Chocolate Banana Bread

This is a loaf of banana bread I made yesterday. It's brown because it's chocolate banana bread. OK - the real name of the recipe is Whole Wheat Chocolate Banana Bread but don't let the whole wheat part put you off (it almost made me not want to make it).

The great thing about this recipe is that the addition of cocoa masks the sometimes overwhelming flavor of the whole wheat flour. I love whole wheat in bread but not always so keen about it in my baked goods. With this recipe you get the best of both worlds; you feel like you are eating a treat (which you most definitely are) as well as getting a little bit of some healthy whole grains. I also liked the fact that there isn't much oil - only 1 T and the sugar, at 3/4 of a cup, wasn't terrible either.

I modified the recipe as follows: used Rice milk instead of skim milk for my milk allergic son, used 1/2 white flour and 1/2 wheat (I was a little nervous to go all the way and use 100% wheat flour) but next time I will try and increase the ratio of wheat to white flour. And I only used 3/4 t of nutmeg instead of a full teaspoon. Nutmeg can be such a strong spice; even at the reduced amount it still came through loud and clear.

Hubby proclaimed this banana bread "perfect" in its current state and told me not to change anything. I can't get any better compliment than that.

When Life Gives You Lemons

....step on 'em!

My Dad loves to send me those internet emails that go 'round the world. He has become a lot more selective, especially since I taught him to use Snopes.com. This was one he sent me this week. I liked the message - kind of the farm animal version of "Who Moved My Cheese".

"A donkey fell in a deep well. The villagers, not knowing if he had survived in good condition, decided to just bury him in the well.

At first the donkey was very upset and angry. "How could they do this to me? I worked hard for them and I never complained about the heavy loads. I was loyal and did a great job." he thought to himself.

As the shovels of dirt continued to fall on his head he realized that complaining and being angry was doing no good and certainly wasn't going to help him get out of the well. He finally decided that with each shovel of dirt that fell on his head he would shake it off and step up.

He continued to shake off the dirt and step up. By the time the villagers had thrown in their last shovel of dirt the donkey was able to step up and out of the well by himself."

Setting aside all my questions (how did a donkey fall in a well? If it was a dry well why wasn't it capped? If it wasn't a dry well why would the villagers risk their water supply by contaminating it with a dead donkey?) I liked the message: if you aren't happy with something that is going on in your life change it!

Blow... Didn't

Tonight I finally got around to watching the 2001 movie "Blow". I don't know why it never appealed to me 8 years ago, but it was on regular old TV tonight and I was looking for some background that I could knit to so I decided to watch. I'm glad I did.

I thought it was quite good. Based on a true story - I always like those types of movies - it was intriguing to see the life of George Jung go from rags to riches to rags again. It was poignant and somehow I ended up feeling sad for him, but especially his daughter. I tend to try and avoid any sad movies nowadays so this one snuck up on me. Again, I'm glad it did.

Johnny Depp, as usual did a great job. Lots of other big names too - Penelope Cruz, Ray Liotta, Rachel Griffiths, Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman - I thought he looked familiar) to name a few. It's definitely worth renting

and Salsa-ing

Looky who thinks she is Ms. Canner now? I canned 5 pints of salsa today - mostly because Hubby was feeling sad that I hadn't made anything he was interested in, plus we had a bunch of garden tomatoes to use up so, salsa it was.

He deemed it delicious and even though I had to supplement our fresh tomatoes with canned I did use the no-salt added variety so this salsa is just about sodium free and a perfect snack for him with his new low-sodium eating plan. My only disappointment was it seems a bit too liquidy but that's easy enough to resolve by just draining it a bit.

Cannin' and Jammin'

I can now check off another item from my list of "Things to do Before I Die" because today I canned.

I have been wanting to try to can for years. Thanks to my friends in the Motherhood Later group on Ravelry I have finally done it. We set a date and a total of four of us were in our respective kitchens today all doing the same thing; one in NY, one in Canada, one in KY and me in IL. Cool, huh?

I decided on Watermelon Rind Pickles - never heard of them? Well, the recipe was in my copy of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving so it must be a legit recipe. My Grandma also used to make them so I thought it would be neat for this recipe to be the one I use for my first try at canning. OK - I'll confess, it was also because if I messed up the entire job I wouldn't have to think about throwing away a bunch of expensive produce - we'd have just tossed the rinds in the composter anyways.

First, my girl and I got the watermelon ready. It was an average sized seedless watermelon. We were looking for 16 cups of rinds and I assumed one watermelon would do it.

She washed and dried it and I cut into it.



NOTE: There should be a picture here but *%5E@%5E$* Blogger is making me insane so you'll have to use you imagination. Sorry.


It looked great - perfectly ripe and delicious inside. But man, it had skimpy rinds - I couldn't believe how thin they were. How was I supposed to get 16 cups of rinds from this melon? I remember as a kid having big chunky rinds after eating watermelon. I think those were the old-fashioned seeded watermelons. Those big, oblong-shaped suckers.

So my girl scooped out the melon and I peeled the rinds, cut them up and put them in salted water for their overnight soak.

This morning we rinsed 'em, drained 'em and boiled them in a syrup of vinegar, sugar and cinnamon sticks.

Since I only had 8 cups of rinds I made a half recipe - three pint jars.




NOTE: Imagine picture here - again thanks to the idiocy that is Blogger




The jars looked so small and lonely in my new, giant 21-quart canner. But it worked, the lids seemed to have sealed properly and maybe I'll open one up for Thanksgiving.

Not So Smart Spending

After reading this article about posh dorms in the Chicago Tribune today I felt disturbed for a variety of reasons; however, the most annoying was this quote:

"You are going to be in debt anyways, might as well enjoy," said sophomore Ashley Hendzell of Tinley Park.

What?? Has she not noticed the financial crisis that so many people are currently facing? If she could talk to 10 of those families do you think they'd say "sure, go ahead! You'll be in debt after college anyways so why not throw a couple $5,000, $10,000 or more on those loans!" I'm sure more than one of them would grimly look at her and say "yeah, that's what I thought and look where I am now". I guess the mention of her 30 pairs of shoes kind of indicates she isn't the most fiscally minded student anyways.

I had a friend that went to a private school for both undergrad and graduate school. During those years she justified taking a nice vacation (Aruba and Hawaii are two that come to mind) by saying she "deserved" them; she was under a lot of stress, you know. And the money was, somehow, readily available via her student loans. Post graduation, after she married and tried to get a mortage her $120K in student loan debt made her enough of a liability that they left her off the mortgage altogether.

If you can pay for these posh dorms outright, than more power to you. If you need to roll the extra cost into your student loans then just say "NO". Isn't living in a cramped dorm room using milk crates as end tables kind of a college right of passage anyways?

Yes Man, Yes Ma'am!

I took a sick day today - I'm tired, achy and feeling blah. After sleeping in I hauled myself into the shower and then out to get an iced coffee. I also decided to swing by the library and see what DVDs they had available.

"Yes Man" with Jim Carey was on their "new release" shelf so I grabbed it. Jim Carey movies are almost always entertaining if only in a silly, frothy kind of way and that's what I needed - some silly humor to distract me and maybe, if I was lucky, make me laugh.

It worked! This is a cute movie and if you really think about it, it's a good message too. If it made me laugh out loud (more than once), than that's saying something. Give it a try.