Fresh, hot, and sweet corn muffins with maple butter are the perfect accompaniment to delicious summer grilling or crisp summer salads alike! Bake up a batch to enjoy – but they won’t last long!
This is Week 18 of staying home and teleworking during the COVID crisis. 124 days. The farthest I’ve been from my house, other than one trip up to Fort Myer for work, is the Giant grocery store 3 miles from my house and a couple of parks for hikes that are no more than 10 miles away.
Instead, the rest of my life has invaded my home. My work computer is no longer 16 miles away from my house but about 10 feet outside the door of my bedroom. Thanks to the magic of digital collaboration, I can get access to everything I’m working on at that computer, on my laptop, on my cell phone, on my Apple watch, you name it.
Which has created, as you can imagine, a big problem.
Boundaries.
My husband and son are very supportive of my work, but at the same time, I’ve seen their faces when my phone rings or buzzes when I’m at the table, or when I think I’m being sneaky and checking the notification on my watch. It’s all too easy for me, being something of a workaholic by nature, to spend a little too long on a project, to get into my email at all hours, to return to work after dinner or after my son has gone to bed, now that the commute isn’t a 45 minute boundary between what counts as work and what counts as home.
So I’ve had to set some rules.
Phones and watches can be silenced, and we have a phone bin on the island where things get dropped when we get to the kitchen. Meals have become an important time for our little family to come together and enjoy food and time shared together, and I have started fencing those off.
The same goes for the time I spend cooking. I have cooked almost every single meal at home since this thing cooked off – and Scott has cooked the others. No fast food. No restaurant orders. That time, for me, is my chance to unplug from the day, to put on some music and sip some wine and unwind from the day, and I love it.
And even though the drive to hustle is real, you have to set boundaries around the work time, and sometimes it’s for the quality of your work. My work quality drops a lot if I’ve been at it for too long without some time to recharge and jog loose some fresh ideas. I make silly mistakes and overlook details that I might not have missed if I’d been fresh.
18 weeks at this and I’m still working on getting my balance and my boundaries right. It’s a lot of fun being able to see my son throughout the day and spend time with him, and it’s really hard to tell him “Mama has to go back to work.”
But we’re figuring it out. One day at a time.
[lt_recipe name=”Cornbread Muffins with Maple Butter” summary=”Fresh, hot, and sweet corn muffins with maple butter are the perfect accompaniment to delicious summer grilling or crisp summer salads alike! Bake up a batch to enjoy – but they won’t last long!” servings=”12″ total_time=”45M” print=”yes” image=”https://homefrontcooking.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Corn-Muffins-1057-e1594844302687-1024×683.jpg” ingredients=”For the maple butter:;3/4 cup butter, room temperature;3 1/2 tablespoons pure maple syrup;For the muffins:;1 cup yellow cornmeal;1 cup all-purpose flour;1/4 cup sugar;1 tablespoon baking powder;1/4 teaspoon salt;1 cup buttermilk;1 egg;5 tablespoons butter, melted” ]For the maple butter, beat the butter in a medium bowl until it’s nice and creamy. Then beat in the maple syrup until it’s well blended and smooth. Cover and refrigerate until you’re ready to use it.;Preheat your oven to 375F.;Butter or grease your muffin tin or line with paper cups.;In a medium bowl, whisk together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Pour in the buttermilk and melted butter and whisk until just incorporated – you don’t want to overmix.;Divide the batter among the prepared muffin cups.;Bake the muffins until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 15-16 minutes.;Cool on racks for about 10 minutes, and serve with the maple butter.[/lt_recipe]
Stay strong, friends.
