Muffin blues

I woke up this morning,
looked out the door
I can tell my milk cow
I can tell by the way she lows
if you see my milk cow please drive her on home
I ain't had no milk and butter since my cow's been gone

You got to treat me right, day by day
Get out your little prayerbook,
get down on your knees and pray...

It's a rainy day, a day for the blues, a day to make carrot muffins from a recipe from Bainbridge Island's Streamliner Diner. Not exactly, of course, because I can never bring myself to use as much honey and butter as the book calls for. And because I had some extra canned pumpkin lying around, and some raisins, and some canned crushed pineapple, I decided to make pumpkin-carrot-raisin muffins, with more spices and some molasses, too. And weren't they just tasty this morning. I think they'd be especially good with cream cheese or apple butter. They're similar to a morning-glory muffin, minus the coconut, which you could, of course, throw in, if you didn't recoil from coconut as if from a snake, like I do.

Milk Cow Ate the Morning Glory Muffins

1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp powdered cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg

2 eggs
1/2 cup (or so) pureed pumpkin
2 or 3 carrots, peeled and grated
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
1/2 cup crushed canned pineapple
1/4 cup melted butter and/or oil, or more if you like a richer muffin
1/2 cup honey
2 TB molasses
1/2 tsp vanilla

Grease a 12-cup muffin pan. Preheat oven to 350F. Whisk dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl, beat wet ingredients together. Dump wet into dry, stirring until just mixed and no more streaks of flour are visible. Don't beat! Scoop into muffin cups and bake until lightly browned and gently springy when pressed with a fingertip.

Best served warm or reheated before serving.

If you can bear to put on your wellies and leave the house, good things going on this weekend--on Saturday at Borough Hall the Brooklyn Book Festival will be in full swing, followed by Sunday's always-fab Atlantic Antic. See you there, and don't miss the Baptist church ladies' sweet-potato pies.