Busy Week

I've been so busy this week I decided I'm not going to cook any new dinners. I have been cooking dinner every night except tonight I went to a place called Thai Flare in Naugatuck, CT. It was decent for a Valley restaurant. We don't really have high cuisine in the Housatonic Valley. I was the only one sitting eating in the restaurant. So, I suspect they do more of a takeout business. The few people who came in for takeout kind of looked at me funny.

Anyway, I went to Naugatuck which is like 15 miles from where I live in Derby to attend an author talk at the public library there. The author was Mike Shalin and he was talking about his recently released book Donnie Baseball : The Definitive Biography of Don Mattingly. The program was supposed to start at 6:30 but there were a bunch of men buying the book so it didn't start on time. I was a little disappointed that the librarian who put on the program didn't ensure that it started on time. I guess that's just me, expecting everything to be perfect. It was a little annoying watching all these silly people trying to talk to the author and just wondering when it was going to start. When it finally started, it was a very good program. It was interesting hearing the stories of a reporter and his life following baseball teams. I don't think the book got a good review so I didn't buy a copy for myself. (I might check it out of the library later) I bought one for my friend Mary's son because he is a huge Don Mattingly fan. I kept thinking when I was driving home that I had my picture taken with Don Mattingly when I was in high school and what an awful haircut I had in that picture.

For cooking something new this week, I chose a muffin recipe from Yankee Magazine's Country Inn Breakfast Cookbook. There's no ISBN or copyright date in the book. The listing for it on Amazon says it's from 1970 but I don't believe that. I think I must have gotten this bundled with a copy of Yankee Magazine or free with a subscription. If I subscribed it would have been in the late 1980's or early 1990's. I have a lot of these small magazine type cookbooks. I really need to go through them and decide if I am going to keep them. I am definitely going to keep this cookbook. I made the Raspberry Lemon Muffins on page 34. The recipe says its from the Richard's Bed and Breakfast in Narragansett, Rhode Island. I think these muffins are one of the best recipes I've made for muffins ever. I just ate one when it was warm so I hope they taste just as good when they cool tomorrow. I am going to bring the remaining 11 that are left to work so I don't eat them all myself. I used fresh raspberries instead of frozen but the recipe says you can use either. They also have a delicious pecan strudel topping that finishes them off very nicely.