Moist Banana Bread

Some people really dislike the word moist.  But the moister the cake the happier I am, even if it errs on the side of uncooked.  Here is a low fat recipe to help keep those skinny jeans from getting too tight.

This makes about 1 loaf and 8 cupcakes, or 1.5 loaves... 

4 Bananas

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 c. sugar

1/4 stick butter..melted

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 c yogurt

1 egg

Change to: loaves US Metric

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Mash bananas in a bowl and then add egg, butter, vanilla extract, cinnamon and yogurt.  Premix flower and baking soda and powder, cinnamon and salt and mix it into the wet ingredients.
Put in the oven for 20 min at 350 degrees Farenheit.  If you put a knife in it, it should not come out clean.

Mango

What do you get when you add simple, yummy ingredients?  Basically its paradise in your mouth.

This (like all beverages) tastes better in a mason jar... just saying.

Take Frozen Mango (1-2 cups)

1 Banana

1/2 c. orange juice

1 c yogurt

1 c crushed ice 

Blend in a blender or with a stick blender.  Add additional ingredients to taste.

Note- For an even better smoothie use yogurt. 

unhappy hipsters

 

This is Clyde the calf.  He is going to be veal because he is male.

I don't particularly like veal, but I support happy, farm raised food! 

I figured this blog should evolve to include food-related items instead of only recipes.

Other news:
Where do hipsters live? In ultra modern apartments where they are probably unhappy... what is up with that?  unhappy hipsters

Once upon a time there was a hiatus....

Sorry all for the long hiatus that involved a crazy autumn filled with more work than anticipated.

More inventive recipes will soon to come with the holidays,

But returning to hipster where the cool is constantly changing. (aka tapes are the new records which were the new ipods)  In the food world, there was an obsession with cupcakes for quite awhile.  But the news is out Pickles are the new cupcakes!  With that in mind, I will be trying some delish new pickling recipes in the weeks to come...
Stay tuned!

Baba Ganoush

I learned a lot on the trip I took earlier this summer to the Middle East. I learned that bagels are as foreign to Israelis as dim sum. That camel's milk is purported to be a powerful aphrodisiac. That in Egypt, "No" means "I speak English, and can easily be gulled into buying that knick-knack I just tried to refuse." That nothing scares me more than the fear of others.

And I learned about tahini. A creamy, nutty-tasting paste made from sesame seeds, tahini is a key part of hummus (which both Israelis and Palestinians can agree is great) and delicious on falafel (a key part of my diet as a vegetarian). My personal favorite use for tahini is in baba ganoush, a pureed eggplant spread. The recipe is quick and easy, and the resulting spread great as an appetizer with pita bread or raw veggies, or to spread on sandwiches.

Baba Ganoush

3 small eggplants (or 2 large)
4 cloves garlic
1/3 cup tahini
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cumin

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Slice the eggplant into pieces about 1 inch thick and place on an oiled cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, or until soft to the touch but not dry. Alternately, you can just place the whole eggplant on a cookie sheet in the oven, prick it with a fork and bake until soft. This takes about 20-30 minutes, depending on the oven.

Let the baked eggplant cool and peel off the skin, or cut it open and scoop out the meat. Put into a food processor with the rest of the ingredients. Pulse until creamy.

Confiture de Mûres

Lately everywhere I look I see blackberries.  No, I am not talking about a handy mobile device, but the plump, juicy berries.  There are lots of blackberries in the Golden Gate Park and in the Presidio, ripe for my new favorite activity, fruit rescue or ‘foraging’.  Last week I went on a rather painful, but very fruitful, blackberry collection mission.  I came back with five yogurt containers full of berries, ready to be made in delicious jam.  Picking the blackberries ended up being a rather social event.  There were Halloween haunted house solicitations, as well as Mounties who offered their horses as ladders to aid my roommate and me in picking.

With all this bounty, I decided to make jam.  My jam making experience is limited to visits to my Grandmother in Normandy, where I would help make jam with summer fruits such as peaches and raspberries’.  My absolute favorite jam that I would covet and save for special occasions was her Confiture de mures (blackberries).  I quickly set out to use her simple, but highly delicious recipe that is pectin-free.  Take advantage of the excesses of fall and can or preserve your favorite fruit into jam! 

Confiture de Mûres

6 cups of ripe blackberries

4-5 cups of sugar

1 lemon

4-5 jars for jam (Bell jars etc.)

Rinse blackberries and put them in a large pot with sugar. 

Heat to a boil and then lower the heat to a simmer.  Put a small saucer or plate into the freezer

Meanwhile put the lids of the jam jars in a saucepan of boiling water.  Also clean the jars very well with warm soapy water and sterilize by either putting them in a steam bath or by pouring boiling water into them and letting them sit for 5-10 minutes.

After letting the jam boil for 15-20 minutes, place a couple of drops of jam on the frozen plate.  Hold the plate at an angle and watch the jam as it drips down.  The jam has reached a jelling consistency when the liquid has dripped about halfway down the plates and has slowed down dramatically or stopped.   A fun guessing game that I have yet to get wrong (it really doesn’t matter much as blackberry in any form is great, also my jam normally takes a day or two to firm up).

Pour into jars and leave about a ¼ inch of airspace (a funnel is really useful) and screw the lids on (carefully as not to touch or contaminate the lids in anyway).  Immediately cap the jar after transferring the jar and invert. Depending on your dedication to the jam and your desire to preserve it, you can boil the jam/submerge in boiling water for 10 minutes to form the seal (on bell jars).  However, my grandma just lets her jars cool upside down and has never once had a problem.  The merits of each are discussed here.

Vanilla-Almond Peace Cookies

Last Saturday my roommates (the lovely ladies who contribute to this blog, although they’ll probably shoot me for calling them “ladies”) and I went to the Power to the Peaceful music festival here in San Francisco. Since it was about peace and also free, it was a great opportunity to watch the interaction between hippies, hipsters, and the many other creatively dressed tribes that populate our fair city. I thought it was a good excuse to bake cookies and promote our blog. I mean, wait, what? We don’t promote our blog. That’s like totally icky, and like, needy and stuff. We’re just some totally authentic people trying to get by, or whatever. Anyway…

Have you ever handed out free cookies at a music festival in Golden Gate Park? On one hand, everybody’s hungry, but on the other, I could see alarmed parents tugging their children out of my path as I wove my way through the crowd, Tupperware in hand. Although both the hopeful and the suspicious expected at least one ingredient not included in the recipe below, these moist and chewy cookies managed to win everyone over. The secret is pudding, people. Pudding! (ganja optional: add during step 1)
Also, I have to say: Seventy thousand people, doing tree pose and Namaste in unison. I don’t know what it means, just gotta say.



Ingredients:

2 sticks salted butter
1 cup sugar
1 pkg instant vanilla pudding powder
1 vanilla bean
2 eggs
2 cups white flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup raw almonds, chopped





Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place one stick of butter, the pudding powder, and the sugar into a large mixing bowl. Melt the other stick of butter in a saucepan over low heat.

Slice the vanilla bean lengthwise, cutting off both ends, and scrape seeds into the melting butter. If you don’t have any vanilla beans you could throw in some vanilla extract, I guess. Once fully melted, pour the butter and vanilla over the sugar, pudding mix, and unmelted butter. Stir vigorously until the other stick of butter is dissolved. The mixture should be very thick and creamy.

Add the eggs to the mixture and beat well until combined. Add the flour, baking powder, and chopped almonds, mix well. Form the dough into golf-ball-sized spheres and flatten to ½ inch thick before placing on the baking tray. Bake for 20 minutes or until the edges are just starting to brown.

Makes approximately 30 cookies. Super easy, super quick, super delicious. Could help you make friends, possibly even with people who aren’t currently feeling the Universal Love Connection.