monday? oh.

i had a pretty awesome weekend, as evidenced by the fact that this post is so much later than i usually post them. we were gone all day at a pair of good friends' wedding, where i got to see so many great high school and college friends - people i haven't seen in years! we had a blast and now we have a gorgeous bouquet of flowers to remember the weekend by {this was one of the bridesmaid's bouquets, but she was flying home and couldn't take it with her - this thing is heavy!}.

in a bit of sad news, we learned that the floods in thailand have reached our little elephants. the river on the property has flooded greatly and they had to move over 100 elephants, including the little babies, to higher ground near the village. as you can imagine, it takes so much work to move them all and take care of them far from their resources. not to mention how awful it is that all the homes on the ranch have been totally submerged in the river, most of which are just tin and straw huts. please keep the villagers and the elephants in your thoughts as they wait for the river to go down and then have the huge job of salvaging their homes.

this weekend i also finally made espresso banana muffins! dannon's cousin gave us this amazing cookbook as a wedding gift:

now, i don't cook {unless you count cereal} but dannon has been making some of these dishes and they're delicious. be ye warned, the recipes are pretty healthy {read: they sometimes taste healthy}, and call for some pretty unusual ingredients {so make sure you have a whole foods or big health food store nearby}.

i do, however, enjoy baking and there are a couple good muffin recipes, including the espresso banana muffins!

i found that in taste, they rated a 9 out of 10 - super good!

but in consistency, they rated more like a big fat creepy, chewy, dense disaster... out of 10*

overall deliciousness: about 7 out of 10!

i think if you're used to eating healthier things these will be just fine, and really the taste makes the density totally worth it. they call for yogurt, instead of oil or milk, which is what made the muffins so dense. so i think next time i'm going to play with the ingredients and see if i can come up with something a little lighter.

and that's about it for today. check back tomorrow for a much fancier post! i'm going to participate in red boots' series "this is my tuesday..." on the topic of love. you should too!

* i may be exaggerating this rating. we've been eating them a lot and are now quite used to the density. mmm!!!