Jennifer Bohnhoff's Blog, page 31

Apple Muffins for Back to School

September is here, and with it come thoughts of fall, back to school, and apples. 
Really, none of the things that I associate with the time right after Labor Day are really timely. At least for me, school began in the first half of August! Fall doesn't really begin on Labor Day, but on September 21st. And apples come into season somewhere between the middle of July and late November depending on the variety and the climate. 
Still, I think September is a good time to mix up a batch of apple muffins. Heck, any time of year is good for these muffins!  Because these start with a muffin mix that you can keep in your pantry, these come together so quickly that you can make them up even if you have to be out the door and running the car pool. The cinnamon gives the air a warm, comforting smell, and substituting applesauce for oil makes these extra healthy. So give them a try and see if they don't make it to the head of your muffin class. Apple Muffins Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake tins with paper liners.

2 eggs
1 cup water
1/2 cup applesauce
2 3/4 cup Manic Muffin Mix
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 honeycrisp apple Peel, core, and dice the apple into pieces about the size of a raisin. You should have about 1 cup. I selected honeycrisp because they're my husband's favorite, but any crisp apple will do. Gala, granny smith and Braeburn are also good apples for baking because they hold their shape. Mix all the ingredients together until there is no dry mix left.  Fill tins 3/4 full. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the muffins have brown tops and a toothpick stuck into the center of one comes out dry.

Make about 18 muffins. These muffins freeze well. Take them out of the freezer the night before and leave them on the counter, and they will be ready to eat in the morning.​

Cake Mix Cookies, Part Two

This summer I tried making cookies from a boxed cake mix. They turned out so well that I decided to make another variation. They, too, were excellent! Give them a try. You'll find they're really easy and very tasty. Chocolate, White Chocolate and Macadamia Nut Cookies 1 box chocolate cake mix
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped macadamia nuts

Mix all together until there is no dry powdery mix left. Form into balls a little smaller than a golf ball and place 2 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake until set around the edges, about 10-12 minutes. Let cool before removing from the baking sheet. 

Makes about 2 dozen.

Zucchini Muffins

August. High summer. If you have a garden, chances are you have more zucchini than you know what to do with. You can get rid of a little by using Manic Monday Muffin Mix to make zucchini muffins.

My granddaughter spends more time up at my mountain house during the summer. On a recent visit she helped me make zucchini muffins. She's six, but she loves to bake and she did a pretty good job of measuring and mixing the ingredients and getting them into the muffin tin. ​
Zucchini Muffins Preheat oven to 350. Line muffin tins with paper cups

2 3/4 cup 2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup water
1/2 cup oil
1 cup grated zucchini
1 TBS cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Mix all ingredients until no dry mix remains. Spoon into muffin cups and bake 20 minutes, or until lightly browned. 

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an author and educator who lives in the mountains outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is currently at work on a book set in New Mexico during the Civil War and another set in New Mexico and France during World War I.

She's been working on a variation of Manic Muffins every month this year, and plans to produce a little cookbook with all the recipes this fall. If you'd like more information, you can join her friends and family email list.  

The Raid on Columbus

Pancho Villa Many people consider 9/11/2001 the day that America lost its feeling of security. But al-Qaeda’s suicide attacks of the four hijacked that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and a field in Pennsylvania was not the first time enemies had attacked on American soil. The United States suffered invasions during the War of 1812, the Mexican American War, and in 1916, when Pancho Villa raided the New Mexican town of Columbus. Francisco I. Madero  In 1910, Mexico became embroiled in a revolution that was intent on radically transforming its culture and government. It began when the 31-year-long regime of Porfirio Díaz rigged an election against a challenging wealthy landowner named Francisco I. Madero. This led to an armed rebellion that put Madero into power. Madero’s presidency couldn’t unite the people. Conservatives saw him as weak and liberal. Former revolutionary fighters and the dispossessed saw him as too conservative. Madero resigned in February 1913, and was later assassinated. ​ Venustiano Carranza Backed by business interests and other supporters of the old order, General Victoriano Huerta’s counter-revolutionary regime came to power. In July 1914 a coalition of regional revolutionary forced him out and one of their leaders, Venustiano Carranza, took control with the support of American President Woodrow Wilson.  
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Not all of the revolutionaries supported Carranza. One of the leaders in opposition was Pancho Villa, the commander of the northern division of the army centered in Chihuahua. Villa had received a lot of support from Americans in the past and was shocked when this support dried up. Lacking military supplies, money, and munitions, Villa’s army degenerated into a disorganized mob that wandered around northern Mexico, foraging, raping, and looting as they went.  On March 9, 1916, his troops crossed the border ant attacked the tiny town of Columbus, New Mexico. At the time of the attack, New Mexico had only been a state for four years, but that doesn't mean it was a "new" place. Native Americans had lived in it for thousands of years. In 1598 Spain colonized it, but lost it when Mexico gained its independence in 1824. In 1848, at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War, the United States annexed New Mexico as a territory. It was finally admitted to the Union as the 47th state on January 6, 1912. It continues to be the state with the highest percentage of Hispanic and Latino Americans, and still has close ties with Mexico.
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Historians still argue about why Villa crossed the border. One theory is that he wanted to punish the United States for withdrawing its support for his cause. Another is that merchants in Columbus had cheated him in an arms deal. Finally, Villa might have been desperate for the arms and horses he though he could get from the raid. The day before the attack, a ranch foreman named Juan Favela rode to Camp Columbus, a small post established to patrol the border. Favela warned Colonel Herbert Jermain Slocum, the commander of the 13th Cavalry, that Villa and his forces were in Palomas, a bordertown only three miles south of Columbus.  Slocum reinforced the troops at the Border Gate and stepped up patrols along the 65-mile border, but he wasn’t overly concerned. Although not all men were in garrison, the 13th Cavalry Regiment had a headquarters troop, a machine gun troop, and four of the seven rifle troops deployed to patrol the border: 12 officers and 341 men in all. Villa, he was sure, wouldn’t dare attack a force that large. Captured Villistas later revealed that the spies Villa sent into Columbus returned with reports that only thirty or so soldiers were garrisoned at the Camp, however, and this misinformation may have convinced Villa of Columbus’ vulnerability.
Columbus burning during the raid Villa crossed the border about midnight. He took up a position on Cootes Hill overlooking Columbus, and at 4:15 am on the morning of March 9 launched a two-pronged attack on the town from the west and southeast. Most of his 380 man army left their horses with Villa and moved in on foot.

​Columbus was a small town, with only a few adobe houses, a couple of hotels, a grocery store, a drug store, a few mercantile businesses and a railway station lining its sandy streets. People in both the town and garrison awoke in the dark to shouts of "Viva Villa!” and “Viva Mexico!"  Villa’s army looted the stores and set them on fire. If their proprietors got in the way, they were shot. J.J. Moore, who owned a mercantile shop, was. So was C.C. Miller, the town’s druggist. The fire spread to the Commercial Hotel, where the Villistas robbed people as they fled the burning buildings. Four civilians were killed there, six elsewhere. ​ But Columbus didn’t go down without a fight. Many of the townspeople defended themselves with rifles and shotguns. 2nd Lt. John Lucas heard the noise and, so hastily that he never got into his boots, made his way from his private quarters to the camp's guard tent, where he broke into the lockers that kept his troop's machine guns secure. Lucas set up four emplacements of men, each with a Hotchkiss M1909 Benét-Mercié machine gun.  He was soon joined by 30 troopers armed with Springfield rifles.
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At first the night was so dark that the soldiers couldn’t see their enemies. The only way to locate Villistas were the muzzle flashes as they fired. As the Commercial’s blaze grew, it backlit the Villistas, making them easy targets. Close to 20,000 rounds were fired from the machine guns during the 90-minute fight. As the sky lightened, Villa's bugler called a retreat. Villa left behind his dead and wounded and slipped back into Mexico.  The dead Villistas and their horses were dragged to a pit, doused with kerosene and set on fire. The lives ones were jailed. All but one were later hanged. Columbus went through a period of intense mourning. The tiny town that no one had heard of was suddenly on the front page of every paper in America. Its notoriety didn’t last long, however. America’s entrance into World War I made a Mexican’s raid on a small border town in a little known state pale into obscurity. Americans wouldn’t feel that vulnerable again until Pearl Harbor.
Jennifer Bohnhoff teaches school in rural central New Mexico. She has written a number of historical fiction novels and is currently at work on one set in Southern New Mexico during the time of the Villa raid.

Living off the Iron Harvest

This summer, my husband and I had the extreme pleasure of touring World War I battlefields in Belgium and Northern France. We have always gone on trips like this on our own. We’ve done the research, made the reservations, and done all the planning by ourselves. For this trip, I felt I overwhelmed by the number of places I wanted to go. I was afraid I’d miss something crucial. So we booked a tour with a company called Beyond Band of Brothers. It turned out to be an excellent decision.
​ One of the things that BBoB does that really enhances the experience is hire local tour guides. In Flanders, a region that now encompasses part of Belgium and France, that was Iain McHenry, a published author and historian whose understanding of battle tactics and cemeteries was encyclopedic. Iain began studying the Great War when he was in the military and assigned to Belgium. He has since gone on to do research for families of soldiers, for BBC programs, and for his book on the 177th Tunneling Company. A telegraph pole on the side of a field in Belgium. Note the shells that a farmer has placed in it for disposal. While we were driving from one site to another, Iain explained that a lot of unexploded ordnance still litters the fields of Flanders. Much of it is still dangerous. France's Department of Mine Clearance, for instance, recovers 900 tons of UXO every year. 

Farmers in the region have taken to calling this the Iron Harvest. Every year, especially during the spring planting and fall ploughing, they uncover unexploded ordnance, rolls of barbed wire, shrapnel, bullets, and other things in their fields. Iain explained that a lot of farmers carry what they find to the sides of their fields and deposit them where bomb squads can recover them. Iain took us to one farm, whose inhabitants have not only endured the dangers of living and farming such dangerous soil, but embraced its history. As we pulled into the farmyard of Pond Farm, a pleasant, middle-aged blond woman welcomed us.  She explained in halting English that the farm had been completely destroyed during World War I. When her great-grandfather returned after the war, he built a small shed for the family to live in. Next came a barn, and then the house in which the family lives today. Eventually, shed became a museum of things they picked up in the fields. 

The collection was intriguing. One thing I noticed were dozens of tiny horseshoes. Noting the confusion on my face, she explained that they were not actually for ponies; they were the heel guards from the hobnailed boots that both German and English soldiers wore.

Her son, Stijn, became intrigued by all the ephemera of war. He's been collecting things from the fields since he was a child.   When he found the remnants of a tank in his field, he decided to build one of his own. He requested plans for a Mark IV from the British government and has been working on building one ever since. His mother was pleased to show us his handiwork, parked in the barn among the farm equipment. Building a tank is no small or inexpensive feat. If you would like to help, donations would be gratefully accepted here.  World War I has been over now for a hundred years, but the land and its people are still recovering. The Iron Harvest is a legacy that will continue to challenge the people for centuries to come.

Cake Mix Cookies

My granddaughter spent the night this weekend. We have fun when she's here. We read a lot of books, play games, and we always, always make cookies.

This time we made chocolate snow drops, but we made them the easy way. We started with a cake mix.

If you've never made cake mix cookies, this is a good recipe  to try.
As you might expect, cake mix cookies use a box of cake mix as a base. We used a box of Pillsbury Devil's Food cake mix for these cookies.

In addition to the boxed cake mix, you need two eggs, 1/2 cup of vegetable oil, and about 1/2 cup of powdered sugar to roll your cookies in. 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees before you start mixing ingredients.

Also have on hand cookie sheets and a cooling rack.
Dump the cake mix into a bowl. Add the two eggs and the cup of oil and mix with a spatula until the mixture is well blended.  Form the dough into balls a little smaller than a golf ball. Roll them in powdered sugar and set on an ungreased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.

Bake 10-12 minutes, until lightly browned. Let cool completely before removing from the baking sheets.

These cookies had a rich, deep chocolate flavor and they were so easy that a 6 year old could do them all by herself, with a little help getting the dry mix off the bottom of the bowl and a little help with taking the sheets out of the hot oven.
If you made these and liked them, try other flavors of boxed cake mix! You can add in a cup of chocolate chips, chopped nuts, or dried fruit bits. The variations are only as limited as your own imagination!  Would you like me to post more box cake mix variations? * Indicates required field Choose One * No, I think I can figure this out on my own. Submit

Speaking the Lingua Franca

The author coming out of a French tunnel near Hill 64. I recently returned from a tour of World War I battlefields. It was a wonderful, exhilarating ten days, and I will be sharing a lot of what I learned here over the next few months. Yes, all this information will end up in at least one historical novel. 

My husband booked this trip in January, as a gift for my 60th birthday. I don't know a whole lot of women who would swoon over a trip to see WWI battlefields as opposed to a romantic getaway to, say, Hawaii or Paris, but I am one of them. I love to learn, and the tour my husband chose was led by experts and historians whom I could pepper with questions to my heart's desire. A WWI soldier's kit Wanting to take full advantage of the trip, I began checking out Learn to Speak French CDs from the library. I downloaded others from Audible. I dutifully listened to them, babbling along, on my drive between school and home, and nearly every other time I was in the car. Sometimes my granddaughter would be with me and she would happily babble along, too. After six months, I still felt a little shaky on my conversation skills. I'd learned to discuss food, shopping, and the weather, but didn't have the vocabulary to discuss World War I battle strategies. But I was anxious to try out my new found skills. I thought I could order a bottle of beer or a glass of wine with the best of them. Turns out, my reading skills were pretty good. What little French I'd learned, combined with an ability to use cognates, words that are similar in both languages  because French and English both originate in Latin, helped me read most signs in French. I ended up reading and translating many signs on monuments and in museums for fellow travelers. One, who didn't believe my interpretation, typed an entire plaque into google translate, then announced that I'd gotten it right.

My listening skills were pretty good, too. I was able to follow directions and get us places, and I could follow along with the audio in museum displays, getting about half of what was said and guessing another quarter.

But my ability to speak with the French? Every time I tried, whether to ask a question, order that glass of wine, or purchase something, I got the same response: 
"What?" I ordered a café au lait, and I got a café au lait! Huzzah! Turns out, while my brain may be able to come up with the words, my tongue wasn't able to form them properly. One shopkeeper asked me, in French, if I was English. I told him no, I was American. He replied that was strange, because I spoke French with a very heavy English accent. I don't know if the CDs I was using to learn to speak were created for an English audience or if what appeared to be an accent was just my tongue muddying what I said.

Some people bore with me, patiently asking questions and letting me work through my tortured French until we'd reached an understanding. Others swiftly switched to English. All, however, we kind with me. The French are by nature a very polite people, and I appreciated their forbearance as I mangled their lingua Franca.

I hope to be able to do it again soon. In the meantime, I will continue to try to improve my wayward tongue's ability to speak French.

My favorite mugs, part 2

Do you have a mug that makes you feel happy every time you fill it? I have several. This one was given to me by good friend and fellow author Patrice Locke, 

Patrice's writing makes me happy. She's got three novels out, and all three are lighthearted, clever romances that make you laugh out loud.

But her faith in me and my own writing isn't anything to laugh about. Patrice is the kind of friend who will give me a completely honest appraisal of a chapter I've written, but deliver it with so much kindness that it doesn't hurt, even when it isn't what I was hoping to hear. Her suggestions are spot-on, and her belief in me buoys me up when I'm feeling down.

Do I like it when people ask me about my books? You bet! If you want to know more about them, click here. 

Red, White and Blueberry Muffins!

Declare your independence from grocery store baked goods! Show your patriotism and your good taste by starting the day with a basket of these delicious muffins. Especially appropriate for Independence Day, Flag Day, Memorial Day and all those national holidays, these are easy enough to whip up even if the government hasn’t seen fit to give you the day off.

This recipe begins with my basic manic muffin mix, which you mix up and store in your cupboard. The mix makes it easy to create a variety of muffins quickly. Don't have any sitting around? You can find the recipe for the mix here. 
I make blueberry muffins all the time. Strawberry muffins, however, can be a little trickier, because strawberries can have more water content in them. That water can "bleed" out when the muffins are cooking, making soggy pockets that contained cooked bits of strawberry. Not good. My solution: use freeze dried berries instead of fresh ones. Trader Joe's has yummy ones. If you don't use them all in muffins, they are great sprinkled over cereal or eaten by the handful as snacks.  Don't eat the desiccant! I measured out a little more of the strawberries than the blueberries because each slice was bigger. It doesn't take many dried strawberry slices to fill up a third of a cup measure! Make sure you take out the desiccant packet before you dump the berries into your water/oil/egg/extract mixture! 

Leaving the berries in the wet ingredients for a few moments gives them a chance to soak up a little moisture without becoming too soggy. When your muffin tins are ready, dump the muffin mix right on top and mix for a few minutes with a spatula. Try to incorporate all the dry mix, but don't worry too much about a few lumps. Fill your tins 3/4 of the way full, stick them in the oven, and it 20 minutes your mouth will be celebrating! Strawberry Blueberry Muffins Preheat oven to 350.
Mix together in a large bowl.
1/3 cup freeze dried strawberries
1/4 cup freeze dried blueberries
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup water
1/2 cup oil
Let these wet ingredients sit while you put muffin papers in 12 standard-sized muffin cups, or grease the cups with spray oil.
Add 2 1/2 cup manic muffin mix to wet ingredients and stir with a spatula to mix. The batter should be slightly lumpy.

​Fill muffin cups 3/4 full. Bake for 18-20 minutes until the tops of the muffins are golden. 
These muffins freeze well. If your family is small, I recommend putting single muffins in sandwich bags, then putting them all in a ziplock freezer bag so you can pull them out one at a time. Frozen muffins are ready to serve after being reheated in the microwave on high for 30 seconds.

My Favorite Mugs

I'm a teacher, which means I have a lot of mugs. They, along with Starbucks cards, seems to be favorite gifts from students. 

Some of my mugs, though, are very special to me. I reach for them over and over. This is one of them. 

In 2017, my husband and I sold our house in Albuquerque and moved to the other side of the Sandia mountains. Because what had been a five minute commute was now going to be a 50 minute one, I decided to leave the school at which I'd been teaching for a decade and find a new job on this side of the mountains. When someone left this in my cubby hole during the first week of school (with a sweet welcoming note!) I knew that I had made the right decision. 

This is my go-to weekend cup because it's huge. I can fill it up and dare myself to have a complete scene done before the coffee's either gone or cold. Most of the time I don't win, but the challenge goads me on.
Jennifer Bohnhoff writes novels for middle schoolers, young adults, and up. In her spare time she teaches language arts to 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students at a middle school out in New Mexico's eastern plains. You can learn more about her and her novels here.