Just as I was pulling these fluffy, steamy, Ginger-Peach Oat Muffins out of the oven this morning, the fire alarm in our building went off. Not the annoying little squeaky smoke detector in our kitchen, but like the building-wide, hurts your ears, cats-run-under-the-bed blasting loud fire alarm. It sounded like a screeching fork over a chalkboard times a million…

Perfect pairing: matcha latte.

I poked my head out the door and out the window to make sure their were indeed no billowing plumes of black smoke soaring through the quiet hallways. I pretty much always assume that a fire alarm is a false alarm. Which, actually, if you think about it is a really bad thing. I mean this alarm was blaring for about two minutes before I even started to consider that it could be real.

I paused in the kitchen, in my socks and pajamas, hair in a messy bun. And I panicked. Wait. If this was real (and still, it probably was not) but if this was real, WHAT WOULD I GRAB FIRST?

It is one of those silly questions that reporters sometimes ask celebrities in interviews. Or a fun conversation piece at a dinner party.

But really. What would you grab if you only had a minute or less to grab your self and GO.

People always used to say photo albums. But in this day in age, I think computers + hard drives + cell phones may be more likely. I mean you can always print more photos. However, for those of us who grew up in the pre-digital age, I do in fact have a giant stack of photo albums that have never been digitalized. So those would need to be grabbed in a heavy stack, hugged by my long arms and thrown into a reusable grocery bag nabbed from under the sink.

But first and foremost, those little fuzzballs who ran under the bed. Our heavy, wood, I cannot move it alone bed. Shoot. How in the world would I grab the cats with that scary fire alarm blaring? One cat maybe. But two into two separate carriers? Yikes.

Hopefully, in a true adrenalin rush, fueled by true fear and smoke, my superwoman powers would take over and super strength would be possible. Kinda like Edward blocking the truck from crushing Bella in Twilight (OK, so he was in fact a vampire with super strength) but you never know. And yes, I will use Twilight comparisons every chance I get here on the blog.

But really. Super strength. It is real I tell you. There is even a name for that, hysterical strength. Now hysterical strength doesn’t have the same ring to it as super-woman-powers, but anyways.

So. Cats, computer, camera, some photos. Shoot, my arms are very full now. Well if I can grab the cats and my cell phone – and hopefully a bag full of my digital books of files, I will be good. Oh, and maybe my wedding dress. A girl can dream..

So back to today’s events. After about five minutes of blaring sound and me NOT moving from my kitchen. Deer in headlights or eternal optimist, you decide. The alarm went off and I heard a maintenance man shout something like, “It works up here!” Really? Aren’t they supposed to warm you of fire alarm testing?

Well at least it gave me some critical thinking time to ponder. I rolled my eyes and went back to this muffin morning photoshoot..

Ginger Peach. These muffins are a spin on a recipe in my cookbook HealthyHappyVeganKitchen. Ginger-peach is a favorite flavor combination of mine. Spicy, warming, ginger combines with sweet summer peaches, a hint of cinnamon, oats and a few crunchy walnuts. I use silken tofu as the egg replacer, so the muffins turn out very fluffy and with a nice bite to them. And a nice boost of plant-based protein too. In my book I use all spelt flour – and that is my preference for these muffins, but today I experimented with a combination of oats and wheat flour. Worked beautifully and deliciously. Perfect summer muffin!

So, as you nibble your muffin and sip some tea or coffee, ponder this question, with a real life answer: What would you grab if you had to leave your home in minutes or seconds? How could you be more prepared to exit on an emergency? PS. I’d love to hear your answers so please leave them in the comments!

PPS. Wow, how funny that my muffin post turned into a public service announcement for emergency preparedness. 🙂

* adapted from Ginger-Peach Spelt muffins in HealthyHappyVeganKitchen, by yours truly – recipe page 80.