Recipe: Nutrient-rich, they're good anytime
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Rainy days are made for baking. That’s when I pull out the muffin tin.
Muffins are a handy treat good for anytime snacking, on-the-go breakfast or after dinner with coffee. When they include high-nutrient vegetables or fruit, they might even be healthy.
With dark red skin and orange flesh, garnet sweet potatoes are packed with vitamins and antioxidants. And right now, they’re available in abundance. Other varieties also work in this quick and easy recipe.
Two small sweet potatoes or one medium will yield ½ cup pulp. To cook quickly, trim ends and prick with a sharp knife in several places. Wrap sweet potatoes in a paper towel and zap them for 4 minutes on High in the microwave until fork-tender. The flesh will slip right out of the skin. After mashing, a little orange juice keeps the color bright.
Leftover mashed sweet potatoes also work in this recipe.
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Sweet potato muffins
Makes 1 dozen 2-inch muffins
Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
½ cup mashed sweet potatoes, cooled
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup milk
2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
½ cup raisins or dried cranberries
2 tablespoons Demerara sugar or white sugar
Instructions:
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Garden Checklist for week of July 21
Your garden needs you!
* Keep your vegetable garden watered, mulched and weeded. Water before 8 a.m. to reduce the chance of fungal infection and to conserve moisture.
* Feed vegetable plants bone meal, rock phosphate or other fertilizers high in phosphate to stimulate more blooms and fruiting. (But wait until daily high temperatures drop out of the 100s.)
* Don’t let tomatoes wilt or dry out completely. Give tomatoes a deep watering two to three times a week.
* Harvest vegetables promptly to encourage plants to produce more. Squash especially tends to grow rapidly in hot weather. Keep an eye on zucchini.
* Pinch back chrysanthemums for bushy plants and more flowers in September.
* Remove spent flowers from roses, daylilies and other bloomers as they finish flowering.
* Pinch off blooms from basil so the plant will grow more leaves.
* Cut back lavender after flowering to promote a second bloom.
* It's not too late to add a splash of color. Plant petunias, snapdragons, zinnias and marigolds.
* From seed, plant corn, pumpkins, radishes, winter squash and sunflowers.