In the Kitchen: Baking, Blueberries, and the Beatles

Baking, Blueberries and the Beatles. That was my and my friend Eliza’s plan for this in the kitchen experience. And, although things did not exactly go as we intended, Eliza and I ended up making some pretty delicious blueberry muffins. After a lovely pizza- and conversation-filled dinner at Zachary’s Pizza, we headed over to Trader Joes and Market Hall to pick up the few supplies that we needed to make this recipe, aptly named “To Die For Blueberry Muffins”.

            When we returned to my place and finally got down to business, we put Abbey Road on my record player and prepared ourselves for a baking frenzy. I turned on my oven only to discover an unfortunate smell of gas. My oven was broken. I was frustrated with myself for not checking to see if my oven was working, especially since I had had problems with it in the past. I thought (logically I might add) that if the oven worked the last time I used it, it would work this time. So I turned off the gas and called Ben, hoping he might be able to help me fix my oven and salvage our evening. Although he couldn’t fix it, he and his roommate (also named Ben) generously offered to let us use their super nice brand new oven.

            So Eliza and I packed up Abbey Road and all the ingredients into a giant bag and trekked over to their place. Baking was so much easier in their kitchen and this only reinforced the importance of having access to good equipment. But I couldn’t have it all. Sadly, Ben’s record player is old and funky and Abbey Road skipped so much that we couldn't keep it on. Although this marked the death of our planned evening, it was probably for the best; Eliza and I were pretty tired at that point and some silence actually did us some good. We were even able to pull it together enough to bake up some super delicious blueberry muffins. The topping was the best part of the muffins by far: a combination of flour, sugar, butter and cinnamon is virtually infallible when it comes to taste. Although Ben (boyfriend) doesn’t like blueberries, he still enjoyed his muffin and Ben (boyfriend’s roommate), Eliza and I all ate ours with gusto. And, not to toot my own horn too much, these muffins received an abundance of compliments when I brought a batch into my internship at Making Contact/NRP.

My lovely co-baker, Eliza.

The Bens, enjoying their milk and muffins.

            Overall, this was just one of those times when a change of plans worked out for the best. Later, I found a potential explanation for our bit of good luck: unbeknownst to us, we baked our blueberry muffins two days after National Blueberry Muffin Day. The stars must have been in alignment or something, because those muffins were superb.