Brunch Before The Paint Fumes Got To Us

Today was the big DIY day of painting my bathroom, so Lala came to my rescue. Before we started painting though, I made brunch for us. She had gotten me The Joy of Cooking a few weeks ago so I thought I'd try one of the recipes for breakfast muffins. I must say I am impressed with myself for having TWO DIY projects in one day. Though the paint job is a lot less impressive than the muffins. More on that later.

I made scrambled eggs with onions, shitake mushrooms, and pancetta -- too easy of a recipe to post here so I won't go through how to scramble an egg.

Orange Walnut Muffins

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1/2 cup walnut pieces (The walnut pieces didn't make it into the muffins today because I was in too much of a rush to remember that I actually bought them. Ah, my wonderful, organized DIY skills strike again!)

2 large eggs
1 cup sour cream
2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
6 tablespoons melted butter
1 tablespoon orange zest
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 400 degrees
Mix all the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and walnut) in a bowl. Whisk to combine well.

In a separate mixing bowl, mix all the wet ingredients (eggs, sour cream, brown sugar, butter, orange zest, and vanilla). Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Stir until just combined. Do not over mix.

Spoon batter into lined muffin tins. Fill about 2/3 up. Bake for 15 minutes or until a toothpick test comes out clean.

I made a glaze with 1/2 cup fresh orange juice and 1/2 cup brown sugar for the muffins. The glaze was quite watery so next time I think I might cook it down on the stove a little while the muffins are baking.

So we ate, painted, felt really good about ourselves, then felt really light headed and tired from breathing in the paint fumes. We left the house in a hurry.

Oh, so, the color I picked, incidentally, has a food name: pernod. According to "the internets," pernod is an apertif, a successor of absinthe, with a delicate licorice scent. The internets also said that pernod is often added to vegetable dishes and fish to give it a sophiscated, herbal taste. Sounds good, no?

It looks like this:
Depending on your monitor, this is meant to be a very pale yellow, sort of like the color of hollandaise sauce. A delicate yellow reminiscent of lemonade.

So why does my bathroom now look like an ill egg yolk explosion?!

I am hoping it is just the lighting. During the day the color actually looked mild and light, the way I intended it to be. But tonight, the lighting in my bathroom is doing some voodoo magic that makes the paint look really scary.

I think I'll eat another muffin now.