cook.

I got home from work and felt an urge to cook -- a strange urge; I haven't been in the mood to cook in awhile. So I knocked out three things: 1. banana crumb muffins; 2. orange curried chicken; and 3. turkey lunch wraps.

Every time we don't have bananas, I think they sound really good. But when I buy a bunch, I eat two before I get tired of them and the rest get brown. The last time I tried to make banana bread, I ruined it when the middle wouldn't cook and the edges were burned. So this time I decided to make muffins (easier to cook thoroughly). My dad and Karen got me a KitchenAid mixer for our wedding so it makes baking 100 times easier.

While the muffins were cooking, I made dinner: orange curried chicken. It is one of our favorites. I love it because it only uses 5 ingredients: chicken, water, salt, curry powder, and orange marmalade. Except I use apricot preserves from Aldi because they are less than half the price of marmalade and taste exactly the same in this recipe. I also like the curry powder because when I mix it in, it looks like glitter. :)

The chicken cooked for 45 minutes, so I duplicated what I bought in the cafe today for lunch. I spread Ranch dressing on a flour tortilla, added deli turkey, Muenster cheese, romaine lettuce, and tomatoes and made a wrap. I covered it in plastic wrap and made seven more.

Nate will eat two of these for lunch so I made up lunches for the next four days. (I should really have done this Sunday night.) Also in the brown sack is baby carrots, a cheese stick, fruit snacks, and some homemade trail mix (pretzels, mixed nuts, raisins, chocolate and butterscotch chips). This way Nate doesn't have to run to Chipotle during work breaks or to Chick-fil-A in between his seminary classes.

The finished muffins! The recipe made 10, and I added chocolate chips to 4 of them. I had one for dessert ... very good. Now I'm all cooked out for awhile. Nate is having two friends over for dinner tomorrow so I'm just throwing some pork in the slow cooker for pulled pork sandwiches.

We got Nate's car working. We had to get it towed to the Honda dealership and it cost way more than we would have liked but unfortunately my DIY attempt was futile. Nate said it runs like new now though so hopefully that will be the last thing we have to fix for awhile.

Happy Wednesday,