Banana My Bread

It was National Banana Bread Day sometime this weekend. Saturday? I don't remember. I can't say that I crave banana bread like some people, but there were some renegade bananas that we bought last week that went straight from green to brown, and they had to be taught a lesson. Onward!

Now, as some of you may know, I haven officially given up refined sugar until, say, March 23 (a.k.a. Easter). So, I set off on Sunday to make a banana bread that was without refined sugar, and somewhat healthy AND TASTY. Crazy you say? I think I succeeded, so there. I adapted my recipe from this one from Simply Recipes and made them into muffin form. Half were in muffin papers and half weren't, and I think the ones without the paper were a little better; they got a nice crust around the edge and didn't have any annoying paper sticking to them.

Friggin' Healthy Banana Bread
4 ripe bananas
1/2 cup honey
2 tablespoons oil
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch salt
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon flaxseed (for that kick - optional)

Preheat the oven to 350º

Mash the bananas, honey, oil and yogurt together.

Add the vanilla and egg and stir with a wooden spoon.

Sprinkle the baking soda and salt across the dough, and then stir in the flours just until mixed.

Add that optional flaxseed, dontcha know.

Bake in a greased loaf pan or greased muffin tins for about 1 hour or 35 minutes, respectively, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

"What's for Dinner?"

This is a delayed response to Penney's question of "How do you decide what to eat?"

Living with Brian, the first question to answer in our household is "Who will cook?" (We do not cook well together - too alpha). After our first few months of living together, Brian and I realized that deciding the answer to that question the night of dinner would probably mean that we were
(a) eating cereal for dinner,
(b) going out to eat, or
(c) not getting dinner until 10 or so.

So, I started "assigning" mealtimes for the week on Sundays, based on how busy we each are and what else is going on. For example, last week, Brian made dinner Monday and Wednesday, and I made dinner Tuesday and Friday, while Thursday we went to a friend's house for dinner. Since Brian will be pretty busy with a paper this week, I'll be cooking some days, and we'll probably go out to eat and eat leftovers as well. We've talked about planning meals on Sundays, but neither of us feels inspired enough to do that, so we each plan our meals separately.

Ok, then what? In my parents house, there weren't many "new" things for dinner - there was more a rotation of meals that my mom pulled from. And can you blame her? With kids, job, dog, husband, who wants to think of new things to cook, especially if you don't know how they'll turn out? Here, we're still building the rotation - that is, thing we're willing to cook over and over and have. In fact, the only things I can think of that's in our rotation are beef stroganoff (for wintertime) and turkey meatballs (in summertime).

For ideas of what to cook: We get two cooking magazines right now - Fine Cooking and Bon Appetit. Fine Cooking is a little more approachable and has more recipes, while Bon Appetit focuses on food in general, and has fewer recipes, though I have gotten some killer ideas from it (nom, Cinnamon Rolls. I subscribe to a number of food blogs - I will usually add one I come across and follow it for a few weeks and then unsubscribe if I don't feel inspired by the recipes or the writer. These are the ones that have had staying power:

• Simply Recipes: This is the first food blog I started reading regularly, and I really enjoy it her style of writing and variety of recipes - most are pretty approachable, but she's not afraid of trying new things.
  
• Chocolate & Zucchini: I love this site - it's written by a French woman who lived in California for many years, and her recipes are always inspiring. When summer comes, check out her Zucchini Chocolate Cake, which is the best chocolate cake, hands down, that I've ever had.
  
• Lunch in a Box: This is less a recipe site and more lunch/bento site. I've gotten some good ideas of things to take for lunch, since sandwiches bore me and there's nothing good to eat around my office.
  
• Epicurious: I get a daily recipe on my feed reader from Epicurious - they span a whole range of food-making abilities and genres, so it can be a good source of inspiration.
  
• Bitten: This is Mark Bittman's blog on the NY Times. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything was the first real cookbook I owned, and I enjoy his minimalist style of cooking.
  
• Slashfood: This more just a deluge of foodie-related information, but I occasionally find inspiration (for example, yesterday was National Banana Bread Day. So I made Banana Bread. How cliche.)
  
• And of course, all my friend's food blogs! Make Things Tasty, Ellie May, Recipes from the Peapod, Penney's Palate, Traditional Cake, But I Suck At Cooking (oh, the inspiration).

Since I've started working full time, I'm especially on the look out for recipes that are quick to make after I get home from work, or will allow me to do most of the prep work the morning or night before. For example, crock pot recipes can be prepared the morning of, and lasagne can be assembled the night before, to be merely popped into the oven. On the weekends, I'm more willing to do something more time-consuming. I usually don't scale what I'm making to two people, because I like leftovers for lunch (goal: make my lunch as cool as possible). And I'm always on the look out for something that will be healthy or vegetarian but still taste good. If I know what I basically want to make, I use epicurious's search feature, and occasionally Allrecipes, though they can be more inconsistent since they are user-submitted.

And then we eat dinner. And then someone needs to take care of dishes. Brian and I had been going under the "If you didn't make dinner, you have to do dishes" game plan, but since Brian creates tons of dishes, and I create many fewer, this isn't totally fair. We're trying out flipping-a-coin during dinner to see who does dishes, which could be a mildly interesting decision-analysis case study. Only mildly interesting.

Ok, now: Food/Recipe blogs you love?

Spicy Slow Cooked Chicken

"Do you have anything earth shattering to say about dinner, Brian?"
"It was earth shattering!"

I think he's humoring me. Anyways, it was good! Let's talk about it.

I've had a package of chicken thighs hanging out in my freezer for a while - I was afraid they were reaching the end of the time which they would be tasty right out of the fridge, so I decided to use them in a crock pot dish. The slow cooking takes away the toughness that can come with overfreezing - so, into the crock pot! I'm not just a crock pot cooker, but Mondays are great for these dishes, since I can come home and plop on the couch while dinner finishes cooking.

Spicy Slow Cooked Chicken

1 yellow onion, chopped roughly
1 red pepper, seeded and chopped roughly
1.5 pounds of chicken, trimmed of fat
1/2 cup of chicken broth
Package of Fajita Seasoning*
8-10 white or crimini mushrooms, quartered

Combine all ingredients, except the mushrooms in a crockpot over low heat. Leave over low heat for 7-10 hours. Add the mushrooms and cook for another hour, increasing to high heat if there is excess liquid. Serve with tortillas or over corn chips, garnishing with salsa, cheese and sour cream.

Fajita Seasoning

If you don't have a packet of seasoning, but you do have way too many spices like us, you can use this recipe. Just combine and then shake over the ingredients in the crockpot.

1 tablespoon cornstarch
1.5 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon sugar
3/4 teaspoon chicken granules/chicken bouillon
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (less if you don't like spice)
dash cumin
dash red pepper flakes

Egg Drop Soup with Noodles

I've been sick all weekend with some sort of cough-grossness, so I didn't do much other than watch a LOT of TV and knitted the beginnings of a hat. How productive of me.

I didn't really cook much, or eat much as a result (for example, lunch yesterday was an avocado with olive oil and salt. Maybe a little weird, but good). Tonight, though after my day of toast and tea, I wanted some soup to soothe my throat. Unfortunately, I didn't have any canned soup, and I was too icky feeling to walk to the grocery store (about five blocks away, but hey, it's raining, and there's a hill. ew). So, I decided to make this egg drop soup with egg noodles. A little different from your typical egg drop soup, but it takes the best parts of egg drop soup and chicken noodle soup in one recipe. I basically followed this recipe from my Gourmet Cookbook, though I didn't have fresh ginger (I used jarred, about two tablespoons), I only had wide egg noodles (eh, who cares), and I didn't have sesame oil (I toasted some sesame seeds in some oil, but I'd probably skip this next time).

Chinese Egg Drop Soup with Noodles