July Potential Recipe Roundup

So this time I started this post as soon as I saw I had a few recipes waiting to be added; it seems to have gone well, except the darn formatting fight! I find I go back and forth from the "Compose" to the "HTML" screen more than I should...

I made banana-flop muffins. That means the rose beautifully and then FLOPPED when I brought them out of the oven. Sometimes you can't throw-and-go with a recipe (or mish-mash of recipes); or I need to not add more bananas just to use them up. Edible, I took them to the office and they would have all been eaten had someone not put the container back onto my desk; a sign, I incorrectly assumed, that they were no longer good. It turned out a hour later someone was asking if there were any left, after I had pitched the last half-dozen, oops. 

On the success side, I made beans and rice. Yes it sounds silly to have never made it before, but I took time to look up a Chili's clone because I LOVE their beans and rice. The clones I found were super simple, so I took a few and made something that turned out GOOD and CHEAP. I sauteed half of a diced onion until translucent and starting to brown, and dumped in a can of black beans (Go GOYA! - my favorite) and then started adding spices and garlic and cooking it to reduce the bean liquid and make them softer. I ended up making it too spicy for my taste, but J thought it was great. I made quick brown rice and a bag of corn, and now can boast a meat-free pantry meal as part of my potential rotation. Just next time I will taste as I go a bit more (as opposed to NOT AT ALL) so I can make it a teensy bit more mild. Can of beans, cup of rice, can or bag of corn, spices/onion on hand = way cheaper than going out. If I could add one meal like this a month to my mental rotation, it would save us a lot of money eating at home and having lunches to take to work. 

I also picked up a bag of pre-cooked frozen shrimp at Aldi (OMG why is shrimp so expensive, I thought it was supposed to be cheap? Aldi had the best deal I had seen.) I was starving late one night, but ended up being lazy and saying "Let's just eat here" - J made an omelet and I made a bowl of pasta with a few shrimp and a fake fancy sauce; margarine, garlic, Parmesan cheese (aka 'shakey cheese' - processed stuff in a shaker-can). The pasta was udon noodles, which were bundled in the pack into perfect portion-sized servings. Tasted great, but I did need to rebrush my teeth from the gaaahlic. Something I can make in bulk and pack for a work lunch? Not unless I bring some mouthwash. ;)
Onto the delightful looking recipes!

Chocolate Mint Brownie Bites  The Pioneer Woman 

Zucchini Pineapple Bread  Brown Eyes Baker

Honeyed Peaches  The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking

Cappuccino Bars   Everybody Likes Sandwiches

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls   Joy the Baker

The Amazing Incredible Broccoli Surprise Sauce  Tea & Cookies

Cinnamon Roll Waffles with Cream Cheese Syrup  Lady Behind the Curtain

Breakfast Nachos  Joy the Baker

Waffle Brownies  Tea & Cookies

Classic Icebox Cake   Serious Eats

Tarragon Corn Chowder  Simply Recipes 

Zucchini Tots  The Curious Country Cook

Crockpot Strawberry Jam  The Lady Wolf

Beer Batter Bread*  Epicurious

*We bought some beer; lemon shandy...I am not a beer drinker, so I am trying to cook with it.

Beer Batter Bread Round 1; I find I don't taste the lemon in the beer nor in the bread. I used 2/3 wheat flour, and added some extra sweetner (no-calorie stevia based). Sifted in the baking powder since it was getting to the end of the container, age unknown. Maybe I will like it more when it has cooled more? I was on my third piece of deciding if I did or did not like it that I cut it up and took it to work; I got some nice feedback!

Round 2; Nice enough feedback from the first Round that I tried it a second time; still half-wheat-half-white, extra tablespoon of -sugar-sugar, added some cinnamon, ginger, and a teensy bit of nutmeg. Better to enjoy on its own, still didn't rise much. I blamed that it was the last of the baking powder. Taste was much better for enjoying on its own.

Round 3; Took a bread pan and a can of the ale to my mother's. This time the beer was room temperature (maybe it didn't rise to being awesome last times because it was cold?) and I used her dry ingredients. Same as first try; a dense yeasty product that is a great vehicle for bringing a spread (jam, apple butter, peanut butter, etc.) to your mouth. Probably not something I will try again unless at some point I am in possession of an unopened beer that I have no desire to even try.
  

Not -too- bad looking, right?

What recipes have you tried recently?
Are there recipes out there that you would love to make?

Search this blog for other Recipe Roundup posts and view them here! 

We have Banana Bread!

Sometimes plans around here don't fall into place; especially in the kitchen. I saved and shared a link to a Brown Sugar Banana Bread the other day through Google Reader - I have sad bananas in the 'fridge, I can make this! Wait until I have some time on Tuesday, it'll be great!

So I sat down and better inspected the recipe Tuesday morning (ahem, er, afternoon - hey what else are days off for??) and realized I didn't have a few of the ingredients listed, or had substitutions on hand... so off I went to find a better idea for the scary bananas that were dangerously close to being sent to the dumpster. They were getting ugh-lee. And, no you can't peel and freeze them - er well you kinda can, but you need to plan better, as the last time I made a container of banana mush, froze it, I forgot about it after putting it back into the 'fridge, and well, it got nasty.

First and final stop by to smitten kitchen, where I knew I had found a great recipe for apple muffins previously. I found her jacked-up banana bread as the first search result, and I had all the ingredients! Well, in theory anyway, things around our house always have some minor alterations when it comes to baking. Like old bananas that look terrible but turn out to still be hard because you didn't know you weren't supposed to store them in the fridge. Pfft, I like cold partially green bananas, so it seemed like a great idea. If you haven't experienced this before, the peels turn a nasty brown color long before the inside turns to mush under refrigeration.

Then there was the rest of the kitchen adventure; since this is a new blog you'll have to know that no matter what project I take on in the kitchen, it turned into an adventure - if I had a cooking show it would be called OH S*^# - in the kitchen because no matter the project, I say that at least once. Today was giving myself an impromptu manicure with a new knife (GINSU!) that I love, but keep trimming my nails. No there were no escaped parts that will be crunchy bites, eew. The other event was the minor spilling of the last ingredient on the counter, floor, and myself in a small amount - flour.

One-Bowl Banana & Apple Bread
(adapted from Smitten Kitchen's jacked-up banana bread)

3 to 4 ripe bananas, peeled and smashed
1 to 2 small apples, peeled, cored, and chopped in size to your liking (I like teeny, but that's me)
1/3 cup melted salted margarine/butter (I added a pinch of salt, mine was Fleishman's unsalted margarine so my bread would be lactose-free)
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg, beaten (I didn't pre-beat my egg, which made this a one-bowl mess)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 1/2 cup of flour

• Preheat the oven to 350°F.
• With a wooden spoon - or hand mixer in case your bananas aren't ready to be wooden spoon mixed - mix melted butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl.
• Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla - then the spices.
• Sprinkle the baking soda over the mixture and mix in.
• Add the flour, and mix!
• Pour mixture into a buttered (or sprayed, I found baking oil spray with flour worked great) 4×8 inch loaf pan - your call on material, I used one of those silicon ones because that's what we've got!
• Bake for 50 minutes to one hour, or until a tester comes out clean. Cool on a rack or on top of the stove and marvel at how great the kitchen smells.
• Remove from pan and slice to serve. Or stand over the stove and enjoy while still warm, dropping half a slice onto the counter - good thing you just cleaned it from spilling flour.

This also has potential for some great muffins too! I just happened to be too lazy to partition the batter into lined muffin tins today. I'd bake 'em for 25 minutes at the same temperature, and keep checking with the clean-poke-to-the-interior-with-a-sharp-object test. Ohh another great option? Sprinkle the top with extra brown or raw sugar for a little crunch on the crust before baking.

(Oops, this sat lonely in my LiveWriter since June, argg!)