Pumpkin Banana Bread

Hello Friends and Happy Holidays!

So this year for Christmas my family is having a potluck-ish brunch. Since I had left over cinnamon cream cheese frosting from cookies from a holiday party, I decided to make some sweets. I settled on a Pumpkin Banana Bread. The recipe is found below

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,184,154166-240206,00.html

yum!

This recipe looks really good, so I did follow it pretty closely. A few things I modified include:
-Instead of 1 cup pumpkin, I added the whole can (about 1 and 1/2 cups total). Because I'm leaving for vacation, I didn't want the extra pumpkin left in the can to go bad. Hopefully this will make the bread extra moist and sweet
-I added a bit extra pumpkin pie spice to kick it up a bit. I also added extra cinnamon (this seems to be a theme in this blog thus far)
-I mixed everything by hand because electric mixers are for cheaters (or you know, people with larger kitchens and a bigger appliances budget)
-The most annoying change to this recipe was the timing. Because of the extra moisture from the pumpkin, it took FOREVER to bake. Like, an hour and half. Much to long, but I'm hoping it'll be worth it.

I can't give a final verdict until Christmas day, but it smells and looks pretty darn delicious. Can't wait!




Seasons Eatings! (ha)
-C

Crackers are hard....

Hello friends

Today I made my first (and likely last, at least for a while) attempt at making homemade crackers. The recipe is as follows

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/wheat-crackers/

Before I started, I read through some of the comments and reviews and decided to use a flavored olive oil/roasted walnut oil blend. I also added about 1/3 cup sugar as suggested. I don't know what the issue was, but I ended up with an EXTREMELY sticky dough. Never try to roll out dough if you don't think it's the correct consistency.....it only leads to sticky counter tops and fingers. I tried to salvage the mixture by rolling it out on the pan. This led to doughy insides and burnt outsides. Mission aborted. Not even worth a picture. Sad day.

***EDIT*** I spoke too soon. One of the batches was actually pretty tasty. Like wheat thins. Still a lot of work, but this may be worth a second try, using wax paper to cut down on the mess


Oh well. I'll make up for it by sharing one of my favorite, no fail dinners: turkey burger with sauteed veggies. You seriously cannot screw this up. I'm a huge fan of Jennie-O Turkey Burgers. Rub Lawry's seasoning on both sides and stick it in a George Foreman Grill.

While the burger is cooking, saute some veggies. You can do whatever you have around, but my favorite is some combination of mushrooms, onions, shallots, kale, and spinach. Garlic flavored olive oil is great for this.

Top your burger with your sauteed goodies, and add some crumbed blue cheese to be extra decadent. (Side note: Blue cheese is one of those foods you need to mature into. I don't know any children who like cheese this pungent, but man oh man it's crumbles are to die for. Try it again if you haven't in a while)



Put it all on a slice of bread or hamburger bun and chow down. That's it. Much easier than those damn crackers....

Om Nom Pumpkin Aplomb

Hello friends

I decided to start a food blog mainly for my own selfish benefit. I love cooking, but almost always play with the recipes a bit. This makes it difficult to replicate exactly. I always forget what spice made it great and what herb made it god awful. I also am more of an estimator than exact measurement kind of gal. Call it the ying to the yang of my chemistry degree. So, for each entry I'll link the original recipe and then talk about the tweaks I made, and which ones I want to make in the future! Sound good? Good.

First up is a dish i discovered via Reddit (of course). I really like this blog. I'm a pretty frugal person, which isn't so easy as an aspiring foodie. I also try to be pretty healthy in my day to day meals. Cue in Budgetbytes.blogspot.com. I get a lot of great ideas here

One of my favorites is the baked pumpkin pie oatmeal. (http://budgetbytes.blogspot.com/2011/09/baked-pumpkin-pie-oatmeal-277-recipe.html)



I'm not going to put the actual recipe here. I assume you all are smart enough to figure out how to copy and paste the link if you want to know.

This isn't the first time I've made this, but neither I nor my boyfriend John could remember if it was too moist or too dry. I think inadvertently made both kinds in the past. That is kind of the inspiration for this documentation...

The major modifications this time include:

-using dry milk instead of the liquid stuff. I drink a lot of milk (a lot!) but I recently bought a box of dry milk for some homemade granola. I figured I might as well use it up since I don't really want to drink it straight up. I just added the mix, not the water. I'm hoping this will make it creamier without being too moist
-I eyeballed the pumpkin pie spice and vanilla extract. I probably overestimated, but I will tell you it makes my entire apartment smell WONDERFUL (albeit I do live in a studio apartment). I added extra cinnamon too. Delicious plus it adds antioxidants, so that's good.
-Instead of 2.5 cups old fashioned oats, I used about half oats and half homemade granola I had (another recipe for another day). The granola includes rice crispies, dried cranberries, and sliced almonds. I just added the granola/oats until I had the consistency I wanted. I also added more dried cranberries, because, why not?
-I sprinkled cinnamon and brown sugar on top for extra flair.

The timing was pretty true to the recipe. I gave it a few extra minutes at the end to try to crisp it up a lit.

Verdict: Good! The cranberries add a nice kick. The texture is moist and chewy, almost muffin-like. Other than that it's a nice blend of flavors. It could probably use even more cinnamon and maybe some nutmeg (though for most people it's probably perfect)

How to eat: Cold it's a great breakfast to go or pre-workout snack. Also is fantastic warmed with sliced bananas and maple syrup. Add peanut butter to that and I'd be in heaven!

Next time: Play with dried fruit. Or nuts and/or peanut butter. The pumpkin could be substituted with a different flavor for variation. I would like to find a similar recipe but with a more crunchy, granola bar-esque texture

Until next time my foodie friends
-C