It has been brought to my attention that my children are shamefully hard-done-by: most weekday mornings they must suffer through the burden of torturous breakfasts consisting of cereal, granola, porridge, toast, French toast, eggs, bacon, and occasionally, even English muffins. Oh, the horror! 

Hey folks. Sorry for the unseemly lack of posts; since I last posted I’ve stopped teaching fitness classes and started back to work full time (outside the home) and have been swamped with a daily routine of schlepping my eldest to school with the twins in tow, picking up the hubby each morning after he finishes teaching an early morning anatomy class, catapulting myself to the office, and then racing back home for dinner time, and collapsing after extracting my remaining drops of energy while kicking and punching my way through an hour of my mom’s Turbo Jam DVDs (love it!!).

Okay, so I had to use up the last of a seemingly endless supply of pumpkin puree, created from one modest “pie” pumpkin, one soft pear, and half of very ripe banana. Yet another case of necessity giving rise to invention; and muffins seemed like just the ticket to fill the order: portable, moist, healthy and flavor-packed.

Save yourself three bucks and a trip to Starbucks, and instead invite some friends over for coffee at your house and serve up these outstandingly delicious cranberry-studded pumpkin scones using this recipe, modeled very closely after the exquisite (and hugely popular) pastry served up at your “local neighborhood Starbucks” (although I do believe that is, in fact, an oxymoron).

Once again, I find myself inspired by — or perhaps, rather, in desperate need of using up — copious quantities of certain foodstuffs, so lovingly delivered by our friendly CSA farmers. The zucchini harvest seems to have waned and we now find ourselves (most appreciatively) up to our knees in carrots.