Banana Peanut Butter Muffins

Several things happened last week. My other dog had surgery, I went to a drive in movie, and I made muffins. Exciting life, eh?

That’s pretty much it. These 3 things occupied all my time and thoughts.

Yes. . it’s been a rough year for us here, in what seems to have become a geriatric dog home. My first and oldest dog, Abby, is the patient this time. She is 14 years old. A black lab-ish mutt, healthy, until now.

Her dog breath had turned into something straight out of a nightmare. Upon closer inspection we found a growth. Turns out it was a much bigger tumor than could be seen from pulling back a rubbery dog lip. So, she had a pretty extensive oral surgery last Thursday. Not sure what exactly the tumor is just yet, but nothing good can come of a tumor on a 14 year old dog.

She’s home now, though. I feel so bad for her sore little mouth. She gives me the sad eyes and it breaks my heart. I know 14 years is a good long life but it’s no fun to think of the possibility of the end approaching.

Unfortunately, this all means that she is now getting canned dog food. And, I’ll be honest, I don’t do well with the wet dog food smell. It is truly disgusting. I’ll do it because she needs it, but I won’t like it.

The dog surgery stressed me out. But, I had Saturday night to look forward to. Tim and I went to the drive-in movies! There is an old drive-in theater about an hour from our house.

It’s been very chilly here, so we bundled up, threw some blankets and pillows in the car and headed to see some really terrible movies. We brought a big bag of popcorn and sodas and boxes of candy. And we stopped on our way and ate the first greasy McDonald’s junk that I’ve eaten in forever. We shared McNuggets and fries. . it was romantic. Truly.

I think we need to make a fall trip to the drive-in movies a tradition.

After the movie we hit a local 24 hour donut place and got some very yummy donuts. We ate them sunday and they rival a donut place I used to love in Florida!

By the way, the movies we saw were the latest Resident Evil movie and the one about bike messengers called Premium Rush. Not so great. I don’t recommend them. But I love spending that kind of quality time with Tim so the movie didn’t really matter.

And, of course, there were muffins in my week. Lots of muffins. About 6 dozen were baked in my kitchen last week.

And I don’t even really like muffins. I don’t get the draw. The best ones are usually more like cake, anyway.

I’m never drawn to muffins. I’ll choose any other breakfast baked good over a muffin any day. They bore me. I never bake them. So this muffin making was certainly out of the ordinary.

What can I say? It kept me busy and I used up some very ripe bananas. Plus Tim had put in a banana muffin request a couple of months ago. Which is also odd because he usually leans toward the blueberry muffin and rarely opts for banana anything. (He has a weird intolerance to bananas most of the time.)

Oh, and when I make muffins or quick breads or cookies I don’t pre-mix the dry ingredients. I know most recipes read that way but you can just assume that I mix all the wet together and then measure the dry in on top and mix it all together. Simple, easy, low clean up. Enjoy!

Banana Peanut Butter Muffins

1/4 butter, softened

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 over ripe bananas, mashed

1/2 peanut butter

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

2 Tbsp flax seeds, optional

Sanding sugar, optional

In a large bowl mix butter and brown sugar with a hand mixer until well combined. Add eggs, bananas, peanut butter. Mix well.

Add the flour, baking soda, salt and flax seed (if you want).

Line a muffin pan with cupcake liners. Fill each cupcake liner 3/4 full with muffin batter. Sprinkle the top off each with sanding sugar.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Makes 12 cupcakes.