Rush hour

Today was a fricking insane day. I'm not sure how I survived. I know I've been saying this a lot lately, but it's true. Saturdays especially are proving to be horrible nightmares (and Sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest). I woke up at 7:30 to bake some blueberry coffeecake muffins. I had mixed the batter the previous night (at 1:30 am), but this morning I folded in the blueberries and baked them off. The recipe was courtesy of Barefoot Contessa--butter, flour, sugar, milk, sour cream, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and eggs. It was a typical batter-making process which was speeded up with my Kitchen Aid. I placed the entire bowl into the fridge and a bowl of washed blueberries next to it. I also lined the muffin pans with cupcake cups. Even though all I had to do was fold in the blueberries and fill them with an ice cream scoop, it still took a decent amount of time. They went into a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes.

While they baked, I cooked some quinoa for my mom. My mom happens to suffer from these horrendous allergies, which renders her unable to eat basically any normal food. She's on a super restrictive diet, and one of the few things she can eat is quinoa, a super healthy grain that has a decent amount of protein in it. Quinoa is cooked similarly to rice. I washed it and then boiled it for about 15 minutes until all of the water was absorbed. My parents were on the East coast because my aunt passed away earlier in the week. They left on Thursday and came back today. I figured she would need some food, and even though I didn't really have the time to cook anything, I knew I needed to make the time for it. I've never made quinoa before, but it was easy enough, especially since she can't have anything normal to add flavor to it besides salt. All I did was add some salt and scramble an egg into it (that didn't work out so well--I think I needed another egg).

The muffins turned out really beautiful and golden. The church had a bake sale, so I needed to make something. Since I've been wanting to try this recipe, it was two birds with one stone. The recipe said it made 16 muffins, but I got 24 out of them. A dozen went to the church bake sale, 6 were for Jim, and 6 for my dad. I sampled one and was pretty pleased with the moistness. My chief complaint about muffins is that they either taste too much like cake or they're dry. This was a nice balance between the two. Unfortunately, when you know how much fat goes into the baked good, it's hard to be okay eating it.

Anyway, I had to rush home to take care of Midget. I loaded the muffins, quinoa, and Midget's food into my car and drove back. When I got there (around 8:30), I fed and shot Midget, finished up the program for the church concert that night, loaded up my muffins into appropriate boxes for the bake sale, tried to straighten up the house a bit, finished up the quinoa (added peas and a tbsp of butter), and then got ready for church. I left for church at 9:30 (late of course) in my mom's car and practiced for my duet for the evening's concert before going upstairs to teach the Primary class.

Right after church ended (10:45), I took off for the Oakland airport to pick up my parents. While driving on 80, I called Goog-411 to get Herbivore's number and then phoned in a takeout order for a couple of chicken burritos. I exited the freeway to pick them up and then grabbed my parents from the airport (12:00). My parents were thankful for the food (their stomachs were on East coast time), so I'm glad I went the extra mile on that.

I dropped them off at home at 12:45 and switched cars. I was almost out of gas, so I had to swing by Costco to fill up before heading back to church for the children's choir practice. I consumed my burrito en route to Costco. It was sooo yummy. My dad really loved the food, too, but I wasn't surprised at that, since it's a grubbing burrito.

When I got back to church, I set up the week's craft, which were fish magnets. I decided to get a little smarter about it and filled each craft in a ziploc bag. When they were done practicing, all I had to was hand each a bag filled with the fish color they wanted (pink, orange, or green). After I handed out the bags, I took off downstairs to find A so we could practice a little more. She was still busy, so I went back upstairs. To my dismay, NONE of the parents bothered to supervise the kids, so they were making a complete mess of things. They started using the paint pens to decorate the fish--the paint pens that are for sun catchers. I cleaned up some of the mess, gave them strict instructions on what was and was not acceptable for this craft and then went back downstairs to practice. I ran through my student J's performance for the evening's program. She was doing a little narration/piano deal called "The Sunny Snowbear." I performed the thing when I was about her age, and it is such a cute little thing. I now feel sorry for my old teacher, because it was so much WORK to get her prepped for it.

I left church to run to Powell Brothers Feed store to pick up some more Merrick's dog food for Midget. I got a flat of Grammy's Pot Pie and Thanksgiving Day Dinner. I also grabbed a single can of some chicken thigh. The two I got flats of were flavors she really seemed to like, and the chicken thigh one was a flavor she hadn't yet tried. The dog seems to favor poultry, so I was pretty optimistic for that one.

After the store, I went to Brentwood to give Big A a piano lesson. They were late, so I practiced until he got there. After the lesson, I ran home to pick up my video camera and the muffins and went back to church. I arrived around 4 and then put in some serious practice time with A and my dad. I also ran through J's performance again and then went to put on some makeup before the concert started at 6. I finished up with about 5 minutes to spare.

The performance went really well. I was extremely happy with how I played, and it was just fun. People really seemed to enjoy it too, which is always nice. I asked Tennis J to videotape us, and we got cut off a little at the beginning and the end, but I was able to play back and self-critique most of it. A's hubby L did an audio recording, so I'll need to get a copy of that. J did . . . okay. She could have done better, but it was cute and the audience seemed to love it. T also performed his Tarentella, and I was very disappointed. It really wasn't very good and I was not happy that he didn't practice enough for it.

Anyway, the program ended close to 8, and I was off again to feed and shoot Midget. I changed clothes and then finally got some down time to hang out with Jim. We went to Matsuri's for dinner, and for the first time all day, I got to relax for a bit. I had that post-performance euphoria going on, too. I got a veggie maki and a veggie hand roll, both of which were super good. Jim got a Dynamite roll and a Lion King. We shared some agedashi tofu and edamame (I think Jim has finally learned how to pronounce it). I forgot that I don't like their agedashi tofu, but I ate my half anyway. Jim doesn't particularly care for it either. Oh well. For dessert, we got a couple of mochi ice creams. I got strawberry and Jim got coffee, but we shared.

What a day. It was definitely nice wrapping it up with Jim, though.