The Friday Five 8.24.12

1. What I’m Reading: After the flop that was Dare Me, I knew I needed a more thrilling mystery to read. Jenna recently posted about two great books she read, the first of which I read a couple years ago. The second, The Weight of Silence, really intrigued me. I started it last night; 100 pages in, I’m hooked!

2. What I’m Eating: Amanda and I are housesitting this weekend, so breakfast was provided by her parents. (Thanks Martha and John!) This was a delicious combo:

3. What I’m Listening to:  How about a change-up from the recent hipster tunes? This Top 40 hit has been stuck in my head lately. I usually can’t stand Taylor Swift, so I just don’t watch the video, ha!

4. Recipes I’m Bookmarking: I want to make this Sweet Raspberry Dip for our next Book Club meeting. It’s only 3 ingredients, one of which is Greek yogurt.

5. GIFs I’m Loving:

WHEN I TRY TO DIET

WHEN I’M OUT AND REALIZE I LEFT MY HAIR STRAIGHTENER ON

I think this next one might be my favorite…

WHEN SOMEONE MAKES A BLONDE JOKE TO ME

I hope you all have a wonderful, blessed weekend! 

The Friday Five

1. Where I’m Running: I ran on Daniel Island again last night. It’s becoming my favorite place to run. Every part of the island is beautiful. Check out the scenery:

A tree house!

2. What I’m Eating: During the Volunteer Fair at Blackbaud, King of Pops was selling his delicious popsicles. While a lot of the flavors are fruit-based, I almost always opt for the dessert pop. Today’s pick was Banana bread. The popsicle had a slice of homemade banana bread running through it. It was perfect. I ate all around the edges until I was left with only banana bread.

3. What I’m Bookmarking: I found this slideshow of lego sculptures of fast food items. Of course my favorite was the Chick-fil-A sandwich!

Now I want some legos.

4. What I’m Listening to: I will never tire of Sia! And David Guetta makes every song a little bit more fun.

5. Memes (gifs? who cares?) I’m Loving:

WHEN I’M DRIVING AND MY FAVORITE SONG COMES ON THE RADIO:

Boding made a gif out of Lucy and me hula hooping!!

Yep, it’s still one of my favorite hobbies.

HAPPY FRIDAY!!

Three Ingredient Dessert: Baked Bananas with Honey & Cinnamon

We all know and love whipped banana “ice cream”, but how about a warm banana dessert? My friends, using just 3 ingredients, you can have another delicious dessert without the guilt!

First, let’s take a look at one of my favorite fruits: the banana.

What’s to love about bananas?

• very good source of potassium (helps with muscle cramps!)
• good source of Vitamins B6, C, and manganese
• help maintain normal blood pressure
• low in sodium

So what are the three ingredients necessary to make this easy dessert? Banana, cinnamon, and honey.

1. Peel the banana, slice it in half, and place in an oven-safe dish.

2. Drizzle with honey.

3. Sprinkle with cinnamon.

A lot of cinnamon.

4. Cover and place in oven that has been preheated to 400*. Bake for 15-20 minutes, depending on desired softness. 

Of course you’re totally welcome to stop here and enjoy your warm, caramelized banana. But should you? I say add more toppings! For me? Peanut butter morsels and coconut! Yum!!

Have you ever had baked bananas?

What would you top your baked banana with?

Baked bananas or banana soft serve?

HAPPY FRIDAY!

These Are My Confessions

Don’t get too excited; I’m only posting some of my weird habits.

1. Other than my team meeting last week and when I was on vacation in Destin and NYC, I have been eating the same breakfast since January.
  +
The first couple months, I ate this with bananas,
then briefly switched to bluebs..
Since the beginning of April, I’ve been eating this cereal with strawbs.
The few times that I deviated from my breakfast of choice, I felt extremely thrown off. Obsessive, much?

2. I am the only person I know that can chew gum and drink beer at the same time.
And speaking of gum, has anyone ever chewed gum while in the shower? It’s pretty weird.

3. I just told Mariah that despite it’s God-awful list of ingredients, I’m having an obnoxiously strong craving for pistachio pudding:

Do not be alarmed if you see it on my blog this week. I have the most intense cravings for such random foods, that I am fearful of the day I’m actually pregnant. It is going to be really bad.

4. I bring “bar snacks” in my purse when I go out sometimes. I’d rather be prepared when hunger strikes!! I’ve found more than a few of these wrappers in my purse on Saturday mornings:

5. I like grocery shopping 2097529867298672676726 times more than clothes shopping. But no, I can’t count that high. My heart belongs here: here: and as of July 29th, here:

I’m really flipping excited for the Mt. Pleasant location to open and if I didn’t have to work, I’d probably camp out for its grand opening.

6. I think Food & Wine magazine is stupid. Really stupid. The recipes call for ingredients I’ve never heard of or ones that are only sold in ethnic markets in NYC. Come on!

7. Last Thursday, Matt and I went to the bar at Husk for some drinkies. I think my hands are too big for cocktails.
Or these glasses are stupid. Or I should paint my nails.

8. Saturday night, Margaret and I went to a friend’s house for a Mexican fiesta. As we were shooting tequila and watching a Tupac video, I told her “My life cannot get any better.”
She said “Ummm…I could think of lots of ways it could.” And then Snoop Dogg and his double braids came on on stage.

9. I’m excited for Chick-fil-A to start serving multi-grain oatmeal on July 25th. I might have to switch up my breakfast routine!
I promise not to put ketchup on it.

10. I just found this rotten tomato in my cabinet at work.

Capital D-sgusting.

Stop Making Other Banana Bread Recipes…

and make this one right now.

Well, right after you catch up on my blog. :)

I make cookies weekly, but the other type of baked good I really enjoy making (and eating!) is bread. God bless carbohydrates. They make us run faster! I absolutely love bananas and whenever I see those brown speckles forming on their peel, I immediately think of banana bread. You do too, right?

Three speckled bananas sat on my counter this morning and although I had just finished my cereal, I knew I needed a second breakfast. Rather than using an old recipe, I started googling new ones. There are way too banana bread recipes out there y’all. Just too many for my short attention span. For some reason the name David Lebovitz popped into my head, and boy, I’m glad it did.

This man is good. And he uses the metric system. I might love him.

Banana Bread adapted from David Lebovitz

makes one 9-inch loaf

• 1½ cups (210 g) flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¾ cup (150 g) sugar
• 2 tablespoons (55 g) melted butter
• 1 large egg white
• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 1 cup (250 ml) banana puree, made from 3 small, ripe bananas
• ½ cup (125 ml) low-fat sour cream Greek yogurt
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Grease a 9-inch loaf pan and preheat the oven to 350*.

1. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon, and sugar. 

2. In a separate bowl, mix together the butter, egg white, egg, banana puree, Greek yogurt, and vanilla extract.

3. Slowly incorporate wet mixture into the flour mixture. Stir just until combined.

4. Add mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

5. Cool for about 20 minutes, and serve warm. Drizzle with honey for an even tastier treat. 

And here is when you say, “Aaaah, I want that.”

In addition to eating several spoonfuls of the delicious batter, I ate a warm slice. I’m sure you can imagine how difficult it was for me to wait 20 minutes for it to cool a bit. And that scary looking knife my ex gave me? Oh yeah, that thing is sharp, and for the first time ever, I didn’t annihilate my bread. Thanks B.

And you all can thank me later for blogging about this. I promise you’ll love it. And if you don’t, send me your, dare I say, better recipe.

What is your favorite tried-and-true recipe? Please share!

Peanut Butter Banana Bread with Peanut Butter Glaze

The last week that I was a pneumoniac, I skipped the gym and baked up a storm instead. Saturday morning I made a variation of Cooking Light’s Peanut Banana Bread with a Peanut Butter Glaze. This was unbelievably good. It was light, moist, and rich all at the same time. And then the glaze. Oh, the glaze. On a scale of 1 to Titanic, this bread is Titanic.

Ingredients

Bread:

• 1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana
• 1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt (Fage! Fage! Fage!)
• 1/3 cup peanut butter (I used PB&Co. White Chocolate Dreams)
• 3 tbsp. butter, melted
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 6 3/4 ounces all-purpose flour (about 1 1/2 cups)
• 1/4 cup ground flax meal
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup Reese’s peanut butter baking chips (my special touch!)
• Cooking spray

Glaze:

• 1/3 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tbsp. light vanilla soy milk
• 1 tbsp. creamy peanut butter

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°.

2. To prepare bread, combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed. Add granulated and brown sugars; beat until blended.

3. Weigh or lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour and next 5 ingredients (through cinnamon) in a small bowl. Add flour mixture to banana mixture; beat just until blended. Stir in peanut butter chips. Pour batter into a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 1 hour and or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from oven; cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack. Remove bread from pan; cool.

4. To prepare glaze, combine powdered sugar, milk, and 1 tablespoon peanut butter in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk. Drizzle glaze over bread.

I dare you to make this bread and not want to eat the whole thing.

While the bread cooled, I convinced Justin to walk the Cooper River Bridge with me. He had never gone before and it was the perfect weather to be outside: 85* and sunny. We walked the entire bridge – roughly 5.4 miles. At the end I found some gymnastics equipment.

The next day, I gave half of the banana bread to my friend Luke. Apparently during exam time, law school students live in the library and don’t eat. This hurts my heart, so I gave some bread to the needy. Earlier this evening I got a picture message from the library.

True Life Charleston Law: Full throttle, ear plugs, my banana bread.

Who eats banana bread with Full throttle?!?!

“No skim milk in here :(“

G-R-O-S-S.

Luck of the Irish Cranberry Banana Oatmeal Cookies (Vegan!)

I feel like I’m either baking or thinking about what I’m baking next. This doesn’t seem to be a problem for anyone around me….except Lucy. My sweetheart roommate is allergic to dairy, so she can’t eat the majority of what I bake. I checked Bethenny Frankel’s website for  vegan recipes. I stumbled upon Cranberry Banana Oatmeal Cookies and immediately made them.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups oat flour
• 3/4 cup Irish steel oats
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup raw sugar
• 1/3 cup dried cranberries
• 1 tsp. canola oil
• 1/3 cup soy milk
• 1/2 cup banana puree (1 medium-size banana)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 375 °.
2. Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
3. Combine all the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Mix the dry and wet ingredients together until well combined.
4. Use a medium-size ice cream scoop or a large spoon to scoop batter onto a cookie sheet covered with wax paper.
5. Bake for 12 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through cooking, or bake until the edges of the cookies are light brown.

The batch made 16 small cookies, at around 112 calories each. The texture if very different than your typical cookie. It’s not a bad thing, just different. I think they’re muffin-like. Bethenny has a few other recipes I’d like to try, including her Wheat-Free Vegan Double Chocolate Chip Cookies and Boo Boo Banana Bread.

Speaking of banana bread, when I got home last night, Lucy told me that there was a brown bag at the door when she came home from the gym. Praying it wasn’t another love letter (true story), I approached the bag like it might be a bomb.

Obviously it wasn’t a bomb, or else I wouldn’t be typing this…but it was banana bread!! Joey had left a couple of slices of a recipe he made last night. This bread is ridiculous. If you’re interested in a loaf that contains enough sugar to give you diabetes in one slice but tastes like heaven, you should make this. Here is the recipe he emailed me:

“Glad you liked it. I actually just improvised with the walnuts, raisins, & blueberries, but here it is from memory.

Melt 1/3 cup butter

Combine with 3-4 mashed (ripened bananas)

Mix in 1 egg

1 tsp. Van Extract

1 tsp. Salt

1 Cup Sugar

Then, add 1.5 cups all purpose flour or whole wheat flour if you choose.

I then just added 2 oz. chopped walnuts, handful or raisins and a handful of blueberries.

Bake on 350 for an hour, and you should let it cool before you cut it. I didn’t which is why your piece wasn’t a perfect slice (impatient haha)”

I really appreciate the manly writing style of this recipe. So caveman like. “Melt this. Mix that.” Ha.

. . .

I just noticed that I have reached over 400 Google followers. I feel like it happened overnight! Thanks guys!!! I’m really curious though – I know all of you who comment, but the rest of you…where are you? Please leave a comment stating who you are, where you’re from, and if you have a blog. And click here to follow if you haven’t already. GRACIAS!

Grammy's Here for Dinner and Banana Cake!

Last night was the highly anticipated arrival of Grammy! Auntie Kelly and my baby cousin went to pick her up from the airport while I stayed at the house helping Gabrielle finish her homework. Look at this sweet face enjoying writing out her vocabulary words.

As Grammy's flight didn't come in until 5:30 pm, Kelly wanted to have an easy dinner, crock pot style. Earlier yesterday, she gave Gabrielle a few options and put her to work. Gabrielle chose a Beef Bourguignon recipe from Fix-It and Forget-It. She excitedly put the meal together and was very proud of how delicious it came out!

I enjoyed my serving very much, especially knowing how carefully it was prepared ;) Thanks, Gabby!

After dinner, Gabby and I decided to make a recipe from the November 2010 Cooking Light magazine: Banana Snacking Cake.

Of course Zachary couldn't be left out of the fun.

Despite it being considered a healthy recipe, I found additional changes I could make to reduce the amount of calories and fat. 


Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup plain low-fat yogurt 6 oz container fat-free vanilla yogurt
• 3/4 cup mashed ripe banana 2 medium ripe bananas, mashed
• 1/4 cup canola oil 1 6 oz container cinnamon applesauce
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• cooking spray

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 375*.
2. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon in salt in a large bowl. Stir with a whisk. Make a well in center of flour mixture.
3. Combine yogurt, banana, applesauce, vanilla, and egg in a small bowl and stir until blended. Add wet ingredients to the flour mixture, stirring just until moist.
4. Pour batter into a 9-inch square baking pan coated with cooking spray. Bake for 20 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. 

While the cake was in the oven, we licked the bowls clean. No need for a dishwasher in this household! Just kidding. 

20 minutes later... 

 

Everyone loved the final product. It was very light and fluffy, just like banana bread. I'm not really sure why Cooking Light refers to this as a "snacking cake." Sure, the title is much more enticing, but c'mon, who are they trying to fool? This is essentially bread, just baked in more of a cake shape. Those tricksters got us. 

I shall leave you with a hilarious picture of my cousin. He stuck his head through the arm hole of Grammy's shirt and ran around yelling that he was a "black ghost." :)

And that would be him knocking his sister off the chair a few minutes later. Sibling love!

What are some simple recipe changes you like to make to "healthify" them or reduce calories/fat? Have a good night!