Monday, February 9th - the Case of the Mysterious Shrinking Tim Horton's Muffin

Breakfast was at mine. D had Vanilla and Almond Special K with Silk Soymilk, unsweetened. I had two little pots of Activia Yogurt with a handful of cereal flakes tossed in. I had a brew coffee but D prefers to wait until work where they have a proper capuccino machine.

Lunch, well, I was on calls most of the morning and half way through lunch so I left late and couldn't go where I was tempted, i.e. sushi. I grabbed a McDonalds medium coffee and Fruit and Fibre muffin. It's only 1.39 for the two together and it's just a couple of blocks away. I'd have gotten a decent muffin like from Urban Fare that does amazing muffins, $1.86 but well worth it. But they are too too far. The IGA muffins are not worth the $1.4. Far too oily. Tim Horton's? Where do I start? I used to lurrrve Tim Horton's muffins. When I lived away, the first thing I'd buy when I was back, often on the way home from the airport, was a Tim Horton's carrot muffin. Not anymore! Two reasons, the first I'm largely willing to ignore. They are very very oily and high in calories. Their classic carrot muffin is almost as bad as a burger and since it's all sugar, even worse really. So I switched to any muffin that looked 'healthy' with grains or bran. Still, it's hard to beat the coffee & muffin deals that abound so last fall, they finally caved and started offering Tim Horton's muffin and a coffee for 1.99$. Whoohoo, right? Wrong. I had one on the way to San Francisco at the airport, a month ago, finally. I'm not actually near one anymore, since I don't take the skytrain as much. Anyhoo, I was sorely disappointed. The reason they were finally able to do it or probably, rather, they only way the were willing to do it was by SHRINKING their muffins by 25%. They are puny now. Totally not worth it. The McDonald ones are about the size of the 'original' Tim Horton Muffins. And if you get the Bran or the Fruit and Fibre, they're not bad if not good. The Fruit and Fibre muffin has a banana base to cut the amount of oil but not moisture and had blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. Yum. The coffee is acceptable.

Dinner, we're having BBQ'd portobello mushroom burgers with blue cheese. On the side we're having BBQ'd sweet potato fingers.

Sweet Potato Fingers
Peel two med/lg sweet potatoes
Cut into 1 inch wide strips
Toss with Olive oil and Dean and Deluca Chipotle BBQ rub
(I would have nuked them first for a bit but I'm not a BBQ pro)
Place the fingers in a BBQ veggie basket.
Cook and toss occasionally until fork tender.

Portobello Mushroom Burgers
De-stem and clean four Portobello Mushrooms about the size of a burger pattie or bigger, they will shrink.
Rub some BBQ sauce of your choice on them
BBQ briefly until they char slightly and turn once.
Crumble some blue cheese probably 1T per burger depending on how strong you like it.

Put two mushrooms per burger. Essential or you'll won't feel it's 'meaty' enough. Now here is the trick. If you were able to grill all the way (we had to finish in the oven when the BBQ ran out of gas) Put one mushroom guts side up, dress with onions and cheese and then put the next with guts side down so you you have sandwiched your filling. BUT BUT, if you haven't grilled all the way, your schrooms may still have quite a bit of moisture in them so you'll want to do it the other way so the tops are touching. That way the moisture from the innards of the mushroom will be soaked up by the bun.

On the side we have some white sliced onion and baby spinached, prewashed.

by the by, we had to nuke the sweet potato fingers before serving. the Broiling and BBQ'ing wasn't enough in the timeframe of the mushrooms. :-D