Warning: Re-entry can be a little tricky

I'm having a little bit of a hard time coming back to reality.

Can you guess what I did this weekend?

I didn't spend it baking.

Or cooking.

I wasn't at the beach.

I didn't watch a single minute of football.

I spent the entire weekend in Palm Springs.

I attended Homefries U.



Hosted by these two lovely ladies:



Joy The Baker and Tracy of Shutterbean

They taught us how to make breakfast pizza.



What? Pizza for breakfast? Yes!



And brown sugar bacon.



Yes, indeed.

We learned about what makes good pictures.



We got schooled in spirits and wine by Nathan and Whitney.



Whitney explained to us why there is absolutely no reason to drink bad wine ever again.



I bought it, hook, line and sinker. :)



Nathan taught us how to make proper cocktails like grown-ups.



Gin. Get on that train. It's the place to be.



We made friendship bracelets.



And laid by the pool.



And learned about spices.



And we ate. A lot.



Best of all, I met a ton of like minded, awesome people.

Now, I got nothing to do but count the days until the next soirée.



Can you really blame me?

Gertrude's Banana Bread

I'm gonna be real honest with you. I don't know who Gertrude is. I probably should. I'm sure my dad knows. I'll convene with him about it in a week when he's here for a visit and get back to you all.



This recipe was kind of an exploration or sorts.



First, if you will please refer to the shot of the back of the card it says that it is "similar to banana nut bread of ranch house". This intrigued me. So I did a little digging and came up with THIS.

How cool is that? I was quite thrilled with that little nugget.

Then I continued on.

There were quite a few things I needed to figure out first.

1) "Don't Use Big Loaf Pan- Use Small-Makes one loaf"
Ok, um, big vs small. I have big and small loaf pans but my big ones I find to be very standard sized loaf pans and the small ones are quite small, like mini almost. So, I go with the big knowing that if I were to make the recipe without doubling it, it still wouldn't all fit in my small loaf pans to make one loaf.

2) "Double Recipe"
Yes, well, I had 4 bananas to use up, so I did indeed double the recipe

3) Complete lack of baking temperature.
All is not lost. I made a guesstimate at 375 degrees solely based on the fact that quick breads I have made previously are between 350-375 and it doesn't matter anyway because I can never really tell what the temperature of our very antique oven is.

4) I love me some super sweet dense almost syrupy banana bread. I especially like it with some chocolate chips thrown in. With a gigantic glass of ice cold milk. With that being said, I will be attending the wedding of one of K's good friends in about a month so this is not the banana bread I will be making. Whole wheat and bran was used. Fiber is good for your waistline. :)



I creamed the shortening, sugar and egg as instructed.



In a separate bowl I mixed all of the dry ingredients.



I mashed the bananas with buttermilk, vanilla and almond extract in yet another bowl. That's 3 bowls we've got going here. I promise you the bread is really fantastic. It's totally worth the dirty dishes.



I chop, chop, chopped the nuts. I need a mezzaluna for tasks such as this. That and a bajillion other kitchen things. It would all make it so much easier, wouldn't it?



After alternating adding the wet and dry ingredients to the shortening mixture, I folded in the nuts.
I used a great deal more nuts than what is in this picture. After I took this picture I looked at it and thought, that needs more nuts (insert "That's what she said" joke here)



I buttered and floured 2 loaf pans because after mixing up the batter I was so afraid that not all of it would fit in one pan.
I love buttering and flouring bakeware. I can actually remember my grandma showing me how to do it. "get the corners" and "flour them over the sink".-Do you think I remember that part every time. Um, no.



I probably could have put all of it into one pan but then I would have only had to butter and flour one pan and what fun is that?



Plus, I'm going to wrap up and freeze the other one for future enjoyment!




Gertrude's Banana Bread (with adjustments as above)

Makes: (2) 10"x5" loaves

1/2 Cup Shortening
1 1/2 Cups Granulated Sugar
2 Eggs
4 Large very ripe bananas
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/2 Teaspoon Almond Extract
1/2 Cups Lowfat Buttermilk
3 Cups Whole Wheat Flour
1 Cup Oat Bran
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 1/2 Teaspoons Cinnamon
1/2 Teaspoon Nutmeg
1/2 Cups chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Butter and flour your loaf pans and set aside.

In a large bowl cream together the shortening, sugar and eggs and set aside.

In a medium bowl combine flour, bran, baking soda and powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg and set aside.

In another medium bowl combine the bananas, buttermilk, vanilla and almond extract. Mash the bananas until they are good and mushed up but still have some pea sized lumps.

Alternating between the flour and banana mixtures add a 1/4 of the mixtures at a time to the shortening mixture until all is just combined.

Divide batter between loaf pans and spread out evenly.

Bake 55-60 minutes or until a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Serve slices warm with a good smear of butter. This will totally cancel out the whole wheat and bran which is exactly how I like it.

Something for your tuesday night.

So, I don't know how closely you follow the happenings at Target but apparently their debut of Missoni clothing and housewares was a total bench clearer. The demand was so high that it crashed the Target website within moments of the product being available and shelves in the stores have literally been wiped completely clean. ON THE FIRST DAY. Woah. I love me some Missoni, but let's get a grip.

But, I digress, let's bring it back to something a little more entertaining. (Yes, I can hear your stifled laughs from here)

The succulents in my terrarium are blossoming.



Here I was freaking out about having to keep them alive and the little babies just start shooting out flowers!



Two of them are sending out buds and as you can see one of them has already blossomed with another bud just waiting to pop.



And the other one has some funny little bitty buds on it.



I'm pretty excited to say the least!



On a sad note, the very last bloom fell off of the orchid plant our dear friend Jake gifted us as a house warming present when we moved into our new apartment. Jake has since moved back to Minnesota where I know he is thoroughly enjoying himself and I hope he knows he is missed. I will be doing my very best to get it to bloom again in his honor.



And then you say, "why would you show us a crooked picture of the stairs to your apartment?"

And then I say, "the picture is not crooked, the stairs are really that jacked up!"



Here's a close up of the metal stabilizer bar they have installed so that the stairway to the apartment above us doesn't collapse down on top of us.
Please note the oh so visible safety tape applied to the cross bar so we down twack ourselves into a coma.

Wanna see something else even a little more disturbing?



In this photo you can see where the stairs USED to meet up with the adjacent wall.

You can also see where the support bar is NOW resting on the stairs.



And in this photo you can see the line where the support bar USED to be resting on the stairs.

We have been assured that an engineer has come to survey the situation and they will hopefully start construction on both sets of stairs sometimes soon.

The cause of all this craziness?

Termites.

2 different kinds to be exact.

You know what that means?

The house has to get tented.



We live an extremely charmed life.

Norma's Ginger Cookies

I recently received a stack of recipes from my sister that once belonged to my maternal grandmother.

Norma Sophia Johnson Prosnick

Born September 1st, 1921. She would have been 90 last week.

My sister and I spent a good deal of time at my grandmother's house on Coffey Lane growing up.

Most of the memories I have of her surround food. 

Reheated homemade spaghetti when we arrived after the 2 1/2 hour drive from our house to hers.

Glasses of eggnog  and slices of patica at Christmas.

Bowls of rice pudding.

Liverwurst sandwiches.

And the ever plentiful pile of oatmeal raisin and ginger cookies.

I was apparently lucky I was as active a child as I was.

I've tried several different recipes for ginger cookies; trying to recreate that certain taste and texture from my childhood but none have really been exactly what I was looking for. All certainly delicious and all by definition "ginger cookies" but none replicated that snap shot of sitting on the lawn in the middle of summer with my sister. 

Until that little fat envelope showed up in my mail box. 

Not all of the recipes are typed out. Most of them are in her hand writing which make them that much more precious. Although I'm sure my grandmother would claim that she hated her hand writing and would be embarrassed that I would post something like that publicly.

This one has a little note at the bottom. V.G. Stay Soft. All of the recipes have a little something like that. Good. V.G.-very good. Mike likes- Mike is my dad. Or indications of quantities of ingredients that she adjusted or the origin of the recipe. All make the recipes absolute gold to me.

These cookies are super simple and the fussiest part is having to roll them into balls and coat them in sugar. But I find this an extremely relaxing and fulfilling task but that's just me.

The recipe specifically calls for Brer Rabbit molasses. Although I have this in my pantry I also have another brand that I favor over Brer Rabbit, but heaven forbid I should go against my grandmother's instruction.

Plus, I do adore the graphics on the bottle.

Do you know what they call molasses in the UK? Treacle. Except our molasses isn't the same thing as their Treacle.

The recipe calls for melting the shortening, letting it cool and then adding the sugar, molasses and egg.

Because I'm horribly impatient (BTW this is not a good thing to be when baking and cooking) I didn't wait very long to let it cool and just dumped the sugar and molasses in. I did know better than to just dump the egg into the hot mixture. How do I know this? Because I have learned the hard way previously. Scrambled eggs are good for brunch. They are not good in baked goods.

So, I stood over the pot watching while the sugar and molasses congealed in a pool of melted margarine. Completely separated. If you read my previous post you will understand why I started freaking out. Once again, second guessing my abilities in the kitchen.

I pulled it together. Tempered the eggs with a bit of the crazy oily sugary congealed mess and slowly added the eggs to the rest of the mixture.

This is what came about:

Yes, well, that's just perfectly fine, right? Disaster averted, Continue on.

Add the sifted dry ingredients to the pot. I really enjoy this method.

You could keep the dough in your original pot and put the whole thing in the fridge but because my dutch oven is so indispensable to me, I transfered it to the bowl that I had sifted the dry ingredients into, covered it and let it rest in the fridge.

If you opt to refrigerate it longer than an hour or two, which is perfectly acceptable and is what I did, I would suggest letting it sit at room temperature for about 20 mins. It will make the scooping and rolling much easier.

Like I said before, I find the portioning out and rolling of the dough my very favorite part. Scoop, roll, sugar, arrange on cookie sheet. I love things perfectly arranged. So satisfying.

In a world where I very rarely feel like I do anything correctly or perfectly, sometimes my kitchen is the only place that I can really nail it.

The recipe called for baking 8-10 mins but I found that after 10 mins they still didn't look done to me. So, I baked them for more like 15-18 until they formed craggy cracks.

Although this made for a lovely aesthetic it also defeated the purpose of my grandmother's note of "stay soft". If you want soft and chewy cookies do as Norma says and bake them for only 8-10mins. Mine turned out crispy and crunchy, which honestly were just as delightful.

Ask me how many I ate after they cooled.

The answer is 5. I ate 5 of them. I was in my grandmother's back yard. With my bare-feet in the grass. Chasing my sister. It was awesome.