together and talk about what’s happening, what’s coming up in our lives and usually joke around a little bit (okay, we joke around a lot). It’s a time of the day that I look forward to and cherish. However, it doesn’t always happen as life sometimes has different plans with one or more of us off doing some type of activity.
Case in point, I have a sixteen year old son whose been busy with a new job, school responsibilities and extra-curricular activities in recent weeks. He’s always on the go and does not have much time to get a good home cooked meal.
This weekend I was determined to get in our family dinner. Given his busy schedule I had to improvise and create what I like to call “linner” (think brunch but lunch and dinner together). The purpose was to get him a home cooked tasty meal that would be better than the PB sandwiches or Mac and Cheese he’s been scarfing down in his 25 minutes between school and work. I decided to make one of his favorites – chicken fajitas along with Mexican rice and corn muffins (recipe below).
Ingredients
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup cornmeal – preferably stone ground
- 6 tablespoons sugar
- 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 3 tablespoons corn oil
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 cup corn kernels fresh, frozen or canned (drained and patted dry)
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Butter or spray 12 muffin molds in regular-size muffin tin, or fit each mold with paper muffin cups.
*Original recipe found in Dorie Greenspan’s book, Baking: from My Home to Yours.
- Put the cornmeal in the food processor to get some of the graininess out. Or I’ll buy a different version of the cornmeal altogether.
- Use fresh corn to get a deeper corn flavor.
Oh, and 3. Make sure I use the camera correctly. I took (or I thought I took) some great shots of the muffins and the dinner as a whole. The muffins and dinner looked great plated but as it turns out the camera didn’t store the pictures. Oh well, I’ll have to make do with this sad picture of the one muffin left at work. LOL
Until next time, happy baking!
