Bonus Post: Great Grandmother’s Muffins

While I write a decent amount about food on this blog, I realized that I rarely include any actual recipes.  The other day, we decided to make some muffins using an old family recipe, created by my great grandmother on my mother’s side, who originally hailed from Genoa, Italy.  This is not exactly an Italian recipe; I just thought that was an interesting detail to include, nonetheless.

The Duck Tries Butter Beer

I like trying new recipes, and just this past year, I have made a whole bunch of things I have never had before, such as my delicious pumpkin soup, squash soup, and the delicious meat pie called a tourtiere.  I also love trying recipes from books and video games, and today’s recipe might be one you’re more familiar with.

Some time ago, I tried sea salt ice cream, a rather strange concoction I first heard about in Kingdom Hearts 2.  It was all right, but very salty, and I can’t say I’ll ever want to try it again.  And then, just a few weeks ago, I decided to create another treat I learned about from fiction, the butter beer from the Harry Potter series.  I really wanted to try it at the park in Orlando, but seeing as I am not able to visit the place anytime soon, I thought the next best thing would be to make the stuff myself.  I looked up recipes for butter beer, the non-alcoholic, young witch and wizard-friendly, variety, and I found a site listing the five most accurate recipes.  Of course, #1 seems like the obvious pick, but instead, I ended up going with #2 because I found the many spices in this recipe to be rather appealing, and it involved less butter, for fewer diabolical calories.

The Duck Decides to Become Posh

I’ve been trying a lot of new recipes lately, and after staring avariciously at those trays of tiny sandwiches and pastries you see people eating at tea time on shows where people seem far more posh than I am, I decided I was going to try my own hand at being posh and have my own afternoon tea.  And even though I am, mournfully, not a big fan of tea (or any warm beverage, so at least I’m consistent), I was going to have tea, darn it, because people have sent me tea from other countries in the past, and I’ve had boxes of the stuff just lying around, feeling quite neglected indeed.