Lemon Poppyseed Muffins

Several weeks ago I went on a stay-cation with my boyfriend's family. Taylor's mother asked me to make something during the week, so I decided to go with lemon poppyseed muffins for breakfast. They turned out pretty yummy!

Ingredients

Muffins:

2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup Sour Cream

1/2 cup buttermilk

2 tbsp fresh lemon juice

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup {1 stick} unsalted butter, room temp.

1 tbsp grated lemon zest

2 large eggs

2 tsp poppy seeds

Glaze:

1 tsp melted butter

powder sugar

4tsp lemon juice

Directions

Oven: 350

Line muffin tins with paper liners or non-stick spray.in medium bowl. In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, and baking soda. In a small separate bowl, whisk sour cream, buttermilk and lemon juice to blend. In a large bowl, using electric mixer, beat sugar, butter, and lemon zest to blend. Add eggs 1 at a time to the large bowl, beating well after each addition until mixture is light and fluffy, occasionally scraping down sides of bowl. Beat in dry ingredients alternating with sour cream/buttermilk mixture. Mix just until blended. Stir in poppy seeds. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups. Bake muffins 20 – 22 minutes. Cool in pans 5 minutes. Remove muffins from pans and cool on rack. 

 Mix together melted butter, lemon juice and enough powdered sugar to make a glaze. I was hungry and I made the mistake of not waiting to drizzle the glaze over. So, wait till muffins are cooled and drizzle or pipe glaze over tops of warm muffins.

LATER RATER

Makes 48 mini muffins or 12 large muffins

Family Vacation

It's been a while since I've posted anything and the reason being is family and moving into my apartment. 
Now I know this is a food blog, but I will be posting about the places I went to eat in Eureka, so it's also an excuse to blog about my awesome vacation! I am bummed I did not take pictures of any of my food. Unfortunately, the idea to blog about this was far past my eating adventures. 
~I have tagged [the majority of] them throughout the blog~

So here it goes: I've spent the past week with my family. Every three years we have a family reunion and this happened to be that time of the year. My oldest brother lives in Eureka California. Haven't heard of it? Neither had I until my brother Tyler and sister in law Claire moved there three years ago. Anyways, we decided to go visit Tyler and Claire before we headed off to the reunion. They were FANTASTIC hosts. They had planned out literally everything. After a long day of flying and driving we made it to their little town and met at a Mexican restaurant called Pachanga Mexicana. The food was fantastic and service was great. Best part was the queso; I am a sucker for queso. 
The following day we met back up at Tyler and Claire's house to enjoy breakfast together. They bought THE biggest tray of bagels at Los Bagels; the platter came with so many varieties of bagels along with a very generous amount of cream cheese, pesto spread, 6 butter pats, Lox, 2 kwasants, 4 small muffins, 4 cookies, jam, and Larrupin Musatard Dill Sauce aka the best mustard I have ever had. {Now this platter was huge so we ate it for breakfast for the next few days, which I so didn't mind.} This day was filled with exploring their town; after bagels we ventured out to see the bay that lined their town (Lol bagels, bay....). 

It was gorgeous and a wonderful 69 degrees, which was a nice change from Texas's 108 degree weather. We took a stroll through the farmers market, Humboldt chocolate store, and a bookstore before going out to lunch. For lunch we went to a yummy burger place Stars Hamburgers. I had a BBQ burger and added grilled mushrooms and some of my dads fried onion rings. We took this delicious lunch to Sequoia Park.  

After enjoying our lunch we walked through the tall forest of sequoias down to a pond filled with hungry ducks. Long story short, we ended up at a Babe's Pasta-Pizza where we shared a box salad, a spicy pepperoni pizza, and chicken, spinach, mushroom pizza with creamy garlic sauce. 

Since this is mainly a food blog I'll skip the details of this night and jump to breakfast; the next day we went to an unforgettable place called Mcintosh Farm Country Store. We all ended up ordering off of the not so "Secret Menu". My mom and I split eggs Benedict, which was amazing

[Picture from their FaceBook page]

and we split THE BEST biscuits and gravy I have ever had; I will probably never get biscuits and gravy ever again because my search for the best ended that day. Yes I am from the South and I found the best recipe in the North, but it is true. The biscuit was homemade and fresh and the gravy was like I never tasted. I could *Chris Traeger voice* literally just eat the gravy. The gravy had bits of sausage and was so cream and filled with so much flavor and the biscuit was perfectly baked. {Did your mouth water because mine won't stop.} I could have died and gone to heaven after that, but we had to head off to our day of camping! 

This is the second time I've ever camped and I loved it just as much as the first. Patrick's Point State Park was our camping destination. Since the sun was out, which apparently the sun is never out, we decided to go on an adventure. 

We ventured up to wedding rock

a sweat lodge at an Indian tribal ground
and to Palmer's Point where we took in the scenery of open waters, mountains, and trees. 

We finished our night off with watching the sunset then coming back to the campgrounds to enjoy hotdogs, turkey chili and Fritos. We ate around the campfire Claire so awesomely put together, exchanging memories, laughs and smiles. The next morning we ate those bagels from the other day and sipped on coffee and hot cocoa. We packed up camp and ventured off to our next location: Fern Canyon, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. 

Our California adventures came to an end, but it was time for the reunion. For reunions we always travel to whom ever hosts the reunion and this year was my grandmas brother Jed. 

The reunion was held in Klamath Falls, Oregon. It is a nice little town surrounded by lots of land, cattle, and trees.  Jed owns a ranch that stretches out to about 300 acres. This means I barely had any service and when I say barely I mean I had to climb to the top of a huge rock in order to get service. The fact I barely had any service allowed me to enjoy what God created with very little distraction by technology (Of course I still had to snap photos for memories). Being out on that ranch was such an experience. 

Jed has two horses: Bubba (grey), his companion and Brownie (brown), a wild mustang who has been tamed by his, ever so far, neighbor. They are both so loving and sweet; I spent a good amount of my time petting and feeding them. 

 

I climbed a ginormous rock

 and went four wheeling with my cousin.

 But back to the food, we ate chicken, potatoes, and unbelievably tasty tri tip hat smoked for hours. I also tried fresh goats milk, which I could easily drink that over cows milk. 

To sum this all up: Every piece of food I ate during this family vacation was so fantastic and delicious that I forgot to take pictures because I ate it up right as it touched the table. So, if you ever find yourself in Eureka, California check out these links and go eat there! 

BLT Stuffed Avocados

I was asked to make these for a dinner one night at Taylor's house because his Papaw loves avocados, so I did. They ended up being pretty good. The recipe originally called for cubed french bread. However, we were not a fan of the french bread being included, so I recommend not adding the bread (which is why it is not listed under the ingredients). If you would like to try the recipe with the french bread, you can visit Stepable from which the recipe was adapted. I love the idea of putting sandwich ingredients into an avocado, it is brilliant...and delicious. Go ahead, give it a try!

Ingredients

2 large avocados

Fresh lemon juice

1 Roma tomato, seeded and cubed

1/2 cup finely chopped spinach leaves

1/4 cup cooked crumbled bacon

2 tbsp mayonnaise

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

Directions

Oven: 400
Cut the avocados in half, remove the pits, and carefully remove the peel. Rub the outsides of the avocados with the lemon juice. This helps the avocado from turning brown so quickly. Set them aside. In a medium mixing bowl, add all the ingredients and stir to combine. Stuff the avocados with as much filling as possible, allowing the filling to come up over the sides. Place the avocados on a non stick baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes. Serve immediately.

LATER RATER