Not Having a Kitchen is Making Me Go Bananas

On a whim I decided to go home last night. I was homeworkless, dying to be in a kitchen, and I had a ride, so why not? After pouring over bakerella.com and flipping through websites generated by stumbleupon.com, the "Recipes" folder in my bookmarks tab was being flooded and I needed to give one or two of my latest finds a go.

When I walked in the door 9 bananas were laying on the kitchen counter, all ripened to the point that they were destined for banana bread and nothing else. Just a couple days ago I had come across a recipe for banana bread that involved peanut butter, chocolate chips, and a crumbly topping that made the loaf look more like a coffee cake. The recipe came from a blog called "Oh Baby O," a pretty appropriate name when you take a look at this stuff. It's more like a dessert than a bread, but who's complaining?

Given the number of bananas I had to work with I tripled the recipe (and still managed to work in another batch that I'll show you later...), 2 medium loaves and 20 muffins. I actually made these into muffins purely because I ran out of loaf pans to hold batter, but they were an excellent way to share this awesome recipe with friends back at school :D

Anyway, the recipe is here: http://ohbabyo.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/chocolate-peanut-butter-banana-bread/ But of course, I made some changes... I tripled the recipe but I only used two cups of sugar total, 1 white and 1 light brown. I thought a bit of light brown would lend better to the flavor and give the bread a chewier and denser texture. You can actually cut quite a bit of sugar out of most recipes, sometimes I'm daring enough to take out half and you usually can't tell much of a difference! I also used half whole wheat flour. Because I <3 style="text-align: center;">

As mentioned before, I did make a fourth batch of banana bread, this one much different. I assumed my parents wouldn't be too keen on the peanut butter and chocolate hyped loafs I was planning on cranking out of the oven, so I turned to a tried and true recipe from Smitten Kitchen: http://smittenkitchen.com/2006/11/speckled-for-the-freckled/. Again I used half whole wheat flour just for good measure ;) and my father was more than happy to splash some bourbon in to accompany all of the spices. This makes a really good loaf of banana bread, a little less sweet, but my only complaint is that it tends to fall. It tastes great, but doesn't rise much at all...

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Back on campus now, hopefully my banana bread rendezvous has baking out of my system for a bit. Next week is spring break though! And I'm hoping, of course, to find some time to try out a couple more recipes I have stashed away... we'll see ;)

Apple Technology Has It's Place EVERYWHERE

I'm getting to the point where I have to carefully choose which recipes I actually want to blog about. Yesterday I whipped up three separate goods: watermelon lemonade, olive bread, and banana bread. Today I decided to experiment with my bread machine again and cranked out a loaf of whole wheat honey bread which I have to mention merely because bread machines ARE SO AWESOME. I like to cook/bake when I have generous amounts of time to dedicate to the task at hand, but if I want to make something in a hurry my bread machine is my new best friend. Let me illustrate what I mean for you. This is what I put in the bread machine

and this is what came out!

I didn't even have to mix the ingredients! Just dump them in, close the lid, press start, and four hours later... bread! Too awesome.

But anyway, more to tell. So my mom and I went to get massages at Foot Finesse today, a place at Rangeline and 116th that does these full body massage things for $25. One hour for $25, I recommend it, it was nice :). Well on the way back home my mom informed me we needed to stop at Meijer to get mayonnaise for a cole slaw recipe she wanted to make to go alongside the bratwurst that would grace our dinner table this evening. Two things I don't really care for: cole slaw and bratwurst. I decided to make a salad, but as creative as I can be with food I cannot put an impromptu salad together for the life of me. Just as I was about to resort to concocting my own recipe it dawned on me that I had recently added a number of free applications to my iPhone. I opened my recipe search engine, curtesy of Whole Foods, and immediately had hundreds of salad recipes literally at my fingertips! I chose a "Fresh Mozzarella Salad with Avocado, Roasted Corn and Grape Tomatoes." Yum.

Chunks of mozzarella, avocado, tomatoes, corn, black beans, all lightly dressed and seasoned with fresh chives and basil on a bed of spinach. Oh yes. I found the recipe online just for you because it went over so well with my parents and the couple they had over: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/recipe.php?recipeId=548. I made it right before we ate dinner, though, and I felt like it would've been much better chilled, so I'd recommend making it an hour or so ahead of time and let it hang out in the fridge for a bit. Oh yeah, and I only used one avocado because I felt like two (the recipe's instructions) seemed a little overwhelming. The salad could've handled two avocados pretty easily, but I was happy with the turnout so it's up to you. What I really like about this recipe is that it's heavy enough to be a meal itself, but it's also light and clean enough to work well as a summertime side dish. Either way, it's deliciously fresh and so pretty!

Market Fresh, hopefully the first of many!

As soon as I heard farmers markets were starting up I put going on the very top of my to-do list. Somehow I ended up having my heart set on going to Zionsville's, probably since To the Last Drop (a catering business in downtown Zionsville that I think is wonderful) sets up a stand there. Even though I was totally willing to venture down on my own, I figured I'd try and recruit a fellow food shopper if at all possible, and was fortunately right in assuming my dad would join me :D. So... we got up at 7, yes 7 AM, yes 7 AM on a Saturday during summer vacation, and dropped my brother off to take the ACTs and then headed to Zionsville's vibrant Mainstreet. We popped in to Eagle Creek Coffee Company, which I found out has delicious quiche, had a little breakfast and then headed to the farmers market!!!

Turns out Zionsville's farmers market is a little anticlimatic... with my dad in a desperate search for gooseberries (which hopefully I'll be able to introduce you to later on via a pie) we ended up going to the Carmel famers market. Carmel's farmers market pwns Zionsville's farmers market. Yes, that's how you spell pwns. Claggy taught me that on Twitter today. So because of the major pwnage going on at Carmel's farmers market, GO THERE! Saturdays, 8-11:30 or something like that. We ended up buying some crazy good honey, fresh lemon spice spaghetti (which should be featured in my next post!!!), and some delicious smelling tea that I have yet to brew. It's pretty freakin' ridiculously awesome.

What I did pick up, however, while I was in Zionsville was zucchini.





Aren't they pretty? Believe it or not, I went to the farmers market intending to buy a couple zucchini. I had recently come across a recipe for zucchini bread and I though, "you know what? I feel like that has the potential to be incredibly delicious." Hopefully I was right.

I feel like far too many people are afraid to embrace vegetables. People automatically think vegetables = yucky. WRONG. You all are missing out on so many wonderful culinary experiences because your preconceived notions of this amazing food group are so so so so so wrong! Vegetables are delicious if you prepare them the right way. If I didn't tell you, you probably wouldn't even realize you were enjoying a vegetable when eating this.

Zucchini bread is kind of like banana bread. Except they are completely different. Following me so far? The recipe that I used is from the Kitchen Sink. It's a little chocolately, but not too overpowering. The best part is the recipes healthified!!! The butter's been replaced with applesauce, the oil is minimal, most of the flour is whole wheat, instead of all whole eggs some whites are used, it's just the right hint of chocolatey, and it's a hidden serving of vegetable!!!







Green and brown are so like my two favorite colors! When I told Sally, "that brown thing" was the finished loaf she exclaimed, "Hey! That look like cake!" Righto Sally! It kinda tastes like it too, very subtle in it's sweetness but incredibly dense and moist. I imagine this being delicious with a cup of tea, I think I'm going to try it with the new leaves I got at the Carmel famers market :D. I did only use two of my zucchini for this recipe, now I need to find a use for the third...





Check out the recipe: http://thekitchensinkrecipes.com/2008/07/09/identity-crisis-er-crises/#more-1708.

Getting Rid of My Muffin Top

I have had a revelation and I'd like to share it with the world. Muffin tops really aren't attractive. And I don't mean the ones hanging over the majority of American jeans. Muffins are good, but messy and honestly, more trouble than they're worth. It's nearly impossible to get batter in those little cupcake wrappers without splattering it all over the pan and you know what else? The whole thing is the edge!

Have you seen the brownie pan someone invented so that the whole thing is an "edge?" Who in their right might would ever choose to eat the edge of a brownie, let alone make a whole batch of brownies that contain multiple edges, is a fool in my book. I like sweets (brownies, cookies, cake, pie, you name it) soft, dense and chewy. And that is not what a muffin is.

As I've mentioned before, Taylor gave me a wonderful baking book for Christmas that I absolutely adore. I whipped it out the other day to make a tried and true batch of blueberry muffins that are absolutely delicious and, when reading the side notes, was given a suggestion that I think I will take from now on. Instead of baking my muffin batter in muffin tins, I roughly doubled the baking time and poured it all into loaf pans. That's right! No more blueberry muffins, but instead deliciously dense, moist, blueberry muffin bread! It's SO GOOD. It's like taking the concept of banana bread and making it ANY KING OF BREAD. Why did it take so long?

What might be more amusing than my new tactics, however, is the brief lapse in intelligence that I experienced while making these lovely loafs. I decided to double a recipe that I really just didn't have any business doubling.







Yes, that's how deep my biggest mixing bowl is. And this is how far I ended up filling it...





Not my brightest moment... I attracted the attention of both my parents, who I tried to hide the batter from as I added ingredients and volume. Inevitably, my mother noticed my blueberry muffin batter, slowly developing an impressive resemblance to the Blob of the old horror films, and was so engrossed she insisted on taking a picture of me trying desperately to stir it. It is not easy to mix lots of batter in a less than accommodating bowl.





I managed though, and ended up with roughly 24 delicious muffins (yes, I did resort to baking some in the tins) and three well sized loafs of blueberry muffin bread. I gave a little away, but our family easily polished off the goods within a mere days, I'd say it was a success.