Banana Love & Being Proud

Before we get started – I ought to clarify something for the sake of my ego. A lot of people felt bad for my seemingly terrible bread-baking skills…but I’ve actually had good luck bread-making lately! See: here, here, here, here, here and here.  Oh, and here – though that one looks like it fell a touch but I’m thinking it’s more the fact that my mom baked it wrong  

Don’t mistake this for vanity – I certainly don’t consider myself a skilled yeast bread maker yet – but I definitely think the breadmaker was main cause for my fallen loaves before I started making them by hand. The ironic thing is that the mountain bread wasn’t a typical yeast bread with two rises – it was just go and bake! When it was the consistency in which I would typically add more flour if I was making a yeast/knead bread I didn’t, because I figured it was meant to have a more batter-like consistency. I think maybe since it was a recipe translated from another language, I just had a liiiiitle bit too much liquid!

Sorry for that. Not a gloat, just a little sensitive. After so many troubles with bread making I’m kind of proud of the fact that I can make a decent loaf by myself now

I mean, we all need to be proud of something – vanity and modesty aside. What’s something you’re proud of and want the world to know? Or, are proud of and working on letting the world know?

I’m usually pretty self-conscious – and never want to come across as gloating or vain…so even writing the above is a big step for me!

But anyways. This has nothing to do with bread.

Today has to do with bananas.

You all probably know how fond I am of the funny yellow fruit. I really might as well be a monkey. Not only do I rely on bananas mashed up in overnight oats, or on top of my waffles or pancakes – I also love to use them as a sweetener in baked goods (and cutting back on the other sugars) or as my afternoon snack (dressed up in peanut butter, of course) or as part of my night-time snack, sliced with a bowl of millet puffs, cinnamon harvest, almond milk and sunflower butter.

…and I’ve been out of bananas for the past three days. I had banana-less breakfasts. Banana-less snacks. Banana-less carrot graham muffins. Banana-less cereal.

This made me do crazy things. In the above picture, not only am I combining fresh figs with cranberry sauce – I’m combing fresh figs with gingerbread cornmeal pancakes. It was a little weird, and after I realized how weird it was, had to pick them off and eat them plain.

Luckily, that had no ill effect on the gingerbread pancakes, but I still don’t know what inspired me to be so weird.

It must have been the lack of potassium.

So then this morning, it called for desperate times.

I broke into our top-secret stash of freezer burnt blueberries that we picked this summer. These babies are so good, we save them for the depths of winter to bring a little summer lovin’ into our lives.

The joy that is fresh blueberry pancakes immediately ceased my sadness over being banana-less.

I don’t think there’s anything better than fresh blueberry pancakes. Blueberry Cornmeal pancakes, no less.

In case you haven’t noticed, why yes, yes I do eat my pancakes with a dessert spoon.

What?! Don’t look at me like that.

Of course, now that I’m not in mourning for not having any bananas – I replenish my stash.

I had two driving home. And if anyone tells me I eat too many bananas and am going to get fat, I’ll knock you over the head with my bunches of bananas and then rub the peels all over your hair. And the offer you some of my vitamin B6.

Oh, sorry. That was a little harsh. It’s just one of my pet peeves.

What’s your favorite fruit?

What’s a “diet rule” that drives you crazy?

(I should clarify that I do understand certain diets because of diseases or conditions requires limited starchy foods/sugary fruits. I’m talking about “lose weight fast!” diets that say bananas encourage weight gain.)

And now I’m waiting for Rudolph to come on T.V. It’s tradition to watch it…or at least have it on while doing other things…humoring my lovely mother.

Welcoming Vegan MoFo

I welcomed Vegan MoFo by making, quite potentially, the biggest baking blunder I’ve made in quite some time.

I got as far as spooning the batter into cupcake tins, licking the spatula, ad immediately spitting it into the garbage ad licking a paper towel to get the taste off my tongue.

Okay, maybe I wasn’t quite so dramatic. But almost.

Why? I forgot the sugar. The wording of the recipe confused me, so I didn’t see it instructing me to even add sugar. Being that I usually don’t add much sugar anyway, I didn’t think twice.

I. was. gutted. I didn’t know what to do, but I was certain the scooping the batter out of tins and back into the bowl, to mix with sugar was not a viable option.

It got chucked.

I’m still gutted. I don’t throw food away. In fact, my mom (a tapioca lover) noticed those tapioca cups still in there, and asked if I was eating them.

“They’re not very good, but I’ll eat them.” I replied.

“Can I try one?” she bravely asked, only for me to respond, “Try them all” in a bit of a challenging voice.

“Oh, these are terrible! Why don’t you throw them out?!”

“There’s starving children in China. I’ll eat them.”

“The reason they’re starving is because they don’t want to eat those.”

There are two morals to this story:

• read your recipes carefully. chances are, they need sugar.
• anything with a brand name of “SoYummi,” is probably a lie.

Oh, right, before I went off on that tangent, you were wondering why I was calling myself a Vegan MoFo.

Well, Vegano MoFo is not actually anything profane, but rather the Vegan Month of Food. Unfortunately, I’m not actually officially participating in the Vegan MoFo as I missed the deadline to “enroll,” but I’ll still celebrate. And celebrate is just what I did today, starting with breakfast.

 

…And these pancakes did not disappoint. They were the “Raspberry Cornmeal Pancakes,” as seen in Eat, Drink and Be Vegan, though I made them with what I had on hand:

• peaches instead of raspberries
• graham flour instead of spelt
• added nutmeg

I had grandiose plans of making peach-ginger cornmeal pancakes, or peach-coconut, but then decided to just follow the recipe first.

This. was. delicious. I loved the texture and taste! I will surely be waffleizing or at least keep pancake-izing. Or something like that.

That’s date molasses you see on top, which definitely took them to a level of epicness that cannot be messed with.

And then, this happened:

Oh, surprise, surprise – another ED&BV recipe. This time, Polenta Casserole. Because, as you know, I like casserole, as evidenced by the past…month.

I was really excited to bust open my Bove’s sauce, too. It’s local and seen on Food Network, as well as the only sauce I could find with no added sugar.

And it’s delicious! I will definitely start being more picky about the sauces I use. Of course, I should have just made my own when I had tomatoes out my ears this summer, but I had too many scalloped tomatoes for that to happen!

Anyways. For the Polenta Casserole, I ended up using frozen broccoli instead of frozen corn, and instead of mixing the grated polenta with grated imitation cheese, I mixed it with hummus and nutritional yeast.

And yeah, yeah, I just talked about Vegan MoFo, but I wasn’t about to pay $2 for a single yogurt and not eat it. Although I would have been better off…I should have listened to everyone that said they were unimpressed with Siggi’s – because I wasn’t impressed, either. In fact, I was a little grossed out and left most of it for my  mom. It had a weird texture, and not much “orange and ginger” flavor to speak of, either.

But, speaking of yogurt, I was a featured blogger on Chobani yesterday!! Go check out Emily’s write-up on me…I was practically blushing

What’s been your biggest kitchen “whoopsie”?

Are you participating in Vegan MoFo?