Cooking In Japan

Breakfast menu: cold mugi tea, a green monster muffin, yogurt sprinkled with rolled oats, flax seeds and a wee bit of ume honey.

I found another good blog to follow a few days ago.  I was referred from Kath Eats Real Food’s post mentioning these muffins.  This is how I discovered The Chic Life.   The website has good healthy recipes and the blog posts are full of positive energy from someone who enjoys leading a healthy lifestyle.  I can’t get enough of reading blogs of healthy people because I know very few people that passionate about health in Japan.  I have a small network – something to work on now that we’ve permanently relocated to Chigasaki.  Back to the muffins.  Since I first saw the post I have wanted to try them but was a little weary that hubby would be scared of them.  I’m not sure why – he’ll try almost anything once (with the exception of fruit and meat combos).  I asked him and he said he would try them.  I had to make a few changes so that I wouldn’t have to wait until the supermarket opened.

Changes

• I used komatsuna instead of spinach
• I used 1/2 cup of oil instead of apple sauce and skipped the other oil in the recipe
• I used 1 cup graham flour and 1/2 cup white flour
• I reduced the sugar to 2/3 cup and will go down to 1/2 cup next time

Everything else was according to the recipe.  They are delicious. It had been ages since I had a muffin with lemon zest and it surprised me.  I couldn’t taste the komatsuna at all – I was a little worried because it has a much stronger flavor than spinach – just the lemon zest.