Recipe Fail: salty muffins

I make pancakes probably 3 or 4 times a week for breakfast.  Everyone loves them, me especially, they're easy, they keep me full longer than a lame bowl of cereal, and I feel like they have some nutritional value since I use freshly ground whole wheat flour.  

For the last several months, The Frog gets upset if I don't make him a smiley face one, but lately, he's been really interested in letters and so requests letters.

 Just thought I'd pass along a tip for all you pancake makers who have never delved into the letter pancakes before- If you draw the non-symmetric letters the right way, initially, they will look backwards when you flip them over (and the underside never looks as good).  This means I've had to start perfecting my backwards letters, and now when I do a "J" in the mornings (the most requested letter...) I have to think really hard about what it's supposed to look like!

Iris's stack 'o pancakes.  I'm so glad I finally don't out-eat everyone at breakfast :)

 This is the huge bowl of bran muffin mix that lived in my fridge for a few weeks.  In my family, it's tradition to always eat bran muffins (with lots of butter, and the oranges from our stockings and usually a fritata or some other eggy thing, and maybe bacon) on Christmas morning and this year I decided to do it as well.  As a mom, I can appreciate this tradition because this awesome batter will last in your fridge for up to 6 weeks and still turn out beautifully.  This means you can make the batter the night before and bake them fresh (while opening presents) the morning of :)  (you could even make the batter a week before if you're experiencing a particularly busy Christmas week...)

Well, this is the first year I've tried to make them and I'm not sure what happened when I got the recipe, but I quickly discovered that the Tbl of salt the recipe called for, actually should have been a tsp.  Which means I had to then make an additional double batch (sans salt) to make the muffins palatable.  Which means, we got a LOT of bran muffin mix.  Luckily, they're delicious and the batter lasts a long time.

And finally, I can't believe it, but making the other two batches of muffins used up this giant 6 lb can of Crisco I bought at Costco when we moved here over 3 years ago.  Woah.  That's a lot of Crisco.