I feel like Superwoman

It doesn't take much.

I have pretty much simultaneously made dinner, soda bread and muffins, and without any of the panicky stress that's usually involved when I try to make more than one thing at once.

Andy was in a grumpy mood when he came home (and I'm afraid I can't say what he then added when I asked him if it was ok if I told the world via this blog). Getting a decision out of him in that state isn't the easiest, and I was rapidly getting hungry. I am not nice when I'm hungry and there comes a point when I become 'dangerous to know'. I wanted to get to Sainsbury's and buy the weekly shop before that happened.

To circumvent this, I wrote different possible main course meats on a piece of paper and told Andy to pick a number. I'd only got as far as five different options when he yelled 'Four!'. Lamb, my least favourite meat, probably. But wrangling over the decision wasn't going to help anything.

So I fired up Good Food and typed in lamb. I found a nice quick recipe. I was seriously glad at how easy it was - crush cumin and coriander seeds, fry them and the garlic, then brown the steaks. Stick over the tomato and leave. Awarded the coveted 'in the repertoire' award.

Soda bread

At this point, I started the soda bread. Dad's Irish, and the day after the lamb was the Ire v Eng rugby match. I always meet my friend Ralph, usually in my home town, to watch this one. So I was having lunch at Mum and Dad's and thought it would be nice to take over some soda bread.

Soda bread is the first bread I ever made, by a long, long way. To get my Baden-Powell Trefoil at Guides, I had to do one of a set of badges, which were all sort of local history/folkways options (the syllabus has changed since my day). Why the heck I was talking to my dad about my Guiding options I don't know, but I got to 'Ulster Folk' badge, and Dad said 'Right, you're doing that one'. And thus, I became probably the only girl in England to hold the Ulster Folk badge.

I still remember the satisfaction I got at making the simple soda bread, and wrapping it in foil to take into Guides.

Well, I think I may be in love with soda bread all over again. While I know the recipe I made for Guides had raisins in it, I wanted a proper old-school recipe and eventually found one on Kitchen Daily for a whole wheat loaf. It is a SERIOUSLY easy recipe. The hardest thing was finding the buttermilk. Now, I'm an evangelist for normal bread, but anything that's 'put all this in a bowl, shape' gets extra points. And tasty, too. The only problem, I guess is having buttermilk hanging around. Awarded 'make again soon. Very soon.' status

Muffins

Food getting expensive and trying to limit my costs means I hadn't bought any dessert or ice cream. I always seem to need something sweet after a meal, and Andy kind of wanted something too. I needed to find a recipe that would fit with the not-very-much I had in the kitchen.

As you can tell, my default for such things is Good Food, and so I went over, knowing muffins or cupcakes were probably best for baking-ingredients-heavy but all-other-ingredients-light. Luckily we still had some milk which was basically ok. I found these chocolate muffins.  As commenters said, they're not all that chocolatey, but they hit the spot for our dessert. I underdid them, too; fifteen mins was not enough in my oven. I'd like to try them again, doubling the cocoa powder (which probably makes them even drier) and lengthening the cooking time. Awarded 'make again with changes' status.