Pumpkin Muffins with Walnuts, in our new place!

      Hello hello again! It was so hard to be away from the blog for so long, especially since there's so much I've been exploring and wanting to share. Long story short, I occasionally have the worst luck in the world, which I like to think of as a bad luck waterfall downward spiral up a creek without a paddle sort of event. I'm not always this unlucky, but when it hits, the luck is BAD. This time my bad luck manifested in my ability to be in touch with the world. Between my cell phone and connecting to the internet, I've experienced enough "Well it should be working, wonder why it's not..." moments in the last six weeks to last me...a long time.

      I've done so much exploring, reading, watching Gilmore Girls, and frugally shopping for dishes, kitchen utensils, and furniture in the last few weeks. At first it was really fun, like living the best version of life, but after a few weeks it's gotten hard to handle! Starting anything anew is always exciting at first, but the excitement has faded a bit as I've started to get accustomed to our new home and this big city, and realized...I need something to do with my time!

      Taking a break from job hunting, I decided I'd work on a few blog posts today. And of course, I've started with the most delicious one! It's turned to fall here so quickly! These cold, cloudy days are just begging for all the fall comforts, including everything pumpkin.

      I have a long history of a tumultuous relationship with breakfast. For most of the past five years or so, I've struggled to want to eat breakfast. Don't get me wrong, I love breakfast food! I just seem to prefer it, well, mostly for dinner, ha! My stomach seems to strongly dislike waking up. This has been problematic, specifically for functioning at work, eating before running events I'd signed up for (pretty much ruined a 10 mile race for me), visiting people and going out to eat for breakfast, and generally it's just never a good thing. Over the years, with my gastroenterologist, we've figured out a routine that helps and a few of the reasons why, which maybe I'll get into another time, but one of the strategies I use to entice my stomach in the mornings is by baking whatever I'm craving in muffin form.

      This brings us to pumpkin muffins! With the stress of moving, even when I haven't felt stressed about it, my gut has reverted to it's old ways and I've just not been into breakfast here. It's meant I get late starts to the day and feel like I'm missing out on time I should be using more productively. So, since I'm craving all things fall, I made these wonderfully simple pumpkin muffins from a German blog called "Esspirationen" which translates, essentially, into "eat-spiration" and which I think is beyond adorable. I'll leave a translated version below, but feel free to use your web browser to translate the page from Germany.

      I had to make these little darlings in my new toaster convection oven, because this is my life now.  My kitchen situation, as compared to previous living arrangements, is quite sparse, and I've just got the basics. For example, aside from only having a small convection oven, I mixed everything by hand because I don't yet have a mixer! And I don't have great counters for baking prep, so until we get a table I'm confined to tiny counter spaces which I promptly make a huge mess. At least they are delicious!

Thanks for tuning in, and look for more posts soon, I've so much to share from my "offline" time! 

Pumpkin Muffins with Walnuts and White Chocolate
Translated from Esspirationen
*I omitted chocolate from mine- I KNOW crazy- but that's the way it was! I encourage you to follow the original recipe for yours :)

Ingredients for 12 muffins
200 g Hokkaido pumpkin
150 g spelled flour Type 630
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs
100g sugar
1 packet Bourbon vanilla sugar
75 g butter or margarine
1 pinch of salt
50 g walnuts
100 g white chocolate
1 pinch of gingerbread spices

Preparation 
Cook the Hokkaido pumpkin throughout for 15 minutes in a large pot in plenty of water. Then remove and let cool slightly. Roast the walnuts in a dry frying pan and chop. Chop chocolate (up to 2 ribs) coarsely too. Cut out 200 g of pumpkin flesh and puree. Preheat the oven to 200 ° C (top / bottom heat). Beat butter and sugar until creamy, then add eggs and a pinch of salt and beat for 2 minutes. Mix flour with spices and baking powder and stir. Add to butter and sugar mix and stir, then add the pumpkin puree. Stir in chopped nuts and chocolate. Prep a muffin tin and spread the batter evenly in it. Bake 20 minutes. In the meantime, the remaining chocolate ribs melt in a small bowl in a water bath. Leave the finished baked muffins to cool slightly in the mold, then release them from the mold and decorate with the melted chocolate and powdered sugar.

Tetris! (long post)

I have played a lot of Tetris in the last few weeks. But not the fun kind. This is the fun kind:

Source. This person is not great at Tetris.

If you want to play the fun kind, feel free to download an app or go to www.freetetris.org. Those are great ideas. No, the Tetris I have been playing looks like this:

New Drawer Tetris- Contact Paper Level Reached.

Unpacking Tetris- Knick-Knack Level! 

Closet Tetris: Mastery Achieved; 

Unpacking Tetris- Mess Level Accomplished

Moving is my least favorite thing...ever. Packing, sorting, getting rid of stuff, renting a moving truck, finding people to help out, and cleaning out the old place is enough work- but then you have to unpack! As much as I enjoy organizing things (it just makes life easier), I do not enjoy organizing a whole house/apartment. In as few days as possible. While living among boxes and chaos. Ugh!! I have gotten in the habit of calling it "Tetris" this go around because that's what it has felt like!

A small bit of backstory:  We recently moved to a new apartment. We moved for a number of reasons, but I would be lying if I didn't tell you the biggest reason was saving some money on rent. Our old place was lovely and wonderful but rent had been going up steadily over the time we were there, and was going to go up again this fall, and we decided to look for a cheaper option. Due to all the timing of start/end dates on both leases, we had to move out of our last apartment and into our new apartment on the same day! I do not recommend that as it is the most exhausting process ever.

That being said, our move went fairly smoothly, as far as moving is concerned. I have a few tips to share that helped make it "rather efficient," to quote a family member.

Tip #1       Start thinking about it early. Knowing it would be a time sensitive matter, we began mentally preparing for it all weeks before the day arrived. 4 weeks out, I was starting to make lists of things we'd need to get done and brainstorm ways to make the process go smoothly. I used a note app on my phone for my lists, so that I could add to them whenever an idea came to me or I remembered something I wanted to add. What made the list? Some items I can recall were "email new place about getting key access," "ask landlord about cleaning requirements," and "clean out craft supplies before packing." This also helped me get an early jump on reserving our U-Haul. Our move in date was the most popular moving day in our area, and it is well known that even with a reservation, we could still have ended up without a truck on the day of. I also browsed Pinterest (search "moving tips") for some good ideas.

Tip #2        Follow up on reservations/requirements. The week before we moved, I called U-Haul place to make sure our reservation was still in place. I dropped a friendly "I know it will be a busy day for you all, but I will definitely be glad to know that the truck we've rented will be ready to go when we get there" and the 2 minute call reassured me that we'd be good to go. Aside from moving truck rental, we also followed up with our new landlords regarding documents needed before we could pick up our key, and our old landlords to know what needed to be done before moving out. All the paperwork was done 2 weeks before moving day, so we didn't have to continue worrying about the fine print.

Tip #3        Packing 

• Go room to room. Start with lesser used rooms (i.e. guest room) as early as you can. For example, I was done crafting and with school stuff until after moving, so it was easy to start packing that a week ahead of time. 

• Have a "done packing by this date" goal. Stick to it! Choose a room or part of a room (i.e. bookshelves, closet) to pack each day. Breaking it down makes it seem more "doable."

• Pack everything so you can easily carry it out. Don't just make piles! Use boxes, but also use things you already have: bags, purses, baskets, organizing crates, etc. You can get free boxes from many sources, so search that in your area before you buy boxes. On moving day, all we had to do was pick up and move our stuff, instead of gathering last minute items, odds and ends, etc. This was amazing because from start of loading the truck to emptying the last of our belongings, we were done in 4 hours!

• Label your boxes! It makes unpacking a lot less messy and chaotic. It's a pain to remember when you're "in the zone" packing but it really is extremely helpful.

Source

• For fragile objects, use what you have to pack it securely. No need to buy bubble wrap when you can collect these for free-  4 weeks supply of plastic bags from grocery trips, 2 weeks worth of the Sunday newspaper, blankets, pillows, towels, etc. For every box of dishes, I put a blanket in the bottom of the box, wrapped dishes in newspaper or plastic bags, and then packed in the empty space with more blankets or towels. Nothing was broken during the move or the week of sitting in the boxes. Victory! 

• For closet items, my favorite moving tip is this one  -->
  Cover your clothes in garbage bags and easily move them without having to pack them all. It makes unpacking pretty easy too! 
• Try to enjoy the packing- put on some good music, have a glass of wine, reward yourself with ice cream or a walk out in nice weather (which is great after being stuck inside)- whatever makes you feel better about having to pack. 

Tip #4        Moving Day Arrives! Start early! We picked up our moving truck as early as we could- 7am. This assured the truck was still there (hadn't been taken by someone else) and also helped with our "out and in in one day" timeline. We started moving stuff into the truck by 7:30. If you're not using a moving truck, ignore all the truck related stuff. 

• If you're moving into an apartment, check to see if you can pick up the key the afternoon before moving day. So you don't have to wait for the rental office to open, and can go in the night before and make sure it is good to go to move in (clean, do a walk through, etc).
• If you have help/friends, make sure to have water/sports drink/coffee aplenty. Also have enough for yourself. Hydration is important!
• Make sure you eat breakfast before you start. Have some snacks handy (make sure they are not packed!).
• Load the big items first, then pack around them in the truck. Tetris 101. 
• When you unload the truck, move things into the room they'll most likely go when you unpack. This is why labeling is important! It prevents you having to move stuff around or search to find things once you're moved in.
• Take a few minutes to eat lunch. It will avoid "hangriness" later on. Well worth it.
• Keep the coffee/water flowing! Energy abounds! 

     As far as the rest of the moving process, well. It doesn't really need a lot of explaining. Cleaning the old place was cleaning, just when we were super tired. And unpacking has been playing Tetris, trying to get everything to fit just right! The only tip I have here is to get everything you want to put in a particular space together, and then start filling the space. You'll be able to easily see what you have left, and what space you have left, and you can adjust as you go, instead of after you've already hoped you were done. 

     That's what I've been busy doing instead of blogging! But overall, everything really did go smoothly. Except the washer and dryer, but that's a story for another day. They're hooked up and working fine now, so that is what matters.

     Any tips to add? This was by far the largest move I've ever made, "stuff"-wise. We have a 2 bedroom place and it took two 17-foot truckloads. We didn't load the truck very full the first time, hoping to avoid breaking all the dishes we had packed, but because everything was ready to go and we were only moving a mile down the road, making a 2nd trip wasn't all that bad!