Full Circle Muffins

Today in Kelowna, the sun decided to hide. Rather than also hide (under the covers) I decided to seize the day and make something bright, colorful, and delicious. Or rather, two something’s…both fitting all those criteria.

Having spent just about my entire life living in places that experience a dramatic drop in sunshine as the winter months progress, you’d think I’d be used to the shorter days and endless snow. I’m not. One of the ways I cope 😉 is by bringing the sunshine into my “office,” aka kitchen, via vibrant, refreshing juices. The beauty you see below was a combo of beet, carrot, apple, lemon, and ginger. Mm mm!

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has been consumed and our thirst quenched, there's always this question about what to do with the leftover pulp. We compost in our house so that's the easy answer…but looking at the pile of fluffy carrot pulp, and the deep, rich red that only a beet can leave behind, it seems almost a waste even to put this vibrant content in the compost! How do we squeeze more goodness out of this stuff?

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t! After some Googling, I came across a recipe that not only exceeded expectations, but was simple and all the stuff that went into the muffins was 100% good-for-ya. 👊🏼

OK, so let’s recap: we’ve already made pure, unadulterated juice…and now we get to make no-nonsense, healthy muffins that also taste uhhhhmazing. Can you say…winning?!

The clincher? I did have a little extra pulp after all, that didn’t go into muffins. Instead of throwing it in the compost, I gave it to my backyard hens, who promptly inhaled most of it, and stomped the rest into the dirt, effectively becoming mini composters. They are the best. Why don’t we all have chickens?

This is what I mean by full-circle: I make juice from fresh, from-the-earth produce. I bake the pulp into muffins, using eggs that my chickens provide me, along with a medley of other ingredients. I feed the leftover pulp to those same chickens, who eat it, producing more delicious, healthy eggs, and who also dig it into the earth, producing rich, composted soil for me to grow fresh, from-the-earth produce. Don’t you see?! It’s the ciiirrrrcle of life! 😆

Imagine if we all lived like this most of the time…a world full of juice, muffins, chickens, eggs, and lush, vibrant soil. It would be bliss, I tell ya!