a new twist on dad's classic recipe

banana nut bread

need i say more?

probably not, but i will anyway:

i used my dad's basic recipe for banana nut bread and "veganized" it. it's still not "healthy," but it's safe to say it's at least "healthier."

3 ripe bananas
1 tbsp ground flaxseeds
3 tbsp water
2 tbsp unsweetened apple sauce
2 cups flour
3/4 cups sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
about 1/4 cup chopped walnuts (depending on how nutty you feel. sorry, but no recipe for banana nut bread would be complete without this pun.)
a dash of soy or rice milk (I used rice)

Preheat the oven to 350°.
Viciously thrash the bananas in a large mixing bowl with a fork. In a separate bowl or cup, mix the flaxseeds, water, and applesauce, and whisk together with a fork. it should be kind of goopy (like egg whites!). Add to the bananas and mash it all together. Add the rest of the dry ingredients, minus the walnuts, and mix well, adding just a dash (about and ounce or so) of rice (or soy) milk as you do so. Fold in the walnuts.
Pour the batter into a greased bread pan and bake in the oven for one hour.

My roommate loved it, and I swear it tasted exactly the same as the kind my dad makes whenever we have three overripe bananas lying around the kitchen.

...Other Stuff...

I wrote a reflection the other day on my current situation in life and my thoughts about pursuing post-graduate education. Here's what I had to say about it...

Tonight I stayed up very late making stuffed mushrooms for tomorrow’s company potluck. The sleep-deprived feeling sweeping throughout my body—the aching back, the bloodshot eyes, the stomach that can’t seem to decide whether it’s hungry or sick, all exacerbated by the fact that I’ve been up since 5:30 this morning—brings me back to my too-long estranged student days. There is something dear about staying up late, working on something I half love, half despise because it is keeping me away from my bed, which I half love, half despise. When I stepped into in the bedroom to change into my pajamas while waiting for some of the ingredients to cool so that I might proceed to the next step in the unpredictably drawn-out culinary process, I momentarily caught an unidentifiable smell that instantly took me back to my late nights and early mornings in my Oxford flat, struggling against time and overwhelming fatigue to finish a paper on 20th Century British Theatre or Gender Roles in Shakespeare, wondering if I would complete it before the Study Abroad office closed, or if I would indeed have to walk all the way down to New College and pay about 70p to print out the whole thing.

I want to be a student again. Stuffed mushrooms, no matter how delicious they turn out, don’t give me the same depth of satisfaction as a well-written contrastive study of the differences between Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth’s distinctive approaches to queenly rule. I want to hear a bell tower chiming three a.m. somewhere in the distance, to try to force another cup of chamomile tea and handful of saltines into an upset stomach that really wants noting more than for the rest of my body to get a full night’s rest, and to know, somehow, as the glare of my laptop screen burns into my retinas, that there really is no other way I would rather be spending my time.

growing up

means I went a whole day without wearing a unitard. It means that I felt like exercising today, so I went for a walk around the neighborhood because I knew my joints wouldn't want to handle the strain of a run or a jog. It means I spent several hours researching graduate schools and when my eyes started to burn from staring and the computer screen and my mind started to feel like it was going to burst, I calmed myself down again by repeating the word "zipper" over and over again in my head, rather than saying it out loud. Growing up means that I still had more dessert than I should have ("should" have), only this time I felt guilty about it. It means I am cleaning my dishes up right after I use them. It means that I am going to bed now, at a reasonable hour, so that I can get up early for work.

I love

how the spot of red wine
mellows in the bottom of the glass
while I finish my book;
then I sip those last few drops --
so tart!

smooth...

Today felt like a very long day at work. Which was especially odd, considering I got off early. Anyhow, when I got home, I definitely needed a smoothie. So I put some orange juice concentrate, frozen mangoes, frozen strawberries, strawberry soy yogurt, and a bit of water in my blender and whipped one up. Tropical bliss. That's not the name of the smoothie, but that's what it felt like. But I guess it could be called "Tropical Bliss." I don't see any reason why it shouldn't. Other than the fact that it's a boring name; not very creative.

adventures in baking with bananas

Yesterday I obeyed an inkling to whip up a batch of vegan chocolate-chip cookies. I wanted them to be a tad healthier than the recipe I had on hand, plus, I didn't have the sufficient ingredients to make the cookie dough as described, so I put my knowledge of vegan baking substitutions to the test and came up with the following recipe:

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup nonhydrogenated margarine, softened
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 small ripe banana
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups white whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350°.
Mix together the sugar, margarine, applesauce, banana, and vanilla until well blended. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix well. Add chocolate chips. Divide the dough into small balls on ungreased cookie sheets and bake for 10-12 minutes. Let cool on cookie sheet for at least a few minutes.


The great thing about using the banana as a binding agent is that it gives the cookies a really great texture and helps them to brown very nicely. But the cookies ended up tasting notably banana-y. It's not a bad flavor, by any means, but, if I'm aiming for that good old fresh-from-grandma's-oven flavor, then it just won't do. I'm going to omit the banana next time and try experimenting with other possible "healthy" substitutions. I'll keep you posted on the results.