Apple Muffins, Heartaches, and Change at the Paint Counter

Listening in at the crossroads of baking and loving.

I’m painting my kitchen cabinets. They’re the ones widely used in the 1980s—sleek, white laminate with a stripe of walnut colored wood on the top and bottom. There is one cabinet above the stove and three on either side of a wide aisle in the smallest kitchen I’ve ever cooked in, which seems impossible but true. It is, though, a pleasing and efficient kitchen with a large window above the sink and the back door flooding it with light.

I have chosen Benjamin Moore’s color of the year—cinnamon slate—a warm plum brown. You see the cabinet above the stove as soon as you walk through the front door and, in a very modest tiny house, the warmth of the color seems like it will welcome visitors and lead them to sit at my table for awhile.

Cinnamon slate.

The only store that sells Benjamin Moore is Liberty Trading Post, about twelve miles away. Except for food, it has everything a person needs to survive the Catskill winters. Aisles full of warm clothing, hunting and fishing gear (including various live baits), and pretty nice house and kitchen ware are surrounded by areas jammed with tools, nuts and bolts. It is one of my favorite places to hang out.

The paint counter is way in the back, smaller than the rest of the store but equally packed with all the necessities to paint anything you want. Ceiling-high color chip display cases are stuffed with every conceivable combinations of hues. People like me stand there for hours, exhilarated and confounded with all the possibilities.

There’s two more just as packed beside it!

I don’t need a color chip card, though. I have the number for cinnamon slate and tell the woman behind the mixing counter.

“Oh what a pretty color,” she says when she pulls its recipe up on the computer. She is petite, blond hair pulled back in a loose knot. Her red Ace Hardware T-shirt appears freshly pressed. She exudes the kind of comfortable authority that makes you feel you are very lucky to be in her very expert hands.

“What’re you painting?”

“Kitchen cabinets.”

“So much fun! Then I recommend our most durable line.”

The paint will cost more than I told my husband, but he won’t known until he does his hourly check of our credit card statement. I will remind him how perfect the color is for the kitchen and he will stoically forgive me.

She leaves to start working on my paint and I wander away to contemplate paint brushes and varnish stains. When I return, she is talking to another woman at the counter with a very large German Shepherd mix sitting patiently by her side. She is bundled into a coat too heavy for the autumn day and has a stillness about her in contrast to the paint woman. Long thick brown hair curtains the side of her face so I can’t see her clearly but she sounds younger than the paint woman, her voice unsure. I gather she used to work at the store: she’s asking about Ed in the auto section and how his knee operation went.

I step back to not intrude as they talk. But then the subject of muffins comes up. While the mixing machine begins to shake my can about, I shift a little forward to hear the particulars. The paint woman is thanking her for the apple muffins she brought in a few weeks ago.

“Did you like them?” the woman asks. “I’m trying out oil instead of butter. How’d they taste?”

“They were really nice and crumbly.”

“Too crumbly?”

“That’s what I liked about it. I ate only half of one and brought the rest home for my husband. He liked it, too.”

“Why only half?” the woman asks, a little alarmed.

“I’m watching my weight. I have a stomach for the first time in my life.” She turns sideways for all of us to see her non-existing stomach. “Maybe it’s menopause.”

“I gained 40 pounds last summer,” says the woman. “Had a bad bad breakup.”

“That will do it.” The paint woman leans across the counter and touches her arm.

“One day I was in our bedroom, reading, and he comes in and says, ‘I’m just not attracted to you anymore.’ I couldn’t believe it. Wasn’t like we weren’t having sex or anything. One day he was a good man, the next day he was bad. ”

“What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. We were in the grocery store and he smacked me against the ice cream case. Eating and drinking that’s all I started doing.”

The paint woman’s young assistant shows up from the back of the store. “Elsie!,” he cries and reaches his hand down to cup the dog’s nose.

The woman pulls out of her pocket a handful of dog biscuits and gives them to the young man. “I couldn’t believe how bad he turned. Just like that.”

“Who?” the young man asks.

“Then he left.”

“Who?” the young man asks again and the paint woman gives him a shove.

“How did you lose weight?” she asks the paint woman.

“Cut out all dairy.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

“You get the hang of it. You don’t have much to lose, anyway.”

“You know what he was like? Like the Hulk, you know. One minute a good man, the next ripping his shirt off and a monster.” she says. “I’ve stopped eating as much but I’m still drinking a little. I’m trying to go lighter.”

“All those calories in alcohol sneak up on you.”

“I didn’t think white wine had so much.”

“Everything does. You have to stop.”

The young man hunkers down beside Elsie and keeps feeding her biscuits. It seems like he’d really like to be somewhere else but doesn’t know how to straighten up without being awkward about it.

The mixing machine stops and the paint woman turns away to retrieve my can. She pries open the lid and smears a little dot of the color on the top. She sees me standing in the corner with my little notebook in my hand and nods to come forward. “There’s a lot of color in it so you’re going to have to keep stirring it, alright?”

“I’m working on walnut muffins,” the woman says.

“Why don’t you trying selling them at the farmers market?”

“I was thinking that.”

“Especially with Thanksgiving coming. Everyone loves pumpkin these days.”

“You think?” says the woman.

“I’d buy a dozen,” the young man says.

“People love muffins,” says the paint woman. “It’d be good for you.”

“I’m going to go back and see Ed,” the woman says and takes up the slack on Elsie’s leash.

“Keep stopping drinking,” the paint woman says as she hands me a small foam roller.

“I’ll bring in some walnut muffins next week,” she says and starts down the aisle, past the display cases full of all those color possibilities, her dog trailing behind her.

“Who she’s talking about?” asks the young man.

The paint woman looks up at him, exasperated. “No one.” To me she says, “now if you get a little streak on the first roll, go over it again lightly. You’re going to love it.”

“I hope so,” I say picking up the paint can.

“Nothing like painting your kitchen cabinets to brighten up your spirit,” she says and turns back to the business of running a paint counter.

A visitor’s welcoming view of my kitchen cabinets.

Apple Sugar Muffins

From one of my favorite cookbooks—The Mennonite Community Cookbook compiled by Mary Emma Showalter

4 tablespoons shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg beaten
1 cup milk
1 cup apples, peeled and chopped
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 cups sifted flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup crushed corn flakes

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Cream shortening and sugar.
Sift flour; measure and add baking powder, salt, and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. Sift again.
Add dry ingredients to first mixture alternately with milk.
Stir only enough to mix ingredients.
Fold in chopped apples and corn flakes.
Drop by spoonfuls into greased muffin tins, filling each 2/3 filled.
Mix 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon together and sprinkle on top.
Bake  for 25 minutes.
Serve while hot.
Makes 12-15 muffins

Recipe from Mrs. Loyal Kauffman, Tofield, Alberta, Canada