I love to eat sweet, rich-tasting muffins. Who doesn’t?
With my Poached Pear & Sweet Potato Muffins with Lemon Buttercream Frosting recipe idea, you can eat sweet-on-sweet muffins too.
Where did I this food combo idea come from?
From food in my fridge that was destined for the trash if I hadn’t used it in a recipe.
Did you know that 40 percent of the food in the United States goes uneaten today? According to the National Resources Defense Council, that amounts to 20 pounds of food per person every month.
Where does all that food end up?
Almost all of it in a landfill.
Still here? Thanks.
Poached Pear & Sweet Potato Muffin with Lemon Buttercream Frosting
I don’t want to scare you off I really do want to talk about Poached Pear & Sweet Potato Muffins with Lemon Buttercream Frosting. This is all related, hang in there.
I think it’s important to share this information. Because if only one person reads the NRDC report, one person makes my muffins or a recipe from food they would otherwise toss, then I am good. I don’t claim to want to change the world with this story, but I would take pride knowing one person was affected by this post. And maybe that one person will share this recipe and story, and so on.
I do my share of trashing food. Wilted celery stalks, one portion of leftover chicken soup, ½ cup of cooked oatmeal, half an onion, stale crackers. Lettuce is the ultimate trashed item in my house. Not because I don’t like to eat it, but because lettuce is the most perishable food item. And on most days, I cook for one and don’t always want to eat salad every day.
One word comes to mind—boring.
While I make a conscious effort to use all the food I buy, sometimes I buy too much. Or sometimes we eat out on a whim because I don’t want to cook. Or I open a can of tuna instead of chopping those not so crisp vegetables for a salad or stir fry.
But despite all that consciousness-raising-effort, I have a winner in the use all the food I buy category. Take this Poached Pear & Sweet Potato Muffins with Lemon Buttercream Frosting.
This is one of those recipes I call—least boring.
I started with my base recipe for banana walnut bread. Instead of bananas, I used one poached pear from a jar (the last remaining pear from a jar I preserved last summer), a leftover baked sweet potato (yam to some of you), a handful of dried cranberries and a dash of ground cinnamon. That’s it.
Oh. And the Lemon Buttercream Frosting? I admit I never toss a lemon in the garbage until I use every last iota of lemon. I use lemons for cooking, salads, baking and cleaning, but I use the zest for almost everything (like this frosting) after I squeezed the last drop of juice from the pulpy center. So when you squeeze a lemon for lemonade, or your next apple pie, don‘t throw out the lemon. Wrap it. Refrigerate it. Then when you want to add some zing to your next buttercream-frosting recipe, zest it.
Take a look in your refrigerator before you trash your food. Tell me, what deliciousness have you made lately? And if you don’t mind, would you please share this post? Thanks and I’ll see you next time.
