MULBERRIES?!?!

dudes!
dried mulberries!!!
who knew?
not me.
as usual,
i found them in the weird food section of my favorite overstock department store.
yep.
that's where i get ALL my elitist ingredients.
i'm always on the lookout for that new-new hottness.
and as soon as i saw 'em, i knew i had to have 'em.
uh-huh.
...and i'm super glad that i grabbed a bag.
seriously.
4 oz of dried mulberries took my morning bake
to a whole new tier in the echelons of triumph and sh!t, man.
ha!
but,
for real, though.
walnut lemon magic muffins are exxxactly what i wanted...
so, with those mulb's in there?
my day was made well before noon.
check the teleport:

C'MON!
the berries are perfect.
dark, sweet, thick.
i mean,
have you ever seen a mulberry when it's ripe?
they're HUGE.
so, even dried, they're really rich.
ok.
you may want to know about the details, right?
well,
here's how you can make your very own batch of these goodies:
-
preheat the oven to 360F
-
cream together-
8 T butterish;
1 cup raw sugar;
1/2 tsp salt;
1 tsp vanilla;
1/2 tsp lemon extract;
add in 3/4 cup non-dairy yogurt,
and whip it up!
toss in:
zest of 1/2 lemon;
2 1/4 cups flour;
1/4 cup tapioca starch;
2 tsp bakey powpow;
1 tsp bakey soda;
1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts;
(medium high heat, until that amazing aroma kicks in, and they get a shade darker)
4 oz. dried mulberries;
(it was a bag of  'em, by weight)
3/4 cup non-dairy milk;
2 T lemon juice.
stir it all up, and fold it together so that everything is equally distributed.
for whatever reason,
this made 16 muffins filled pretty much to the top of each cup.
that's good news, really,
because too much is the right amount.
MORE muffins aren't exactly an unwelcome guest at my breakfast table.
but,
before we bake them,
they need a little somethin' extra.
rules is rules, after all.
streusel is in order, don't you think?
yuuuuuup.
a good streus' activates one hundred percent more hottness
in most every cakey baked good.
mmmhmmmm.
that's a thing.
-
y'gotta streus' it UP, buddy!
2 T melted butter,
added to 1/4 cup coarse-ground oatmeal,
and >1/4 cup powdered sugar.
that's it.
fork blend it until it looks like that coffee cakey toppin',
and disperse it among the muffins.
i'm sayin'-
you know what to do.
-
bake these babies for 30 minutes,
and get ready to lose your F*ing mind.
i wouldn't even describe the taste as anything less than expert.
the crumb is crucial, and the nuts make it knobbly.
the berries are sweetish, and chewyish, like blackberry raisins.
that subtle lemon, and the even subtler oatiness???
neighbors,
you're about to enter a whole new era of awesome.
.....i'm kind of hyping these jauns, huh?
that's right.
because if you make these,
and then you eat these,
you're gonna KNOW that what i'm saying is absolutely devoid of hyperbole.
real talk.
***********
friends,
it's always weird to me when people i used to know actually die,
as opposed to just being dead to me.
y'know?
i'm not a keep-in-touch kind of person.
i'm also not a let's-stay-friends-when-our-time-is-up guy, either.
i'm by-and-largely alone.
partly by choice,
and partly by consequence.
but,
that's the cost of being an empirical objectivist.
it's math, really.
here's the reason i bring this up-
through the gossipy grapevine,
as broadcast by the social-media-hounds i work with,
i was informed that my ex-wife's dog,
as in:
previously our dog in those long-lost days of their being an us;
as in:
at one point we were man and man's bestie;
as in:
the stereotypical breed-bannable animal-aggressive 'hood-style pitbull
that i personally picked and packed and brought to the woodsly goodness
to live out her days as a member of my former family;
a.k.a. olive the dog;
a.k.a. loafie,
finally went to her eternal reward.
i don;t know any more details than that,
but, i s'pose i owe her a mention, as a debt repaid for her friendship long ago.
so, now,
as another 'nother piece of the past has passed,
i find myself recognizing an ugly little bit of cruelty in my hardest of hearts.
uh-huh.
...
it's a strange kind of information, y'feel me?
people you used to know still living and dying.
like,
someone asked me if i was ok.
ummmm, what?
of course i am.
why wouldn't i be?
for real.
loss, for me,
is such an omipresent constant,
that what amounts to a devastating event for others
is almost always the foregone conclusion that i've accepted,
and numbed myself to, right from the start.
*shoutouts to olive's owner for that*
what i mean is-
as far as my world goes-
that dog died along with the rest of that lifetime years ago.
although,
my memory is long, indeed,
and as such,
i sincerely hope she passed in comfort,
as one friend to another should;
but as for the ensuing disquiet of those that remain?
i've lived like that for so long that
my disconsolate counsel can conjure no condolences.
like i said,
there's cruelty in my ungentle heart.
-
for what it's worth,
i hope that dog is joyously killing all the cats in the afterlife.
actually,
i guess that's not specifically true.
since every single cat goes straight to hell and burns for all eternity,
and i wish for a better postscript than that for olive.
...
meanwhile,
MY dog is over here listening to pearl jam,
why?
because he's still alive.
oh, c'mon.
i started with a delicious muffin recipe.
and things really went 'round the bend from there, huh?
yeah.
it's my blog, ma,
and it's all really happening,
and that's the whole point.
without the bitter, the sweet's just not as sweet,
and without the sweet,
the bitter would be even less palatable;
never quiet, never soft.....