First published in the Ipswich Local News October 25, 2024
I cook a lot. I mean, no one would say that I should open a restaurant, and I’m not great at planning how much food to prepare if the number gets higher than, say, 10 people (that’s obviously what restaurants are for).
And yes, I complain about the nightly requirement for dinner.
But as that requirement seems to perpetually exist, if it’s a weeknight dinner you need, I’m your girl.
I can menu-plan and dinner-prep in my sleep.
Whether it’s an endless volleyball game, an evening parent-teacher conference, a last-minute friend showing up, or a nebulous feeling that someone might eat something around the general time of dinner, I’m ready.
I can tell you what we’re eating each night of the week and whether we’ll eat it at home, in the car, or grazing like so many gazelle on the Serengeti.
But cooking is not my natural state. We’re all holding our breath to see what Empty-Nester Esther does next year.
It’s been a nice 20-something-year stretch of consistency, but will the switch flip? Will we be back to frozen pizzas and “spicy rice” (my homemade recipe of rice, franks, and mustard that I essentially lived on for … well, let’s call it a decade).
While that mystery dangles out there till next fall, what I can tell you is that never in my life — not the past 20 years, or ever — have I been a baker. I do not bake.
Except for team muffins.
I can’t even explain what happened except that our older daughter was diagnosed with celiac disease back in 2018.
Suddenly, every time there was a sign-up for a team dinner or a team snack or a class field trip or a school dance, I found myself signing up for the gluten-free dessert in some sort of panicked way, hoping to ensure that my child had a treat.
This particular daughter doesn’t like baked goods. So the entire situation didn’t make sense from literally Day One.
But my gluten-free muffins were a hit. And I never knew why.
I mean they’re gooey, which I think is because they are almost certainly underbaked, but who can tell? I throw in whatever is in the cabinet.
Sometimes it’s chocolate chips, sometimes blueberries, sometimes I toss in a spoonful of Nutella. I have no agenda, because I don’t bake.
Once, I threw in random Hershey’s Kisses for maybe half of the muffins. Some girls won, and some didn’t. Try harder, girls. Try harder.
But teachers began to request them. Then the athletic director got diagnosed with celiac, and I made him some.
The science teacher had a bad day and was gluten-free, so I made her a batch.
And when our current high school senior took up volleyball, things went totally haywire. A good friend and teammate was gluten- AND dairy-free — and so were my muffins (minus the chocolate chips).
Everyone knew I would be sensitive to allergies. The team began to request them for each game.
They fought over whether the JV team got a batch, or if they were only for varsity. Sometimes I made pumpkin, sometimes banana, and still I tossed in whatever was around.
I went through a protein powder phase that I called a ‘thickener.’ Were their hits a little harder during those matches?
As I type this, I’m on point to make four dozen muffins for homecoming. You see how this has snowballed?
That is an outrageous number of muffins. I don’t even own enough muffin … uh, tins? They aren’t tin, so I don’t know what to call them. Why? Because I do not bake.
But dear regular reader, I do have a secret.
I’m in the final weeks of my Muffin Era, (as the kids say). Volleyball is almost done, and this insane homecoming muffin-mania will be over by the time you read this.
Still, this has to be just between us.
I’ve been using a box mix all these years. From the gluten-free aisle of Stop & Shop — lower right shelf. You, too, can make these muffins.
And you probably should, because I’m done.
Plus, like I said, I don’t bake.