The cornbread muffins started out promising. The ingredients mixed easily, the batter was the right consistency, and the baking was fairly straightforward. They slid out of the muffin tin easily and had a crisp outside with a chewy center.
The issues started when I popped the first bite in my mouth and realized I had made a batch of yellow soap muffins. There was the bitter tang of baking powder and a grainy texture that had turned a simple recipe into a serious issue.
They were so bad, I experienced no joy when I asked my wife to taste them. None of the "this is awful, try it" glee that all little brothers are programmed to enjoy. We made the adult decision that they would not be used to ruin a perfectly good batch of chili and the mini muffins were exiled to the trash.
This would typically be the end of the story. But we have a new baby, so this tale continues thanks to sleep deprivation.
I took the trash bag out to our back porch in my right hand, also carrying some cardboard boxes for our recycling bin in my left hand. When I haven't had much sleep and am faced with two completely different objects and tasks simultaneously, I consistently reverse them. Thus, the garbage remained on the porch with the recycling bin, while the cardboard was safely stowed in the garage next to the trash until the following morning.
And that's how, on a recent Sunday morning, I discovered how bad this batch of cornbread muffins really tasted. The trash bag sat ripped open on our back porch, with a series of quick slashes made by an animal in the night. The only item of food waste that had been removed from the trash appeared to be a solitary cornbread muffin.
It had been carried to the rug outside the back door where we wipe our feet -- an appropriate placemat for an enterprising raccoon. There it lay, untouched except for a single bite. And the remains of that bite were strewn about in small crumbs near the muffin, as if spit out by a raccoon now regretting the found bounty.
I can only hope that he was able to trick a few raccoons into trying a bite of one of the other muffins.
[Image via Flickr: musicpb]
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