Banana Chobani Muffins

Last night I was pondering where I am in my life and how different things are.  Two years ago this past weekend, I was working a second job at Zeal:

Tony had already been hospitalized locally three times by May of 2014.   In June, July and August was when we made our treks to Mayo Clinic.  All while holding down a full time job, but quitting the restaurant because I knew I couldn’t handle it all and Tony took priority.  That was the best decision I ever made.  Fast forward two years and I am working at a farmers market and no longer sitting at a desk all day!

On Saturday I got to the store front bright and early because I had to drive to Homewood.  The last time I was in Homewood was 30 years ago when I played field hockey against Homewood-Flossmore high school!  I was a bit nervous too, because I was doing this market all by myself, only after working two other markets – crazy!  When I got there I was told everything I needed was ready to go – one of the girls that works at the store went over her checklist and declared me good to go.  I packed my car and off I went.

The best part about this market is that I got to park my car right behind the tent, so I could keep my purse, my lunch cooler, etc. close by.   You may be thinking the table looks a bit bare, and you’d be correct.  Once I unpacked everything I realized I didn’t have my display crate for the frozen soups, no table signage at all telling people the cost or what I was selling, no foil, no saran wrap and wait for it. . . .NO SPATULA!  How the hell was I going to demo cooked veggie burgers without a spatula?  I saw a pretzel food truck a few tents down, and said “Hey, do you guys have anything that closely resembles a spatula?!”  Bam – success!  She said she always packs a “what if” box of various utensils and loaned me a spatula.

It was the opening day for that towns outside market – it was pretty steady busy.  It ran from 8-1, but by noon almost every vendor started closing up shop, and I finally did that same at 12:30.  The only bad part of doing a market by yourself is the unloading and reloading – the tent is really big and I had to find help to break it down.   It went pretty well though, I think I sold about $600 worth of veggie burgers.

I was wondering what I would do for food while I do these markets, because it’s so early in the morning when I leave and sometimes I don’t want to eat within 15 minutes of getting up, so I made some hard boiled eggs, and banana Chobani muffins, and had bananas and fruit in my personal cooler.  I’ll post the recipe at the end of this post.

I ate the egg and the banana on the drive to the market, then after everything was set up, I had the muffin.  It’s really hard to gage my blood sugar too – because I am always moving, I am worried my blood sugar could drop at any moment, but while a little high (220) when I finished unpacking, that wasn’t too bad. 

I have Shelley to thank for my lunch.  She posted the Taylor Farms salads and I had forgotten about them.  I buy them at Wal-mart and they are $2.50 each.

Saturday night Hannah treated Jacob and I out to dinner which was nice.  They had a jones for chicken wings, and well, I’ve never met a chicken wing I don’t like!  I counted 6 of these pieces as 12 smart points.

It was weird going to bed at 9:30 p.m. both Friday and Saturday night, but I had no problem getting up early.  Remind me of that in two months!  Yesterday I was working a market with one of the line cooks, Alberto, as we were going to be doing veggie burger salads and wraps at this event.  He’s been doing these markets for several years and it was wonderful having him give me advice about how to set up, etc.  I drove with him in his car, which was nice because it was a 40 minute drive from the shop.  But he didn’t really talk much for the first 10 minutes of the ride and I was like “wow, this is going to be a fun day!”  But we finally broke the ice, and I really enjoyed working with him.  We were in Frankfort yesterday, and it was the last day of spring farmers market hours, so this ran from 10-1.  We sold $1600 worth of veggie burgers and food at this market.

It was super windy though – I need to bring some duck tape to hold signage down, because it kept flying away and I had to run after it. 

Alberto had to make foil wind shields so that the flames wouldn’t go out on the portable stoves.  It was non-stop customers all day.  That’s my favorite part is talking to people.  This isn’t the best picture, but here is a picture of our veggie burger salad – “danimal” style which has a farm fresh egg on top and cheese.

Around 12:30, Alberto made me a hot wrap – meaning it was the hot vegan burger that has poblano peppers in it, and he used our house made giardiniera.  It’s wrapped in a spinach tortilla, and I also had the egg and cheese.  This was so filling I could only eat half, so I brought the other half home for Hannah to try and she loved it.

That was a long day though.  I left my house at 5:30 and didn’t get back home until 4:00, but they day literally flew by.   I came home, relaxed with Hannah for a while until Jacob got off of work, and then got my grilling pants on.  I made Hannah a hot dog, but Jacob and I had grilled burgers that I stuffed with a bit of pepper jack cheese and a leftover piece of cooked bacon.   I had my burger on a slice of bread that was too small for the burger, and topped my burger with just a touch of Plochman’s mustard and Tapatio sauce.

So it looks like my schedule will be working 4 days a week, which is perfect.  Bringing money in, and still allowing time for cooking, working on my photography, etc.  I think it will be a good balance for the summer!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day.  My Mom is marching in a parade with the 19th century women’s club – it’s the same parade we grew up attending and participating in that starts at our old grade school.  I remember loving to decorate my bike because you could always ride at the back of the parade, even if you weren’t in a group.

I plan on making BBQ ribs – and I am making a Kansas City BBQ sauce – I’ve never tried a KC sauce before, other than KC Masterpiece, so will be interesting to see how it tastes.

Here’s the muffin recipe – when I put it into WW recipe builder, each one is 6 smart points.

Enjoy – make it a great day!