The sheet is torn from the magazine crooked, and for some reason I have never trimmed it. It was page 108 of the Woman's Day issue of April 3, 1984, the "money saving recipes" designed to help the housewife "trim the food budget with . . . cost conscious dishes."

The cost of food is not something I've ever thought much about. While I'm not intentionally wasteful nor extravagant, my first concerns have always centered on taste, satisfaction, and ease of preparation. Once, in an effort to impress some dinner guests which included a former boyfriend, I spent hours to produce two pans of langues de chat ("cat's tongues") according to Dionne Lucas's classic French chef's directions. I creamed the butter and sugar by hand, cut in the sifted flour with a wire blender bought just for this occasion, and then struggled and sweated to force the batter through a #3 tube fitted onto a pastry bag bought at the same chic kitchen supply emporium. The result -- elongated oval vanilla cookies chewy in the center and crispy brown on the edges -- tasted exactly (not sort of, but EXACTLY) like Nabisco's brown-edge wafers.

The "money saving recipes" I've saved for seventeen years include one for pecan maple cookies, one for scalloped potatoes, sausage, and cabbage, and five others that I have never made. The one that caught my attention and which I have prepared again and again and again is for Raisin Bran Muffins:

6 cups bran cereal with raisins
2 and 1/2 cups flour
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
 2 eggs slightly beaten
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

In large container with tight fitting cover mix well all ingredients. Fill desired number of greased muffin cups three-quarters full Bake in preheated 400 degree oven 15 minutes until pick inserted in center comes out clean. Store remaining batter tightly covered in refrigerator up to one month. Makes two dozen 2 and 1/2 inch muffins. Each muffin contains 170 calories, 4 grams protein, 29 grams carbohydrate, and 5 grams fat.

This recipe meets all of my criteria for something wonderful. First off, it's a bread. The result is a chewy moist muffin satisfying and tasty without adornment, although the addition of butter or cream cheese could be considered. It mixes in a single utensil and stores in the same. (I use a large round Tupperware container.) You can make as many or as few as you need, although heating your oven to 400 degrees for the sake of a single small muffin certainly negates any "money saving" aspect that might have been intended.

The original sheet I tore from the magazine bears some notations I made. According to the "exchange" method used by Weight Watchers through the 1980s, each serving provided 1 fat, 3/4 bread, and 15 optional calories. When WW went to the "points" system which figured a food's value according to the ratio of fat to fiber to calories, I calculated the fiber content to be 3.5 grams each muffin, giving it a point value of 3. From time to time I add walnuts, adjusting the food values accordingly.

Although the recipe was originally given for a set of early spring menus, I consider this very much a winter concoction. It looks and smells and tastes like a snowy day. The oven warms the kitchen some, and having a pan of these ready when Lynn comes down from her shower makes me feel like a Good Mother.

The problem is the buttermilk. The original recipe calls for 2 cups of buttermilk. Buttermilk, however, comes only by the quart -- 4 cups. What can be done with the rest? From time to time I've used dehydrated buttermilk powder, which seems to last forever in the refrigerator. But fresh buttermilk adds immeasurably to the sensory pleasure of preparing the batter. Doubling the recipe would use a whole quart but cause other problems with multiple boxes of cereal and volume of batter.

Somewhere along the line I discovered that increasing the recipe by half would use one complete 20 ounce box of raisin bran cereal and produce a quantity of batter that fit nicely into my Tupperware container with room left to mix. I calculated the new amounts and wrote them on a pink Post-it note. Now I could use three cups of the buttermilk, with only one cup left over.

Another wrinkled, annotated magazine sheet provides a use for the leftover cup of buttermilk. The original recipe calls for only 2/3 cup buttermilk. I recalculated all of the ingredients and the point value, and wrote them on a larger Post-it note with the caption "If loving caffeine is wrong, I don't wanna be right." Adapted from Weight Watchers Magazine of February, 1994, here is a recipe for Cherry Fudge Bars:

1 cup flour
2/3 cup sugar (1 tablespoon reserved)
1/3 cup cocoa
1/3 tsp. baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
4 ounces dried cherries
1 cup buttermilk
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8" square baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. In a small bowl, whisk flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Stir in the cherries. In another small bowl, whisk together buttermilk and vanilla. Stir buttermilk mixture into flour mixture just until well blended. Spread in prepared pan. Sprinkle with reserved sugar and bake in upper third of the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in the center is covered with very moist crumbs. Cool completely before cutting into 16 bars. Each bar provides 90 calories and 2 Weight Watcher points.

I made both these recipes yesterday. I was home alone, feeling stronger and stronger as I continue to recover from the knee problem. I cleared the kitchen counter of every stray item that had accumulated over these past weeks, scrubbed everything down, and then set hands to work and heart to God, preparing the recipes as a meditation, praying myself back to where I once belonged. When Lynn came home from school she breathed in the lingering fresh-baked aroma and said, "Ooh -- muffins and cherry bars! Cool!"

What more can you ask from a quart of buttermilk?