I made these blueberry muffins and lived to tell the tale 🫐

Plus jet-fuel faux Vietnamese iced coffee, and more.

Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we bake blueberry muffins, and even make time for breakfast. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.

“To Die For” blueberry muffins at home

Recipe by “Colleen” from All Recipes.

When a recipe calls itself “To Die For,” I get a little nervous. Either the author is bragging too boldly, in which case I probably can’t trust their recipe, or else they are correct and my life has now been thrust on the chopping block. But I made these to-die-for blueberry muffins from a user-submitted website, and I lived to tell the tale. I am glad I did, because these are the best muffins I’ve ever made. There is a proper crumb-to-cake ratio (aka a mountain of crumbs), and the cake is beautifully moist. Do not mind that the batter is sort of thick and doughy. It bakes up wonderfully. The crumbs caramelize and the berries become jamlike and your entire apartment fills with the scent of warm cinnamon, and I like to imagine I am the owner of a quaint bread and breakfast on the New England coast who is gently rousing her guests with the promise of baked goods, and not standing in my apartment at midnight on a work night. (I made 1 dozen instead of 8 muffins, using a regular muffin tray.)  

Nine Pin Light Cider “Lavender lemon” flavor at Trader Joe’s

Also online.

This cider is “light” not as in low-calorie or low-carb (although it is and does market itself that way), but light as in a field of flowers in the springtime, an airy breeze drifting through the window in April. It is light like freshly baked laundry, and the scent of lavender is very strong, which I personally love but can imagine is divisive to others. The good thing is that if cider that tastes like flowers is not up your alley, this beverage comes in a variety pack along with “New York apple” and “cranberry orange” flavors. As for me, I could not imagine a better, more refreshing summer beverage.

“Almost Vietnamese” iced coffee at home

Make it at your place, too!

I get so sleepy working from home on summer afternoons, that around three or four PM I start to crave the double kick-in-the-pants of caffeine and sugar. What I really want to get is a double scoop of coffee ice cream in a waffle cone, please, but Vietnamese iced coffee is an equally sweet, if not more so, socially acceptable and budget-friendly substitute. I don’t have a Vietnamese coffee filter set (because I’m already running on negative counter and shelf space in my studio kitchenette), so instead I just use my Melitta drip cone. First, pour 2 tablespoons (30ml, and 1 tablespoon is plenty sweet if you’re not trying to make it restaurant style) in a glass. Prepare a drip cone with a paper filter and add two tablespoons of coarsely ground dark roast coffee (this is the only acceptable use of dark roast coffee!! About 0.4 oz), and add six ounces of just-boiled water. Let drip over sweetened condensed milk. Give it a good stir and add ice to top. I like to make mine extra creamy by adding a splash of whole milk.

Chamoe or Korean melon at H Mart

Also apparently still known as Oriental melon? Read more here.

I think melons are a very underrated fruit. I guess it’s because they’re so plentiful and tend to show up in hotel continental breakfast fruit salads, which are the worst PR for a food item that you can imagine. Anyways, when I saw these beautiful, small, yellow-striped babies at H Mart being sold for a pretty penny, I thought “finally! Melons are getting the fancy fruit treatment they deserve.” Chamoe apparently means “cucumber melon” in Korean (but please, if you’re a Korean reader, let me know!), and that is a very apt name for this fruit. It has a thin, edible rind and is filled with seeds inside, but my favorite part is that you can eat all the components, and slice it into rounds just like a cucumber. It is beautifully crisp with a gentle, cooling flavor, perfect to eat to wake up in the morning, with a glass of iced tea.

Tamagoyaki (Japanese sweet rolled omelette) and coffee at home

Why not at yours, too?

One day this week, I woke up an hour earlier than usual (which is very late), and I decided to spend time with myself before work. I put on a 10 minute meditation podcast, and I tried my best to listen to it all the way through. Then I cracked two eggs into a bowl, and beat them with half a tablespoon of sugar, a tablespoon of mirin, a pinch of salt, and a tiny splash of soy sauce. I washed my face, and then I washed a tiny donut peach, scrubbing all the fluff off of its skin. I set a nonstick skillet to heat on a medium flame, poured in half of the egg mixture, and then I let it set for a minute before pushing it into a log on one side of the pan. I regreased the remaining pan, poured in the rest of the egg, and carefully rolled the egg log-side-first into a rolled omellette. I made myself a cup of coffee, sliced the log into teeny rounds, and sat down to eat breakfast. I thought that it was so nice, maybe I should do it every day.

Have a good weekend,

Soph

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