Yellowman's Banana Lime Bread

•  I came across this recipe awhile ago from Moosewood's International Cookbook, called Yellowman's Bananna Lime Bread (or something close) and have been making it often ever since. I used to bake it for my roomates in college and they still speak of it. Since I despise coconut in most forms, I omit it and find the result to be pretty amazing. I like to cook the glaze until it thickens into a caramel-like sauce (between 5 and 10 minutes, boiling) and pour it over the warm bread so the heat sufficiently spreads it.
•  
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs , lightly beaten
• 3 mashed bananas
• 3 tablespoons plain yogurt
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 3/4 cup grated coconut , toasted
• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

glaze

• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon rum
• 3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1/4 cup grated coconut , toasted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease a loaf pan.
2. Cream together butter and sugar. Stir in eggs, banana, yogurt and lime juice. Add salt, ginger and coconut. Mix well.
3. In a separate bowl, sift together dry ingredients. Add to the wet mixture and mix until smooth. Pour into loaf pan.
4. Bake 1 hour or until done. Cool for 10 minute.
5. Meanwhile, make the glaze. Combine the brown sugar, butter, rum and lime juice in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes or until it becomes a thin syrup.
6. Pour over the cooled loaf and sprinkle with toasted coconut.
   
   In my searching to find the recipe again, I came across it on several food websites with no proper credit to the cookbook it was lifted from. That annoys me, but not quite enough to sign up for a membership to the various websites so I can comment on it.

My near perfect hot chocolate

I adore hot chocolate, but find Swiss Miss and all it's counterparts to be somewhat disappointing. This is my recipe.
For one huge mug or two small mugs, fill said mugs with milk and pour into a pan. Turn heat to medium high. Add one really heaping spoonful of straight cocoa powder, and two heaping spoonfuls of brown sugar and a little splash of vanilla. whisk with a whisk, and keep an eye on it until it starts to show signs of doneness, which is steam rising off the surface, about 5 minutes. Don't let it boil or you will burn your tongue on it. Pour into the mugs and enjoy! Of course it is also excellent with fresh whipped cream and you can add cinnamon or mint if you like though I'm a purist and prefer it without. I've also tried making it with bars of fancy chocolate and while it is nice, I prefer the cocoa powder method. Serve with a pot of honey, so those who like it sweeter can sweeten to taste.

For my near-perfect ice cream sauce, use the same proportions of sugar and cocoa and vanilla, but use much less milk, just enough to make a thin sauce. let simmer two minutes on the stove and pour over waiting bowls of vanilla bean ice cream. If you have any in the cupboard, a splash of rum is good in this too, though not necessary.

A jar of Sunshine

I bought a large bag of tangerines awhile ago, but they were really too sour to eat and were just sitting around getting old, so I tried out this idea from Dinah Corley's book Gourmet Gifts and was blown away. I had to force myself to stop eating them long enough to take a picture.

2/3 cup sugar
1 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp fresh ground nutmeg
Combine in your measuring cup and get a quart jar.
Slice the tops and bottoms off 4 oranges (more or less depending on size, I used about 15 tiny) and run a sharp knife along the remaining peel from top to bottom to remove it and the white pith. Slice the peeled orange into rings and begin to layer them in the jar, sprinkling with sugar and spices as you go. Fill jar to top, add any remaining sugar and pour in the juice of one lemon and any juices on your cutting board from the oranges. Put a lid on and gently shake. Refrigerate 2 hours to dissolve sugar, then stand at the fridge and eat out of the jar with a fork! If you can bear to not eat them all at once, this will keep for 4 days refrigerated. The author suggests this as the perfect gift for a sick friend, and I have to agree that this would be pretty spectacular to receive, sick or not!
I found that this was plenty sweet and had used very sour oranges to begin with, so you may not want to use the whole amount of sugar if you have sweet oranges. I think this could be lovely with grapefruit too, though I'd want to try brown sugar and vanilla. How good would this be on pancakes? I'm thinking pretty gosh darn good.

Thanksgiving week

Olaf has been busy re-assembling his pirate ship into one that is continually bigger and better. Soon I imagine it will self-destruct from it's own weight, but so far, so good.

We've had bits and blobs of snow, but nothing that has stuck around.

I've been sewing more little dinosaur baby toys. With crinkle paper in the necks.

And I sewed another pair of baby pants. I love the t-shirt pattern.

and out of the scraps, I sewed a few baby hats. I'm learning how to do the fun stitches on my sewing machine, so my hems suddenly got a great deal nicer looking.

Julia's decided that accessories are the key to life.

For Thanksgiving, we made Grandma Wahlberg's cranberry sauce.

In her old grinder we ground up 1 lb fresh cranberries, one orange with a little bit of the peel left on and one peeled apple. Then stir in up to a cup of sugar and let it sit for a day before serving. No cooking! I love a bowl of this with whipped cream.

Since we had the grinder out, we ground up the carrots and celery and apples and onions for the stuffing. Stuffing is what I live for at Thanksgiving.

and I made apple and pumpkin pie.

Julia's into play dough

and Olaf was too, making it into Octopuses attacking the ship.

the sun was out, the weather was mild. Granny came over and we feasted.  I was a tad distracted by all the food, so no photos. 

and later that night I finished another self-designed hat. I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving!

Cranberry Whip Recipe

Mom made this today, and since I'm a fan of unique recipes, here it is:
In a saucepan, boil over medium heat 3 cups cranberry juice. Slowly sprinkle in 6 Tbsp sugar and while stirring briskly add 1/2 cup uncooked cream of wheat cereal. reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally until thickened, 6-8 minutes. When thick, move to a mixer bowl and beat on high speed 10-15 minutes until light and fluffy and pink! pour into individual serving bowls and serve within 2 hours at room temperature.
Instead of cranberry juice, apple, strawberry or raspberry juice can be used, but add a Tbsp of lemon juice as well.  You could also fold in fresh berries at the end!

While it's a tad unusual, I think this would make an awesome holiday dessert for a vegan or dairy intolerant person. You could make a custard-like pie by putting this in a graham cracker crust. I'll probably use this recipe in Alaska for a whipped cream substitute, as fresh dairy can be very hard to come by in the small villages.

Midsummer creativity and fun

corn and green beans and apricots

apricot sauce and plum sauce

driftwood candle holders

denim booties

ocean pants

A hat for Julia that I designed and knit from Hommespun yarn spun by my friend Trevor.
If you want the pattern, contact me and I'll e-mail you a copy. 

A felt crown for Julia someday (a little big)

a baby bonnet from old t shirts made from a captain crafty tutorial

and the second one, much nicer! (i used manufactured bias tape for the edging instead of the t shirt hem,)

I made it slightly larger, but it was still rather small for Julia.  Perhaps I'll do a third. 

Olaf gives Julia horsey rides

He also discovered the town's skate park and wants to go at least twice a day!

but he's not too cool of a skater kid to hang out and eat popsicles with Julia

Our friends Andy and Carolyn came for a visit. They let me live with them in Dubuque, Iowa for two semesters of high school after my parents moved to Nebraska and I hated it. Very kind of them! 

I bought Julia a rocking chair at an antique store for $10. She's pretty fond of it! 

Julia helped me bake Zucchini cake

Excellent Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cake

1 cup wheat flour

2 cups white flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

3 tsp cinnamon

3 eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup applesauce or yogurt or mashed banana

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

3 tsp vanilla

4 cups grated zucchini and/or summer squash (do not drain, grate over a bowl or use a food processor. add with the juice)

1 cup chocolate chips and/or walnuts

Mix dry and wet ingredients separately, then combine gently. 

Pour into a greased 9 x 13 pan and bake at 325 for about an hour, until a toothpick comes out clean. 

The beautiful springtime

We've been having beautiful weather out here, balmy 20 degree afternoons with sunshine! The sun rises and sets around 7 now so we have some nice long days to enjoy. Dave and I borrowed the neighbor's sled and took Julia out for a stroll. We stuffed her in a produce box with some blankets, and she was cosy and content. We walked down the frozen river for awhile, and came to a spot where you could see the slabs of ice poking up from earlier this winter when the rains caused the river to sort of break up.  The chunks of ice showed a lot of beautiful bubbles that are actually signs of climate change, the river releasing unusual levels of methane.

I finally saw the northern lights last night! I had gone to bed with Julia, and Dave was at a stargazing bonfire with the school kids. The kids had all just gone home, when the lights started up on the horizon, and Dave came running over to wake me. You'd have thought someone had died the way he hollered "GET UP", but I had told him that if he didn't wake me up the next time he saw them that I'd be furious.  They were green,  hugging the horizon and arcing over the school. Sometimes a spot light would suddenly glow quite bright, and then they would fade away. They shifted around too, moving to the south. We watched outside in the cold awhile, until we got too cold, then we realized we could see them almost as well from our window, so we watched them from inside some more.

The school lost two more kids, our first and second grader, Tatiana and Rashaun have gone to Oklahoma to live with their mother. That leaves Wade, in the pre-school, Honey, Ashley, Chelsea, Alfreda and Sam in the elementary and Al, Mattie, Miguel, Jonah, Amber, Vern and Katie in the High school. (Katie is Vern's girlfriend, and recently transferred in from the nearby village of Crooked Creek)

Julia, despite taking those first steps has been reluctant to adopt walking as a mode of transportation. Upon great urging, she will appease us with a few steps, but crawling still seems to please her just fine.
Her pinkeye seems to be getting better, though she still gets some goop in her eyes during the day they are no longer crusted over in the mornings. We never got it checked out. There was supposed to be a nurse coming to the village, but for some reason, she hasn't come yet, and this just doesn't seem urgent enough to merit a flight to medical attention. I was searching the internet for home remedies, and one was to put breast milk in the eye, due to the antibacterial properties. This sounded worth a try to me, but the reality of Julia's unwillingness to let me anywhere near her eyes, let alone to drop breast milk into them has prevented me from actually trying this. The only word she says regularly is "da" for "dad" and despite my trying to teach her to sign, she mostly refuses and instead communicates quite well with grunts and babbles. Her new favorite thing is to unload the cupboard that contains the pasta noodles. 2nd favorite is to unload the cupboard containing the pots and pans. She likes brushing her teeth at night. Though it is really more of just chewing on her brush. We don't use toothpaste yet.  I bought some toddler stuff, but it smells like fake cherry, and if I let her use it, she smells like fake cherry, which I hate. I bought her a soft hairbrush, and brush her hair in the mornings, more for the novelty than for necessity, but today she grabbed the brush and managed to do it herself. Despite being able to unload cupboards very well, for some reason she has not figured out that pulling all the books and yarn off the shelves is a fun game too. I thank my lucky stars for that. We are working on teaching her not to bite. She does it in play, and only with me. She precedes the bite with a little veloceraptor cry which is adorable, but the biting is getting stronger! So I yell "NO" in my meanest parent voice, and sometimes she stops, and sometimes she smiles sweetly and bites again.

Julia likes flinging cheerios on the floor, then getting down and eating them off the floor

lest you think our days are all sunshine, here is the progression:

In the kitchen, I've been gloriously busy, thanks to Full Circle Farms, and the fact that we have signed up for a box of produce to arrive from them every other week. We pay $58.25 for this luxury, which on the one hand is an insane amount of money for a box of produce and on the other hand is a small price to pay for my happiness.

I made a amazingly good soup from produce in last week's box. This recipe has very rough quantities, but I think that it will work well regardless of the proportions and with substitutions.
Red Soup
In a heavy pot, saute the following diced veggies in olive oil:
an onion
2 carrots,
3 ribs of celery
a leek
a sweet potato
a regular potato
4 cloves of garlic
After some browning occurs, add chicken broth to cover, and about 2 cups of red lentils that have been rinsed well. Let it all simmer until things are soft, then puree with your handy immersion blender.
Turn off the heat, and add 3 Tbsp or so of red miso and a good splash of balsamic vinegar. Sir well and eat!
And because one cannot live on soup alone in winter,
Apple Tart,  from the Greyston Bakery Cookbook

Fold over the edge to create a little shelf for keeping in the juices.
 Prick the bottom with a fork.
Transfer the parchment paper and crust to a cookie sheet.
Preheat the oven to 400
Peel, core and very thinly slice 2 large apples
Toss with:
3 Tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/3 cup sliced, toasted almonds.
Spread out onto the prepared crust and cut and scatter 3 Tbsp butter over the top.
Bake 35-45 minutes, until things are looking golden brown.

to gild the lily, serve with whipped cream or ice cream

This outfit was my sister Caroline's at one point in history

And I finished a new hat! This one fits both Julia and I, and I wish I had meant to do that.