sigh and chocolate chip strawberry banana nut muffins

I feel like a heavy weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.  Today, we finally, officially opened.  (Only a month after our projected opening date.  Geez, time flies.  But honestly, tourism season seems to be just starting to pick up around here, so I'm glad we took our time and did a good job on everything, instead of rushing to get it done only to sit here in a ghost town.) It feels so nice.  I know in my last post I wrote about how obsessive I am about making lists, but tonight is the first time in forever that I feel like I don't have a miles-long list running through my head.  I feel like I can finally relax.  The "no" is off of the vacancy sign.  We brought our flyers down to the Chamber of Commerce and invited them up here to see the place.  Ahhh.  Now...we wait?

My good friend Lynsey came up from Portland to visit us today.  She helped out with so much stuff including cleaning up the living room, which was a total disaster.  Any room that isn't directly related to guests has been utterly ignored and the living room was the worst of all.  We're thinking of letting guests use this area if they want, given that there aren't any other really communal sitting areas...although it's our only sitting area too.  But it was great to have Lynsey's editing eye to help me get rid of all of the mulch that had accumulated in here.  It feels so clean and open suddenly!  Thanks, Lyns!

I took tried to take some pictures of the second bedroom and bathroom to show you, but they came out pretty blurry. I went to take more, and the camera died.  Of course. I'm charging the camera now, but I'll probably wait until tomorrow morning when the sunlight's better to take more.  So, stay tuned!


In the meantime, those are some pictures of the flowers in the rain that's been here for the past two days.  Also, I used up some over-ripe bananas by making chocolate chip banana strawberry nut muffins.  Whoa, that's a mouthful.  Here they are all stacked up on my dining room table:

I used a recipe that called for 3 bananas, but I had only two.  So I substituted some strawberries, since we have approximately a gazillion of them.  I crushed some up and added them to the batter and also folded in some in bigger pieces.  The batter was bright pink and I really hoped the muffins would be too, but, alas, they are brown.

Still yummy though!

Here's the recipe:

Chocolate Chip Strawberry Banana Nut Muffins

Loosely adapted from Wendy's recipe on Tasty Kitchen


1 cup unsalted butter aka two sticks (room temp)
1 cup sugar
2 whole ripe bananas
1 cup whole ripe strawberries (divided: half pureed, half in chunks)
2 eggs
4-5 tbs milk
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/3 cup chocolate chips (I prefer semi-sweet)
1 cup roasted nuts (preferably pecans or walnuts)

Preheat oven to 425.

Cream together the butter and sugar.  Mix in the bananas, the pureed strawberries, and the eggs.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Add half of the dry mixture to the butter/sugar/fruit mixture.  Then add about 2 tbs milk.  Add the rest of the dry mixture to batter, followed by remaining milk.  Mix well to combine.

Fold in chocolate chips, nuts and strawberry "chunks."

Fill muffin tins at least 3/4 of way to top, filling any empty left over muffin holes with water.  Put muffins in oven and reduce heat to 350.  Bake for about 25 minutes or until golden brown on top.

My muffins didn't rise as much as others and I think this batter might be too wet because of all of the added strawberries....you could maybe try adding a bit more flour or not adding the milk.  But, if you make them as I did, they will still be light and fluffy and moist.  They just might not rise up as much as you'd like.