"sunny morning muffins"

i wacthed an episode of "cooking for real" earlier this week and sunny anderson made these muffins. they looked so scrumptious that i insisted ryan and i go straight to the store to get the ingredients (actually, i convinced him we needed to go to the store to get chicken-we didn't have any meat for dinner-and while we were there, just so happened to get the ingredients needed for these muffins. if you could taste summer, i imagine this is what it tastes like

ingredients:
1 cup fresh strawberries, chopped
1 cup sugar, plus 2 T
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
pinch of ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp salt
1 ripe banana, mashed
2 large eggs
1/4 cup canola oil
1 lemon, zested
1/2 pint blueberries
1 cup chopped walnuts

preheat oven to 350.

in a small bowl, mix together strawberries and 2 T sugar, let sit 15 minutes until strawberries give off juices.

in a small bowl, mix together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg and salt.

in a large bowl, whisk together the mashed banana, eggs, oil, 1 cup sugar, strawberries and lemon zest.

mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients just until combined (maybe 15 strokes). be careful not to overmix. fold in blueberries and walnuts.

scoop batter evenly into muffin cups (she used an ice cream scooper on the show-ingenious!!). bake until a toothpick inserted in center of muffin comes out with a few crumbs, but not wet--about 30 minutes. cool on a wire rack.

ryan enjoyed his with lots of butter, while i enjoyed mine with a little cream cheese. yum yum yum!!