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Recipe: Cinnamon Apple Muffins
Applesauce
Two cups of apples, grated (it's easier than cutting)
1 tsp of cinnamon
1/4 cup of sugar
Muffin batter
2 cups white flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup melted butter
Instructions
Preheat
over to 375 and grease muffin tin. Cook the applesauce ingredients
until they resemble applesauce. Mix dry muffin batter ingredients, then
wet muffin batter ingredients, then combine dry, wet, and applesauce and
mix together with a wooden spoon but not until the batter is smooth,
just make sure the flour doesn't have a lot of clumps. Bake for about
20 minutes or until the knife comes out clean.
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I meet Melissa down at “Greyfriar’s Bobby” bar. A bar named for the
story of a small Scottish terrier who reputedly stayed by his master's grave in Greyfriar's kirk after the man passed away. There’s a ton of tourist merchandising
surrounding the story, including a statue on the road across from the
church - tourists standing back from it taking a picture always block me
on my way to class. According to a girl in my master’s program, the
whole story is a hoax, and there was just some dog who hung around the
graveyard eating scraps. Everyone who has heard this bit of information
finds it incredibly depressing, as the idea of a cute little doggie
guarding the graves is irresistible. Nonetheless, the bar is nice.
I haven’t seen Melissa since I took a weekend foray back to America for my best friend’s wedding, and we are heading over to the Royal Oak - a bar that features bluegrass in the basement on Thursday - to reconnect and meet up with Hannah, a mutual friend. Hannah is the one who actually introduced me to the Royal Oak bluegrass basement. Her professor plays in the band and he intimated to the class that good will is engendered by students appearing in the audience. No word on how many grade points that good will translates into, though.
We settle into one of the booths as we wait for Hannah. The bar is small, but it attracts a large and eclectic crowd. Because of the size of the place, everyone has to scoot into the booth together. Two weeks before, I sat in the middle of a tour-group from England who marveled at the fact that I lived on a Royal Mile.
“Must be a real hardship for you.” One of the women had said to me with a smile.
Sitting down in the booth with Melissa, I pull out my notebook.
“You mind if I write?” I ask. “I have this assignment for my creative writing class where I have to stalk someone, and I just don’t want to stalk someone, plus I don’t have the time, and really, I just want to write in the bar, I mean look at this place, you have everything, students, atmosphere, bluegrass, locals. Heck, I bet you could write a huge essay on the ales alone. Why don’t people write in bars do you think? There’s so much going on here I could write all night. It’s much better than a café.”
“Noise, I guess,” says Melissa. “There’s so much noise here I would always be looking up distracted.” She yawns. “I took a nap after Welsh today, I don’t know why I’m tired.” She pauses. “Don’t write that down. Are you writing that down?”
Hannah walks in. When she sits down I pull out my iPhone (which, having flipped off data roaming and taken out the SIM card I use as an iPod touch) to show her maps of the city. We’re going to a nature preserve at 6 am Saturday morning to see pink-footed geese take off for the Netherlands. We plot out routes to the house where we’re supposed to meet, and then Hannah zooms in on one part of the map.
“You know there’s this really cool lane through the city,” she says. “It’s about a mile long. It starts around in back here...” Hannah has been exploring the city since we got here. Melissa did too, in the beginning, but recently she’s been bogged down in Gaelic (Scottish, Gah-lic) and Gaelic (Irish - Gay-lic) and Welsh.
“Melissa do you study old or new Welsh?”
“Middle.”
“Thanks.”
Recently she’s been bogged down in Gaelic, Gaelic, and middle Welsh.
“Margaret’s being anti-social and writing”, Melissa informs Hannah.
I look up. “I’m writing about you, actually, I hope that’s okay, I really didn’t want to stalk someone.”
“Why would you stalk someone?”
“Because that was the assignment.”
“I guess we’ll just have to have really intelligent conversations then.” says Hannah.
“And we should gesticulate a lot so she’ll have to write that down”, adds Melissa, moving her arms frenetically, a bit like a robot.
Although Melissa lives directly across the hall from me, I met her on a literary pub tour of Edinburgh. That was my first time in the Royal Oak. We were both sitting in the corner, listening to the Celtic music (which is played upstairs) and wondering if there would be more “literary” any time soon.
I met Hannah through Melissa. We were going out to explore some castles. The castles were each about twenty minutes outside of one of those Scottish postcard-perfect towns called North Berwick. The first one was on a seaside cliff, which offered spectacular views once we found the way up to the top of the castle. It was half ruined, so we kept having to wander around from room to room, ducking our heads as we went up this stairwell, or down this one, or through winding corridors.
The other castle was more intact, and had amazing gardens and a yard, as well as a circular dovecote with thousands of boxes still in place. When you stood in the middle of it and looked up you could see the sun pouring in from above, and it felt a bit like what I would imagine it’s like to live in a beehive. In that castle we wandered through an intact dining room, a latrine, and an enormous basement used for food storage.
“So, you know those old ships,” Hannah is saying. I keep wanting to listen to the conversation of the men next to us, because they seem interesting, but I never manage to pay attention. A bunch of younger people have walked in and are hanging out, standing, in the corner by the bar, and the bluegrass musicians are singing something about it not being love and it not being money, although what it actually is I never pick up because I keep getting lost in my writing, or in the flow of chatter passing around me.
“So, you know these old ships,” Hannah says. Hannah is interested in old ships. So is Melissa. Hannah also thinks that getting up at five o’clock in the morning to see birds migrate is a good time. And Melissa likes historical observatories and climbing the Nelson monument and quoting “Firefly” from 327 feet up. We’ve all read the entire Horatio Hornblower series. This always seems to me emblematic, although I’m never entirely sure of what.
“So, you know these old ships,” In the booth with us, sitting beside the two older Scottish men are a couple, I’m not sure from where. They are nodding their heads slowly to the music, tapping their feet while drinking something that is the color of earth, and translucent. The musicians in the corner are now singing a fast paced song about a girl, and how she captured their hearts.
“So, you know these old ships,” Hannah is saying. “I really want to sail out and live in one.”
I look up. “Do you mind if I use this for a blog entry?”
Melissa turns, “Wasn’t the last one about us?”
This is, and isn’t, true. I’ve been trying for a week now to write about the castle expedition, but besides some funny tales of trying Irn-Bru (a Scottish beverage that outsells Coca-Cola in the motherland, and tastes to me a bit like liquid candy) and descriptions of massive amounts of sheep standing in the countryside, it’s not really coming together.
Melissa and Hannah begin a discussion on castles.
“You know,” I say. “It’s funny how we all think so differently, yet we’re interested in the same set of things.”
“Yeah,” interjects Hannah. “Things that are awesome.”
“Right,” I say. “But what I mean is...”
What I mean is that Edinburgh is a big city, and that the University itself is a big place. What I mean is that it’s not every day you find people who like going out to bars just for the music or think castles are a cool expedition. What I’m trying to say is something, in a limited sense, about Scotland, but in a larger sense about life, in general.
It has to do with the bar and the way it’s so small and cozy with only two worn-through booths and wooden tables. It has something to do with the group of students that come here every week, as well as the locals. It’s something about the truly ridiculous variety of ales available in this country, and all the different shades from light to dark that they create when laid out across the table. It’s something, most of all, about the bluegrass band playing in the corner and the sound of the fiddle and the guitar and the harmonics of the voices when they come together and sing.
Melissa has this theory (which she’s expounding on to Hannah right now) that there are, in fact, dragons in Scotland. That they are hidden in the lochs or among the castles or even hunkered down in the fields of heather, hiding in plain site. In the middle of the bar and the music and the sound of chatter flowing up and down the tiny room, I can almost believe that she is, in fact, right. That there’s magic in Scotland.
I haven’t seen Melissa since I took a weekend foray back to America for my best friend’s wedding, and we are heading over to the Royal Oak - a bar that features bluegrass in the basement on Thursday - to reconnect and meet up with Hannah, a mutual friend. Hannah is the one who actually introduced me to the Royal Oak bluegrass basement. Her professor plays in the band and he intimated to the class that good will is engendered by students appearing in the audience. No word on how many grade points that good will translates into, though.
We settle into one of the booths as we wait for Hannah. The bar is small, but it attracts a large and eclectic crowd. Because of the size of the place, everyone has to scoot into the booth together. Two weeks before, I sat in the middle of a tour-group from England who marveled at the fact that I lived on a Royal Mile.
“Must be a real hardship for you.” One of the women had said to me with a smile.
Sitting down in the booth with Melissa, I pull out my notebook.
“You mind if I write?” I ask. “I have this assignment for my creative writing class where I have to stalk someone, and I just don’t want to stalk someone, plus I don’t have the time, and really, I just want to write in the bar, I mean look at this place, you have everything, students, atmosphere, bluegrass, locals. Heck, I bet you could write a huge essay on the ales alone. Why don’t people write in bars do you think? There’s so much going on here I could write all night. It’s much better than a café.”
“Noise, I guess,” says Melissa. “There’s so much noise here I would always be looking up distracted.” She yawns. “I took a nap after Welsh today, I don’t know why I’m tired.” She pauses. “Don’t write that down. Are you writing that down?”
Hannah walks in. When she sits down I pull out my iPhone (which, having flipped off data roaming and taken out the SIM card I use as an iPod touch) to show her maps of the city. We’re going to a nature preserve at 6 am Saturday morning to see pink-footed geese take off for the Netherlands. We plot out routes to the house where we’re supposed to meet, and then Hannah zooms in on one part of the map.
“You know there’s this really cool lane through the city,” she says. “It’s about a mile long. It starts around in back here...” Hannah has been exploring the city since we got here. Melissa did too, in the beginning, but recently she’s been bogged down in Gaelic (Scottish, Gah-lic) and Gaelic (Irish - Gay-lic) and Welsh.
“Melissa do you study old or new Welsh?”
“Middle.”
“Thanks.”
Recently she’s been bogged down in Gaelic, Gaelic, and middle Welsh.
“Margaret’s being anti-social and writing”, Melissa informs Hannah.
I look up. “I’m writing about you, actually, I hope that’s okay, I really didn’t want to stalk someone.”
“Why would you stalk someone?”
“Because that was the assignment.”
“I guess we’ll just have to have really intelligent conversations then.” says Hannah.
“And we should gesticulate a lot so she’ll have to write that down”, adds Melissa, moving her arms frenetically, a bit like a robot.
Although Melissa lives directly across the hall from me, I met her on a literary pub tour of Edinburgh. That was my first time in the Royal Oak. We were both sitting in the corner, listening to the Celtic music (which is played upstairs) and wondering if there would be more “literary” any time soon.
I met Hannah through Melissa. We were going out to explore some castles. The castles were each about twenty minutes outside of one of those Scottish postcard-perfect towns called North Berwick. The first one was on a seaside cliff, which offered spectacular views once we found the way up to the top of the castle. It was half ruined, so we kept having to wander around from room to room, ducking our heads as we went up this stairwell, or down this one, or through winding corridors.
The other castle was more intact, and had amazing gardens and a yard, as well as a circular dovecote with thousands of boxes still in place. When you stood in the middle of it and looked up you could see the sun pouring in from above, and it felt a bit like what I would imagine it’s like to live in a beehive. In that castle we wandered through an intact dining room, a latrine, and an enormous basement used for food storage.
“So, you know those old ships,” Hannah is saying. I keep wanting to listen to the conversation of the men next to us, because they seem interesting, but I never manage to pay attention. A bunch of younger people have walked in and are hanging out, standing, in the corner by the bar, and the bluegrass musicians are singing something about it not being love and it not being money, although what it actually is I never pick up because I keep getting lost in my writing, or in the flow of chatter passing around me.
“So, you know these old ships,” Hannah says. Hannah is interested in old ships. So is Melissa. Hannah also thinks that getting up at five o’clock in the morning to see birds migrate is a good time. And Melissa likes historical observatories and climbing the Nelson monument and quoting “Firefly” from 327 feet up. We’ve all read the entire Horatio Hornblower series. This always seems to me emblematic, although I’m never entirely sure of what.
“So, you know these old ships,” In the booth with us, sitting beside the two older Scottish men are a couple, I’m not sure from where. They are nodding their heads slowly to the music, tapping their feet while drinking something that is the color of earth, and translucent. The musicians in the corner are now singing a fast paced song about a girl, and how she captured their hearts.
“So, you know these old ships,” Hannah is saying. “I really want to sail out and live in one.”
I look up. “Do you mind if I use this for a blog entry?”
Melissa turns, “Wasn’t the last one about us?”
This is, and isn’t, true. I’ve been trying for a week now to write about the castle expedition, but besides some funny tales of trying Irn-Bru (a Scottish beverage that outsells Coca-Cola in the motherland, and tastes to me a bit like liquid candy) and descriptions of massive amounts of sheep standing in the countryside, it’s not really coming together.
Melissa and Hannah begin a discussion on castles.
“You know,” I say. “It’s funny how we all think so differently, yet we’re interested in the same set of things.”
“Yeah,” interjects Hannah. “Things that are awesome.”
“Right,” I say. “But what I mean is...”
What I mean is that Edinburgh is a big city, and that the University itself is a big place. What I mean is that it’s not every day you find people who like going out to bars just for the music or think castles are a cool expedition. What I’m trying to say is something, in a limited sense, about Scotland, but in a larger sense about life, in general.
It has to do with the bar and the way it’s so small and cozy with only two worn-through booths and wooden tables. It has something to do with the group of students that come here every week, as well as the locals. It’s something about the truly ridiculous variety of ales available in this country, and all the different shades from light to dark that they create when laid out across the table. It’s something, most of all, about the bluegrass band playing in the corner and the sound of the fiddle and the guitar and the harmonics of the voices when they come together and sing.
Melissa has this theory (which she’s expounding on to Hannah right now) that there are, in fact, dragons in Scotland. That they are hidden in the lochs or among the castles or even hunkered down in the fields of heather, hiding in plain site. In the middle of the bar and the music and the sound of chatter flowing up and down the tiny room, I can almost believe that she is, in fact, right. That there’s magic in Scotland.
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