Banana bread perfected

First real post for you, and what have I got? Banana bread! Don't judge - a quick bread is still bread.

Looking back on the old posts, I seem to still struggle with the same issue of always cleaning out my freezer. This seems to be a constant thing for me. I hate shopping for myself, but I love shopping for food, so instead of an overflowing closet, my freezer gets more and more difficult to close. 

I also hate throwing out food, and bananas are the number one Thing I Refuse To Throw Out. How can you, when you know they could be used for something yummy? 

In a fit of wishing for more freezer space, I took out a big bag of frozen bananas I've been adding to over time. This bag is big. When I first took it out, I thought "hey, I can make two banana breads with this!" Um, no. I weighed it, and I could make four and a half banana breads with the whole bag. 

Change of plans, then. Make the two banana breads (meetings tomorrow - someone will eat it!), and figure out what to do with the other frozen goo ASAP. See my not-a-professional-blogger photo on the right, ugly counters and dirty coffee maker in all. Don't the breads look good, though?

Given my penchant for always having old bananas around, I've settled on a banana bread recipe that fits all my criteria: 

• Can be made without using the mixer (no nap interruptions)
• Can be made with stuff I have in the house at nearly all times
• Has chocolate chips in it
• Isn't too chewy or greasy

I started with a recipe from The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion All Purpose Baking Cookbook, and changed it a bit to suit my tastes. I think cinnamon and nutmeg taste funny with chocolate chips (and kind of funny in banana bread in general), so those get omitted. I also think mini chocolate chips create a better banana bread to chocolate chip ratio in each bite, so I use those rather than the standard size. 

Banana Bread
adapted from The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion All Purpose Baking Cookbook

Note: If you double this, use an enormous bowl. I also like using the weights rather than the volume measures; it makes a difference in the quality of the outcome.

Ingredients: 
2 large eggs
1 cup (7 ounces) sugar) 
1/3 cup (2 3/8 ounces) vegetable oil
1 cup mashed banana (2 to 3 very ripe, large bananas, 7 - 9 ounces)
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 2/3 cups (11 3/8 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup (8 ounces) full-fat (not Greek) yogurt, buttermilk, or sour cream
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Instructions: 
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

In a medium-sized bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar, and oil. Blend in the mashed banana and vanilla. Thorougly mix together (whisking is good; sift if you're into it) all dry ingredients. Add to banana mixture. Mix quickly and thoroughly, then add in yogurt and chocolate chips until just combined. 

Pour into a greased 9 x 5 loaf pan. Bake about 1 hour, though start checking earlier (40 minutes to see if you need to add a foil tent to prevent over-browning).

Hey there!

It's been a really long time since I wrote on this blog. 

Lots of stuff has happened in the last (cough) 5 years. Moving - having a baby (now a 3 year old!) - changing jobs - spouse changing jobs. Baking and writing took a backseat amongst all the changes. 

January brought a resolution that has pushed me to get back in gear with baking and to write. I hate calling it a resolution - it's more of a commitment to myself to try something new. A couple of years ago, the resolution was to become good at making pie dough, since that had always been something I avoided for risk of failure. Result? I now make an amazing all-butter pie dough, and have made lots of pies. So this is not your typical "lose 10 pounds" or "exercise more" resolution. No, this is one I'll actually keep. 

Anyway, the resolution this year is to make lots and lots of bread. Thanks to an amazing workshop with a colleague, I felt I could finally get bread. Previous bread attempts failed, likely due to lack of kneading enough, or old yeast, and I had put it away as a thing I could do. This year, armed with my new learning, was going to be about bread. 

So far, it has been. I am blowing through flour at an astonishing rate, and my son has eaten his favourite breakfast (as he says, toast with cinnamon sugar and butter) on bread I have made since the start of the year. Success! 

And with that, here goes. No promises on how much I'm posting, though. 

Cleaning out the pantry - Part II

I've been successful in sticking to my goal of cleaning out the pantry - purchases have been limited to rounding out what's needed with vegetables/fruit, milk, cheese, eggs, and bread. Some things have been tasty (such as this delicious recipe for peanut sauce - great in a stir-fry, or thinned with potstickers, and some not so great (Mark Bittman's white beans with tomatoes recipe from How to Cook Everything wasn't worth keeping leftovers of, and white chocolate doesn't melt when it's old). 

I'm now down to a less forgiving assortment of items. I still have plenty of beef, ground pork, tuna, and shrimp in the freezer, but the other pantry items are getting thin. Namely - tomatoes. I'm out of tomatoes. Who knew I would wish for just a single can of tomatoes? 


Some good news, though - with fall comes soup and stew season. That's my go-to type of recipe for beans and stew meat (of which I have two bags in the freezer) - but they don't really fit the weather on a hot day. Now, I'm sure many of these soups would be better with a can of tomatoes, but I must forge on!
 

New mission: Cleaning out the pantry

I love grocery shopping about as much as I love cooking. I love finding new things, and stockpiling ingredients I should be using, and going into new food shops. There's a grocery chain around here, for instance, that seems to carry a lot of Indian foods that I don't have in the closest store (which has the best produce) - so when I happen to stop in for something I actually need, I typically come away with a basket full of other things that I just have to get. Don't go into a new grocery store with me unless you're prepared to spend an hour there. 

What that means, though, is that I have a very well-stocked pantry. Beans, grains, noodles - the cabinet space is chock full. My freezer - and we now have a chest freezer! - is full of meat from our meat man (though that is now over, we couldn't keep up the meat consumption to run out each month), and great deals from Costco (a giant bag of frozen sweet potato fries; a box of par-baked individual loaves of great bread). It's now at the point where I've realized that I shouldn't buy anything else new until I've made my way through what I have, or things are just going to get wasted as they approach their best-buy date.

My new mission: to make meals solely out of our pantry and freezer. The rules: 

• No new meats or grains/beans/noodles or condiments until the pantry is close to empty.
• No new spices. The spice drawer is close to bursting, too - if it's not in there, I don't need it.
• The only items that can be bought at the store are dairy products, chicken bones for stock (the meat guy didn't give us chicken), cereal, fruits, and vegetables. 
•  This continues until the meat is entirely gone from the freezer and/or the pantry is empty of all grains and beans - whichever comes first. 

The first meal on this mission? Lentil soup for lunches for this week. 


Lentil and sausage soup

1 small onion, medium dice
3 small carrots, peeled and sliced into coins 1/4 inch thick
3 stalks of celery, sliced the same thickness as the carrots
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 tsp dried thyme
pinch of red pepper flakes
2 sausages, cooked and sliced like the carrots
1 cup brown lentils
1 24-ounce can of whole tomatoes, tomatoes cut up (or chopped tomatoes)
2 cups chicken broth


Heat oil over medium heat; saute onion until softened and translucent. Add carrots and celery; mix well with onion. Add garlic, thyme, red pepper flakes, and cook until the garlic is fragrant. Add the remaining ingredients. Stir to combine; cover and simmer until lentils and carrots are the desired tenderness. 

Cookies for my puppy

I had stopped writing too much here because of time - I just haven't been cooking all that much. Or, rather, cooking that much that anyone wants to hear about; it's all been pretty basic. 

Enter Darwin, the world's cutest golden retriever puppy.

From Darwin!

The training program we've selected requires the use of frequent treats. (Positive reinforcement! How could two psychology nerds not work with people who use scientifically-proven behaviorism to train their new dog?) However, also being (a) cheap and (b) overly conscious of the potential perils associated with purchased dog treats, this was a perfect chance to get back into baking. 

I started by seeking out recipes online. I have a few criteria:
 - No wheat. According to golden retriever (and dog nutrition) lore, wheat can cause allergic reactions in dogs. No, they do not have celiac disease. 
 - The same idea goes for soy and corn. From what I've read, it seems that the real issues with these ingredients come from feeding them to the dog over and over and over - and traditional dog foods are chock full of them. Anyway...I'm trying to avoid these ingredients.
 - No sugar. I use unsweetened applesauce and bananas to add sweetness, and the peanut butter I use is natural, so there is no sugar or added ingredients.
 - No added fat. The only fat that is a part of the recipes I've tried is in the peanut butter and eggs.


These are the recipes I've started with. Where flour is called for, I've substituted gluten-free flour. There is a bit of cornmeal in the Peanut Butter treats below; since I'm still experimenting, I'm not sure what the role of all of the ingredients in the recipes are.

Applesauce and Oatmeal Treats
Peanut Butter Cookie Treats

I'll be experimenting with modifications of these recipes for a while. I'm lucky - Darwin will eat anything - rocks, clumps of dirt, grass - so while not discerning, he's a very appreciative taste tester.  The most successful change so far? Instead of applesauce, I added a banana and a bit of peanut butter instead of the applesauce to the Applesauce and Oatmeal Treats above.

Chilaquiles

I find that when I need to get back into the groove of cooking, I pick up one cookbook and find lots of recipes in it that I want to make. My go-to book right now? Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express - a cookbook I've expressed my love for before. Because I'm trying to finish up the things in our freezer and pantry, I'm not looking for recipes that require me to buy new things - and the flexibility of the recipes in this book give me the perfect way to do that. 

This morning, to use up some tortillas and a few pickled jalapenos in the fridge, I made his recipe for Chilaquiles. P loves anything spicy - me, I'm more of a bread-products-for-breakfast girl (French toast, pancakes, cinnamon buns...the list goes on), but that sort of thing can be heavy on a humid day like today. This was so easy that we'll definitely be making it again.


Chilaquiles
1 tbsp oil
2 tortillas, sliced into strips (flour or corn - we used flour, but corn would have been tastier)
a few pickled jalapenos, chopped (or fresh; the more you use, the spicier this will be)
4 eggs
a splash of milk
salt and pepper to taste


Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Saute the tortillas and jalapenos until crisp. Meanwhile, blend the eggs, milk, salt, and pepper until well-blended. Add egg mixture to tortillas when they are crisp; stir constantly until eggs are cooked to your preferred dryness. Serve with fresh tomatoes, avocado, sour cream, cheese, or anything else that sounds nice to you with something like this.

Bread pudding

Clearly I've been working too hard - was it really February when I posted last? I'll be making up for it this week; I'm taking this next week off, and will have lots of time to cook (and write about it!) 

Today I made bread pudding. We're moving soon, so I'm loathe to buy new ingredients for cooking - I have a very well-stocked pantry that's going to fill a few boxes already. 2/3 of a loaf of bread was leftover from P's parents coming for dinner earlier in the week - the obvious dessert: bread pudding!  

Bread pudding is one of my favorite desserts. P likes it, but he's not wild about it, so for a week where I won't be bringing leftovers to work, it has to be something he'll eat, too (unless my goals are to throw it out, or to gain 10 pounds in a week). The recipe below, modified from The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion, is easily malleable to the individual likes and dislikes of the eater. I've added some notes at the end about using your favorite fillings.


Bread Pudding


32 ounces milk
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
9 - 10 cups (9 - 10 ounces) cubed stale bread
1 cup brown sugar, honey, sugar, molasses, golden or maple syrup
1 cup (6 ounces) raisins, dates, dried cranberries, dried cherries
3/4 cup (3 ounces) chopped walnuts or pecans
4 large eggs
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9-inch cake pan (a 9-inch Pyrex pan will not be big enough - you need the height of the sides to hold it all). 


Heat the milk and butter together over medium-low until the butter has melted. Mix the bread cubes, sweetener, and dried fruits/nuts in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, salt, spices, and vanilla extract together. Mix the heated milk mixture into the egg mixture until well blended; then stir into the bread/fruit/nut mixture. Distribute the liquid evenly, and pour into greased pan.


Bake for 40 - 45 minutes, until a knife inserted into the center doesn't reveal a pooling of milk mixture. The pudding won't be dry, but you don't want uncooked milk/egg mixture in it. Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes. Serve warm or cool - great for breakfast!


Some additional thoughts: 

 - My combination of things was dried cherries and cinnamon - I omitted the nutmeg because I don't have any in the house, and I don't like nuts in bread pudding. Instead of the nuts, I substituted the near-equivalent amount of cherries for the nuts. 
 - You can also add chocolate chips instead of the dried fruit. I'm not personally fond of a cinnamon-chocolate flavor combination, though, so instead of that I would have added 1/2 tsp almond extract. 
 - You can be adventuresome. Think about what flavor combination you like - this doesn't have to be cinnamon-centric (think cardamom or ginger...mmm).