Welcome to The Yummy Muffin! My name is Nicole, and I’m super excited that you decided to stop by and join me on this journey! Here on The Yummy Muffin, you’ll find all of my favorite things: food, pups, and glitter. We’ll spend most of our time talking about food, but I’m a Libra so I need some balance in my life. That’s where doggie time and craft time come in to play.

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I’m a self-proclaimed cookie monster, but I’m not all about the sweets. Balance, remember? I just as much like to make and eat healthy(ish) food that’s simple and won’t break the bank. Here you’ll find some of my favorite recipes that lead me to success on the 21 day fix plan, reimagined and somewhat healthified restaurant favorites, plus some traditional recipes with a more modern approach.

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I’m cooking for one, so I have to be smart about my meals. Thankfully, I LOVE leftovers, so I’m fine with eating the same meal 3 times a week…sometimes with a different spin on it day by day. I never want to feel like I’m sacrificing an opportunity for a delicious meal because of the shelf life of an ingredient, but I certainly make sure I get the most bang for my buck. I like to meal plan and prep on Sundays. It makes my life feel easier somehow during the week. Who doesn’t need that?!? And I get to eat a home cooked meal? Winner winner chicken dinner for sure…

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So, why start a food blog? It didn’t take long for me to decide that this was a project I wanted to take on. I spend most of my free time reading recipes. It’s part of my nightly routine when I get home from work. My dad was a fantastic southern cook, but unfortunately he was taken from this world too soon. My mom, on the other hand, has a repertoire of about 4 meals; and none of them include salt and pepper. Most of my food knowledge came from reading cookbooks, reading online recipes, and watching Chopped on Food Network.

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As I started learning more about food, I became braver in the kitchen with my experiments. I started following recipes less and less, and let my instinct kick in. And thankfully, more often than not, the food actually tastes great! So from there, I started getting in to food photography. This journey is still pretty new, but now I feel like I look at food more differently than I ever have before. They’re not kidding when they say “you eat with your eyes first”…whoever “they” are.

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That’s when I decided “I can do this”. It is my right and duty to share this delicious food with the world. What kind of person would I be to keep it all to myself? I’ve always liked to write, and I’m even 1/3 of the way through writing a romance novel. (Maybe I’ll let you read some of it someday.) I’m a single lady, so I was sure the pups would appreciate it if I blabbed to someone other than them all night. So, starting a blog seemed like the right thing to do.

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The name “Yummy Muffin” is actually a name I picked up in high school. My group of friends and I thought we were the coolest things since iced water, so of course our group needed a super cool name. We called ourselves the Crunk Clunk. We couldn’t have a club name without individual member identities; but at the time, we’d used up all of our creativity on the Crunk Clunk name. So, we put a bunch of random nouns on slips of paper in one hat and a bunch of random adjectives on slips of paper in another. We each took turns picking out one piece of paper from each hat, and voila…squad name (though back then #squad wasn’t a thing yet). As destiny would have it, I drew Yummy Muffin. And the rest will be history…