I just wanted a lemon.
I found myself at the grocery store faced with limited options in the lemon department. It was either going to be one of those plastic squeeze lemons or a 2 lb. bag of lemons. I was feeling fast and loose, so I bought the 2 lb. bag.
Which brings us to the point – I’ve prepared more lemony things, including Lemon Blueberry Muffin Bread…
This week, I was faced with the age old question.
What should I do with these dramatically overripe bananas?
Well, would you look at that? Now that they’re sitting in a skillet with some butter, eggs, ginger, and rum, they look a little more promising. Continue reading
St. Patrick’s Day is almost here!
To be fair, this means less to me than it does to my husband, a confirmed ‘person of slight Irish descent.’ In honor of his heritage (which in actuality is mostly Scandinavian), or perhaps more accurately in honor of his affinity for beer, he routinely goes all out on St. Patrick’s Day. This means several things: 1) watching The Boondock Saints (which is harder to wrap my head around now that I can only see Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon of The Walking Dead), 2) green bagels, and 3) Jameson Irish Whiskey, Bailey’s Irish Cream and Guinness Irish Stout beer all in one glass.
A couple years ago, to celebrate, we enjoyed some green bagels. Last year, we made Irish coffees to start the day. This year, I’m taking a tamer and more mature approach. I’m channeling Ina Garten and whipping up some Irish Soda Bread.
So… Remember that eggnog? If we’re being completely honest, I have to tell you that some if it is still in my refrigerator. Sure, by now I’m leaning towards throwing the rest of it away, but I should also confess that I’m unreasonably trusting when it comes to the possibility of contracting a food-borne illness, and not all that long ago, I used some of it (yes some of the same batch I made in December with raw eggs) to make Eggnog French Toast.
I was so excited to find a good recipe for English Muffin Bread because it will always remind me of having breakfast at my grandparents’ house after spending the night there.
Few things make me as happy as bread. I suppose that bread is worth making in and of itself, but in this particular instance I required some bread to be part of another recipe.
I was enjoying a ritualistic and obsessive flip through all my past December issues of Food Network magazine (which I hoard), and I found a breakfast casserole (here) that I reallllly wanted to make. Ingredients added to shopping list – check! I arrived at the grocery store and began crossing items off my list, but I was striking out on the potato bread. So I figured I could grab a potato and make some when I got home.
Not to geek out too hard on muffins, but… after reviewing what I wanted to post this week, it just turned out that I have a lot of muffin pictures on hand. My scientific analysis of this situation tells me that I make a lot of muffins. In fact, perhaps my diet is predominantly comprised of muffins. Or maybe it’s a fluke. And I need to learn better science.
Banana bread, as luck would have it, turned out to be a great opportunity for me to practice my food photography! Plus, banana bread is so classic that it’s worthwhile to try out a few different recipes so you can figure out which one is going to be your favorite, and then it forever becomes “your” banana bread. This one happens to be Bobby Flay’s recipe. I’ve never seen Bobby make anything that looked terrible, so I was happy to give it a shot!
It was, in fact, as delicious as I’d hoped. Warm, soft, sweet… all the things a comforting loaf of banana bread should be.
I’ve been on a quest lately to find my “ultimate” version of every classic recipe. There aren’t many things more classic than a warm, fresh, blueberry muffin, and I’m always looking for one that satisfies my craving for something sweet while meeting my expectations for delivering some worthwhile nutrients.
In other words, if I were going to just waste a bunch of calories with no nutritional value, I would choose a cupcake. I have higher expectations for muffins. Muffins need to deliver.
Today, I found a recipe for muffins that do exactly that – they delivered on their promise of being nutritionally better than cupcakes. They’ve got blueberries! (Obviously, but still… ) They’ve got oatmeal! (Fiber! Complex carbohydrates!) They’ve got wheat germ! (Omega 3 fatty acids!) Score. Most importantly, they pass the taste test. I would actually like to eat the whole dozen in one sitting, and I feel confident that I could get that done if I were brave enough to try.
The Bahama Llama 
