Linda's Banana Bread

I love picking up recipes from people I've met throughout my life. I tend to end up naming the recipe after them. This one came from my OSU college roommate, Linda. She made this bread on a regular basis and was kind enough to teach me how to make it the year I lived with her. She also forgave me for putting a whole chicken on to boil, dozing off while I was "studying" only to wake up to a smoke filled house and the most putrid aroma you've ever smelled because the water evaporated and the chicken was burning in the stock-pot!!!

I think of her every time I make this bread, which is the best part of picking up recipes from people you have the privilege of meeting throughout life, especially when you have fond memories of them.

Enjoy!

Linda's Banana Bread

1 1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup softened butter/margarine (or applesauce)

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups mashed, ripe bananas (3-4 med)

1/2 cup buttermilk (which I never have, so I just use regular milk)

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

(optional: chopped nuts, granola, chocolate chips, or whatever suits your fancy...)

Place oven rack on lowest position. Preheat 350 degrees. Grease only bottom of your bread loaf pan(s).

Mix sugar and butter in large bowl

Stir in eggs until well blended

Add bananas, buttermilk and vanilla. Beat until smooth

Mix dry ingredients together separately and then add to the wet mixture until just moistened.

Pour into one large loaf pan, or 2 small loaf pans.

Bake 50-60 minutes until pick/knife comes out clean from the middle.

You don't have time to bake you say? You have kids? Well, give them the dictionary to read so you can whip this yummy bread up!

"Normal people stay home and watch TV"

...said Sam. I swiftly stuck my tongue out at him.

We went to an outdoor showing of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs last night at the Clarke-Palmore House Museum http://usgwarchives.net/va/photo/henrico/palmore.jpg.

Picnic. Blankets. Coloring. Activities. Popcorn. Lemonade. Grooving to "Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho..."

Looks to me like we had fun. Like normal people.

Settled

Webster's Dictionary: Settled - 1. To establish residence 2. To come or cause to come to rest 3. To restore tranquility, to calm.

Vintage Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sam is in his glory. I have not cooked dinner very much the past 2 years (Ada is 2...do you think there is a correlation?). Dinner was usually his domain, and he got really, really good at it, so why put forth the effort? Now that I'm home with Ada I have the opportunity to begin cooking again, something I used to really enjoy - and I can do most of the prep work while Ada is napping.

Some of my favorite bloggers share their yummy recipes, and I always enjoy visiting their sites for great ideas, or at least to peer into the lives of others and see what they put on their dinner table.

I have been having a hard time finding ingredients I like in Richmond, particularly for Tucson-style food (go figure...Latinos make up just under 3% of the population here) - BUT, I found the local "Bodega Latina" and picked up some items that I was looking for the other day. I'd like to share some of the recipes I learned while in Tucson, and others I found in cookbooks, with hopes that you will be adventerous and try them along with me...won't you?

Until then, I leave you with this great Vintage Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from a Vintage baking book that my sister-in-law Melanie (a fellow lover of all things vintage), gave me for the holidays a few years ago. I have always struggled finding a recipe that didn't produce overcooked or hard chocolate chip cookies. I like this recipe and think it's all in the chemistry, which is what baking is all about, isn't it?

Enjoy!

1 Cup shortening

3/4 granulated sugar

3/4 brown suger

2 eggs, beaten

Cream shortening in a med-large bowl with a handmixer. Add sugars gradually, and cream well. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl and then add to the shortening and sugar, beat well.

2 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon hot water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a separate bowl sift the flour and salt together. In a very small bowl combine the hot water with the baking soda until it dissolves. Add both to the creamed shortening mixture. I have been adding the flour mixture first and then adding the baking soda/water mixture. Add the vanilla. Mix together with your hand mixer.

1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
14 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips

Fold the chips and nuts in with a spoon. Once folding is completed, drop dough from a teaspoon (yes, a teaspoon) onto a greased cooky sheet. I recommend using parchment paper for baking on a pampered chef cookie sheet. If you have a regular cookie sheet I would still recommend using the parchment paper. If you don't buy/use parchment paper I think it's worth it and something you'll have for a while if you don't do a lot of baking.

Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes. Play with the time - I have found 11 minutes works perfectly. You want these coming out looking not done, if they are brown then you will have a hard cookie.

Last but not least, share with those you love!

A little LL Cool J to start your day

Belle Isle

Sam, Ada and I went on a mini-jaunt to Belle Isle today to play in the James River. We needed to get Ada out of the house, and Sam definitely needed a break from his new job and from all of the busy work that still needs to be done around here. Belle Isle is a 54-acre island in the James River located here in Richmond. You can only really access it by a foot-bridge that takes you across the James River from the North-shore of the river to the island (and surprisingly gave me a bit of vertigo as we crossed high up over the river).

We had a wonderful time there and were taken back by the vast cross-section of people that came from all over the city to enjoy the sun and cool water like us. This is definitely the most diverse and urban city either one of us has ever lived in - what a learning experience this will be.

Sam informed me when we were walking the path to the river that the island was formerly a prison for Union soldiers during the Civil War. I was swiftly reminded that we now live in what once was (or what some might argue still is) Confederate country. Perking my interest, I had to read up a bit more on this piece of history, and learned that the island was home to approximately 30,000 prisoners of war; nearly 1,000 died. I found this quote on Wikipedia (who knows about the accuracy, but I'm not in the mood for serious research here, a just a little history lesson):

In 1864, Peter DeWitt, surgeon @ Jarvis hospital in Baltimore described the "great majority" of Belle Isle POW patients as being:

"in a semi-state of nudity...laboring under such disease as chronic diarrhoea, scurvy, frost bite, general debility, caused by starvation, neglect and exposure. Many of them had partially lost their reason, forgetting even the date of their capture, and everything connected with their antecedent history. They resembled, in many respects, patients laboring under cretinism. They were filthy in the extreme, covered in vermin...nearly all were extremely emaciated; so much so that they had to be cared for even like infants."

I'll shamefully admit it crossed my mind while we were walking the path that the island didn't seem too awful a place to have to be held captive. I stand corrected!

While there are so many beautiful places that we will get to explore while here, I cannot help but interest myself in the deep historical influences each place holds, so - I will promise to post pics of our adventures, but hope you'll put up with a little history lesson every now and then. One last thing for the history-buffs in the family - Belle Isle was also home to Old Dominion Iron and Nail Company. You can still see remnants of the iron plant, and reportedly of the prison as well, although we didn't explore it enough to see physical evidence of the prison.

We did have a wonderful Sunday afternoon as a family, and truly enjoyed watching Ada grab for guppies and sprawl out in the wonderfully cool water that holds so much history.

Having fun