Pear Lime Pecan Muffins

En français ici.
I promised Tony from Tony's Sustainable Kitchen that I would post about these muffins ages ago (see I haven't forgotten!), and I will, but first I have a small bone to pick.

People attribute all sorts of bad qualities to actors: conceit, moodiness, superficiality, laziness, financial instability (er, actually that one's true), and the list goes on. It could be worse I suppose. In Elizabethan times actors were considered rogues, scoundrels, drunkards, and/or prostitutes.

But one of the most persistent stereotypes, and the one that drives me crazy, is the idea that actors are lay-a-beds. Given the energy it takes to find work in the industry nowadays, I can assure you that a lazy person is NOT a working actor. When everyone else is on vacation, we're on stage. Over Christmas, we do Christmas plays; over the summer we act at festivals; when kids are on fall or spring break, children's theater runs everyday. Still, as with many stereotypes, this one stems from a grain of truth. Actors don't work classic hours. I have to admit that when I was onstage every night last week, eating dinner when I got home at midnight, I was not waking up at 7am!

Though with sunrises like this, perhaps I should have been!

Film acting, however, is quite the contrary. Oftentimes the technical equipment is rented by the day, and the crew sets up before sunrise to get the best use of the daylight hours. This is how a couple weeks ago found me crossing the highway that marks the city limits of Paris under a very sketchy bridge, on foot, way before dawn, alone, suspiciously eying a couple of tall industrial towers winking red and looking like smoke-spewing UFOs. At that moment, I thought to myself, "I'm officially crazy." I had visions of being lost in the outskirts of Paris all day with no map, of being mugged or murdered, my body thrown into the Seine, which was rippling darkly ominous behind a concrete wall. (Mom, if you're reading, none of this is true, skip ahead to the part about muffins okay?)

Yes, for those of you following, these are gratuitous sunrise shots. I'd been on site for a couple hours by the time the sun rose that day, not home looking out my window!

I did eventually find the empty lot where an already quite caffeinated crew was setting up to shoot, and I spent the day running around in the cold and pretending to be a angry mob with a group of very nice people (which mostly made up for not feeling my fingers and toes). What sustained me? Well I credit these muffins. Now how's that for a recommendation!


Pear-Lime-Pecan Muffins

1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp lime zest
1 cup pear, peeled and chopped

1 3/4 cups flour
1/4 cup cornmeal
1/2 white sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup pecans

Preheat oven to 375ºF (190ºC).

Beat together the egg, milk and lime zest. Add the pear and set aside. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, cornmeal, white and brown sugar, baking powder and salt.

Add half the dry ingredients to the wet, then the vegetable oil and the other half of the dry ingredients. Be careful not to overmix. Fold in the pecans and pour into greased muffin tins.

Bake about 20 minutes, or until done and serve warm!