Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

You don't know how badly I was craving banana bread when I made this. I wanted it so bad. But I was nervous, I'd never made it, and I heard a lot of recipes came out soggy in the middle, etc. But this recipe worked great.

You'll need bananas (I used 3), flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla, chocolate chips, two eggs, butter, sour cream and salt.

Mash those bananas! Mash'em good.

Beat together the butter, sugar, eggs, sour cream, vanilla and mashed bananas until blended. You might want to do them one ingredient at a time, like the butter and sugar, then the eggs one at a time till blended, then the sour cream, then the others. They'll combine better that way.

Then you stir in the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and chocolate chips. I tossed my chocolate chips with my dry ingredients first to give them a coating of flour so they wouldn't all stick together or sink to the bottom.

I filled a loaf pan about 2/3 full.. I wanted to eat the batter straight out of the bowl so badly.

And I had enough leftover batter to make six muffins. I baked them together at 325 for 40-50 minutes, taking the muffins out at about 25 minutes. Make sure you keep an eye on them, my oven runs hot. If the top of your bread is getting too brown and the center isn't quite done, cover it with foil and put it back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

They were so good, so moist and chocolatey and amazing. It was everything I had dreamed of and now I know why I don't make banana bread often. I CANNOT LEAVE IT ALONE.

Noooommmmmmmmmmm.

The BEST Chocolate Chip Banana Bread (original recipe from here, on Tasty Kitchen)

• ½ cups Butter, Room Temperature
• 1-¼ cup Sugar
• 2 whole Eggs
• ½ cups Sour Cream
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla
• 1 cup Mashed Ripe Bananas (usually Equals 2 Bananas)
• 1-¾ cup Flour
• 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1 pinch Salt
• ¾ cups Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Beat together until blended the butter, sugar, eggs, sour cream, vanilla, and mashed ripe bananas.

Stir in the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and chocolate chips.

Pour batter into 2 greased loaf pans. Bake for 40-50 minutes (you will want to keep an eye on it, as ovens vary). Cool in the pan for 15 minutes before removal.
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Banana bread is one of those baked goods that you can almost convince yourself is healthy. Almost. I love love love dense, moist cakey things.

 Just looking at these pictures is making me want to make some. *drools*

Go ahead, make some. It's got bananas in it. Potassium is important, yo.

Mom's Chili recipe!

Time to start working on all that recipe backlog. I haven't even taken pictures of a lot of the more recent things I made. I'm kind of disappointed in myself for letting things get the way they are, but that's the story of my life, I guess. Gaining some weight, taking so long to get a job, being a general procrastinating machine. ADD will get you. Get you good. But I will prevail.

And to start with the prevailing, chili! CHILI! I made this for the boys so I didn't wind up with any pics while I was making it, just the finished product. It's so good, it was even better than I remembered it. Mom hadn't made it in so long, even before I moved. AND SHE ALWAYS PUT MUSHROOMS IN IT. Her and my sister Jen love mushrooms. Well bleh I say to them. Bleh!

Steamy chili picture! OoooOOoooo.

Mom's Extraordinary Chili (according to her :) )

•  1 1/2-2 lbs. lean ground beef  (I use 1 1/2 lb. but use more if you like lots of meat) 
• 2 tins (14 oz./398 ml.) Kidney Beans, slightly drained 
• 2 tins (14 oz./398 ml.) Pork and Beans (Pork and Tomato) 
• 2 tins (10 oz./284 ml.) mushrooms-stems and pieces, drained 
• 1 large green pepper, seeded and chopped 
• 1 can (28 oz./796 ml.) tomatoes – whole and cut up or diced 
• 2 tins (10 oz./284 ml.) tomato soup 
• Onion and garlic powder to taste or use chopped onion and garlic to taste and either add to ground beef when frying or put in pot with all ingredients and make sure cooked and tender after cooking 
• Chili powder to taste

            Fry hamburger (with onion and garlic, if your preference) – drain.  Put in large pot and add all other ingredients.  Stir well.  Heat to a low boil, stirring so ingredients don’t stick to bottom of pot, then reduce heat to simmer for 1-1 ½ hours – stirring often.

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Tada. That's all, so easy! I used quite a bit of chili powder before it tasted like.. well, chili. It's so good, I have a bunch in the freezer. I didn't get to enjoy the leftovers because the day after I made it, I had that gallbladder attack and was in horrible pain all week, surviving on jello and powerade.

I wish I had a better picture to show, but trust me. A simple, delicious, hearty chili. Enjoy!

BBQ Meatballs and Gravy

Well, I haven't been recovering for this long, but I haven't been feeling much like blogging. I guess for a bit there I was thinking "Why am I even blogging, who even reads it and how many of the people who do check it actually try to cook any of the dishes?" But I didn't start the blog for other people, I started it for me. So I really should stop being lazy and post my pictures, I'm starting to get a backlog.

In other news, I'm all healed up, I haven't really had to adjust my diet, though I really should anyway. We have a new neighbor above us, and he has a dog that likes to run around like crazy. It is very loud and annoying. Ah apartment life.

So I made this recipe quite awhile ago. The meatballs aren't really BBQ. And the sauce isn't so much a gravy as it is a sauce full of lots of stuff. The first night we ate it, I didn't really think it was very BBQish, but the next day the chipotle peppers really shone through.

This is one of those dishes that I didn't wind up taking a finished product picture because Matt and Garret showed up and I got distracted. The meatballs are really good though, I made them all by themselves last week and turned them into meatball sliders. Sooo good.

First, let's make the sauce. The "BBQ Gravy", as it were.

You'll need bacon, olive oil, carrot, celery, onion, garlic, rosemary, brown sugar, chianti (I just used the random bottle of red wine I had laying around), cider vinegar, tomato paste, chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, 3 cans of diced tomatoes (I used one of crushed because I like smoother tomato based anything) and of course, salt and pepper.

Seems like an awful lot of stuff, huh. Well it was.

If you've never seen a chipotle pepper and don't know what it is, it's a smoked dried jalapeno. Adobo sauce is, well.. I don't know, go look it up yourself. You're on the internet, aren't you? It's yummy and smokey and good.

Now dice that sucker up and put it aside. Honestly, the recipe calls for 2, but I wound up putting almost the entire can into the sauce by the end because it didn't taste smokey or spicy enough.

Dice up your bacon, and all your veggies.

Render the bacon until crispy in the olive oil.

Add the veggies and saute until soft and golden brown.

Add the rosemary and brown sugar. Stir.

Then add the red wine and vinegar, bring to a boil.

Then add the tomato paste, tomatoes, and chipotles in adobo sauce.

Realize your pot is smaller than you thought it was and transfer your sauce to your bigger one so you don't paint the walls when simmering.

Stir and simmer for 1 1/2 hours, skimming the top for bubbly scummy stuff.

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And now for the meatballs.

You'll need ground beef, an egg, worcestershire, basil, oregano, parsley, parmesan, onion powder, bread crumbs, garlic, salt, pepper, and water. 

 Mix all the ingredients but the water in a bowl. You'll notice it's pretty dry. Add a half a cup of water and mix. Form into 1 1/2 to 2 inch meatballs.

Place them into a skillet, and cover with the other half cup of water. Cover, turn the heat to medium and steam them for 35 minutes.

You might need to add a little water near the end, mine always started to evaporate too much and I panicked a little when I smelled that telltale "Hey I'm getting close to burning" smell. Steaming the meatballs makes them so soft and pillowy. Everyone liked them.

I don't have any pictures of the finished meatballs and sauce and noodles. But it was yummy.

I don't think I would make the sauce again. It was good but it was too much effort and the ingredients were kind of expensive for the end product. The meatballs are good though and I have all of the ingredients on hand most of the time.

Meatballs in BBQ Gravy (original recipe found here)

• 1 pound bacon, sliced into lardons
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon fresh rosemary leaves, minced (I used dried)
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 1/2 glasses Chianti
• 3 tablespoons cider vinegar
• 1 small can tomato paste
• 1 small can chipotle peppers in adobo
• 3 (28-ounce) cans chopped tomatoes
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

For the meatballs:

• 1 pound ground sirloin
• 1 large egg
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
  
• 2 tablespoons Parmesan, freshly grated (used Kraft the second time, tasted fine)
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parley (I used dried)
• 1 teaspoons dried oregano
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped basil leaves (used dried)
• 1 cup onion, finely chopped (used onion powder)
• 1 cup fine dried bread crumbs
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 cup water

Heat a large soup pot over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil and heat for 1 minute. When the oil is hot, add the bacon and render. When golden brown and beginning to crisp, add minced carrot, celery, onion, and garlic. Add a pinch of salt and saute vegetables to a light brown. Add rosemary and brown sugar and stir. Add chianti and vinegar to pot, stir and bring to boil. Add the tomato paste, chipotles in adobo, and the chopped tomatoes. Stir and simmer for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, skimming the top occasionally to remove any scum that forms. 

While the BBQ Gravy is simmering, make the meatballs:

In a large bowl, mix together the meat, egg, Worcestershire, cheese, parsley, oregano, basil, onion, bread crumbs, and garlic, and season with salt and pepper. Add 1/2 cup of water. Knead the water into the meat mixture with your hands. Knead and roll meatballs into about 1 1/2-inch balls. Place them in shallow saucepan on stove, add another 1/2 cup of water over them, and cover. Turn heat to medium, and steam for 35 minutes.

Using a slotted spoon, remove the meatballs from the pan. Drain the juice out of the bottom of the pan, return the meatballs to it and cover them with warm BBQ gravy. Serve on top of spaghetti.
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It's good to be back. :)

Recovering

Well anybody who checks this but doesn't talk to me regularily might have noticed that I've been absent for a bit. Now, I was definitely putting off putting up my recipe for BBQ spaghetti and avoiding the awful vietnamese meatballs that didn't turn out (I think I'll just spare you guys those), but the truth it, last sunday I had what was later identified as a gallbladder attack.

I got horrible stomach pains and threw up all night, went to the doctor on monday, was told to schedule an ultrasound because it might've been something to do with my gallbladder based on my neverending pain and tenderness. I had to suffer through all of monday and tuesday but had it on wednesday. The results were: lots of gallstones and they recommended I go to the ER right away.

Some friends and people I knew online warned me against going to the ER for expenses and the like and suggested I get a referral and I hate costing Sean money so I was prepared to try and tough it out. Thursday morning, Sean called the doctor and asked how long it might take to get it done that way. Apparently anywhere from a week to two weeks. And also that I was infected. And had to go to the ER now.

So we went. And I got in by midmorning. And they gave me delightful pain meds. I had blood work and cat scans and my surgery was scheduled for thursday night. But things got busy and it got moved to friday morning. Then it was over. The punctured 3 little slits in my torso and blew me full of air to get the cameras and tools in. Which meant for the new few days I had massive gas bubbly pains and had to walk around and get them all out burping as much as possible, which was very uncomfortable with cuts in me, but I managed to get it all out.

Anyway apparently my gallbladder was so full of stones that it was beginning to rot and turn green and die. It was so close to bursting it wasn't even funny. We were lucky we got in when we did, if it had burst I would have been in much much worse shape. I was lucky.

I got out on Sunday finally and I've been recovering at home. Still lots of pain and all my muscles in the center of my torso ache when I move or sit or stand or sneeze or laugh or cough or anything, and it's agony. Or stretch. I can't lay on my back so I've been sleeping on our recliner. I dislike sleeping in my living room. It sucks out here. But I'm healing.

So cooking blog will be on hold for another week or two while I get myself back to normal. Also, since my gallbladder is gone, and thus my body will have trouble digesting fat (look up the gallbladder), my diet may change. I don't know how my body will react to the change, it's different for everyone. Some people can't even have dairy anymore because of the fat. Some people can have whatever and not have it bug them. Except insane amounts of grease. I'm told it "goes right through you" and you have to go to the bathroom. Explosively. I guess I'll be experimenting with foods for awhile.

Thanks for being patient. I miss my blog and cooking. Leaving Sean in my kitchen is terrifying. I love the man but he is beyond culinarily inept. <3

Joe's Special

I don't eat enough eggs. I firmly believe this. However it's hard for me to just cook up and egg and eat it by itself. And as much as I love breakfast for dinner, I don't usually have all the things on hand.

So when I found this recipe, I thought it looked pretty darn good. Eggs, meat, spinach? Yes please.

You'll need 6 eggs, olive oil and a little butter, salt, pepper, dried basil, tabasco sauce, half a pound of ground beef/chicken, salt and pepper, and fresh or frozen spinach. I opted for frozen because it's a million times cheaper for the same amount of spinach. I also included some green pepper, green onion and garlic, because I had them in my fridge.

Dice it all up nice and small.

Crack your eggs into a bowl. Look at that one yolk, it's half the size of the others! It's kind of hard to see in the picture.

Add all your seasonings to your eggs and mix up.

Melt the butter and olive oil in a skillet over mediumish heat.

Cook your veggies around until softened, about 4 minutes.

Then add your meat and cook until evenly browned.

Now, add your spinach. If using fresh, put the lid on and cook for 3-4 minutes to wilt it all down. If using thawed frozen spinach, cook for about a minute or so with the lid on to take the raw edge off.

Stir it all together.

And dump your eggs on in.

Stir it around until the eggs are cooked how you like them. Try not to overcook them.

And there you have it, a Joe's Special. Whoever Joe is.

Joe's Special (original recipe from here)

• 6 large eggs
• Splash or two of Tabasco or other hot pepper sauce
• 1 teaspoon salt or more to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil or oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly milled black pepper or more to taste
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• About 1/2 pound lean freshly ground beef or ground dark chicken
• 3/4 to 1 pound fresh spinach or one 10-ounce package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained

Crack the eggs into a small bowl and add the Tabasco, salt, herbs, and pepper. Whisk just enough to combine; you should still see large bubbles. Set aside.

Warm the oil and butter in a large skillet over medium heat until the butter melts. Add the onion and sauté until soft but not beginning to brown, about 4 minutes. Add the ground beef or chicken and continue cooking until uniformly brown, breaking the meat into small pieces as it cooks. Cover with the spinach, place a lid over the mixture, and cook for about 3 minutes, just until the spinach wilts. (If using frozen spinach, cook, covered, for 1 minute, just to take off its raw edge.)

Stir the spinach into the meat, cooking briefly to eliminate excess liquid if the mixture seems watery. Pour the egg mixture over all, stirring with a spatula from the bottom until the eggs begin to set. Remove from the heat and stir a few more times, as the eggs cook through from the residual heat. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings.
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It was tasty. The basil mixed with the meat kind of made it have a sausage quality. It tasted like it had been made with sausage. Sean really liked it too.

Good stuff. Thanks, Joe, whoever you are.

Perfect Potstickers

More wontons! I was excited to try this recipe because even though the ingredients are definitely non-traditional, they sounded like they would taste really good.

And they did.

Time for good stuff. Ground turkey, egg, green onions, brown sugar, cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper, ketchup, yellow mustard, worcestershire sauce, and red pepper. Sounds kind of like a sloppy joe, doesn't it? Regardless, let us press on.

Oh and I tossed in 2 cloves of garlic. Look how purple it is!

Throw it all in a bowl.

And mix it all up. Yum. Boy did it smell good. It taunted me the entire time I was filling them.

Then fill them just like I showed you here, and then cook them. I boiled mine for about 4 minutes each, and the rest I put in the freezer.

Yum.

They were so good. I liked the filling a lot more than the last one. The other one was good but it needed dipping sauce. These ones had so much flavor in them, they didn't need anything.

Here's the recipe, with instructions for pan steaming them.

Perfect Potstickers (original recipe by Alton Brown)

• 1/2 pound ground pork
• 1/4 cup finely chopped scallions
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped red bell pepper
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 2 teaspoons ketchup
• 1 teaspoon yellow mustard
• 2 teaspoons worcestershire sauce
  
• 1 teaspoon light brown sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  
• 35 to 40 small wonton wrappers
• Water, for sealing wontons
• 3 to 4 tablespoons vegetable oil, for frying
• 1 1/3 cups chicken stock, divided

Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.

Combine the first 11 ingredients in a medium-size mixing bowl (pork through cayenne). Set aside.
To form the dumplings, remove 1 wonton wrapper from the package, covering the others with a damp cloth. Brush 2 of the edges of the wrapper lightly with water. Place 1/2 rounded teaspoon of the pork mixture in the center of the wrapper. Fold over, seal edges, and shape as desired. Set on a sheet pan and cover with a damp cloth. Repeat procedure until all of the filling is gone.

Heat a 12-inch saute pan over medium heat. Brush with vegetable oil once hot. Add 8 to 10 potstickers at a time to the pan and cook for 2 minutes, without touching. Once the 2 minutes are up, gently add 1/3 cup chicken stock to the pan, turn the heat down to low, cover, and cook for another 2 minutes. Remove wontons to a heatproof platter and place in the warm oven. Clean the pan in between batches by pouring in water and allowing the pan to deglaze. Repeat until all the wontons are cooked. Serve immediately.

(Or just boil in gently boiling water for 4ish minutes and drain)
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Eat. Eat them, my children. Love them.

Oh and by the way. I steamed some and fried them last night. And they were great.

Oh and by the way, if you have something called a Brown Bag Deli near you, you should definitely try it out. I can't speak for other places, but the one that's right next to Sean's work is great.

They bake their bread everyday, and are only open for lunch hours. I always get jalapeno cheddar bread, with brown sugar ham, honey mustard, pepper jack cheese, lettuce and cucumbers.

Soooooooooooo goooooooooooood. One of my favorite sandwiches ever.

Oh and also, these chips are pretty good.

I got them from Target, and they're baked. Nice and crispy, with a nice sweet but salty flavor from the balsamic.

Also sorry, I didn't mean to drop some product placements or anything. This blog is about food and what I'm eating and making, so I just thought I'd share! :3

Wontons for Soup

I love wontons. Not the crispy ones, though. But I would eat boiled or steamed wontons forever.

Last night I made some. Sean and I decided to skip the soup portion because, well, we didn't know if the wontons would turn out, honestly. And I kind of like them like dumplings. I had 2 recipes lined up, one more traditional and one less traditional. Since my wrappers are approaching the date they expire, I'll be making the other recipe tonight. WONTON OVERLOAD.

Anyway here's my wonton adventures from last night. For a much more detailed explanation of wontons and wonton soup making, please check the link down near the recipe. She has a lot more information in her post than is just in the recipe I copy in here.

Let's make wontons!

For this recipe, I used ground turkey, green onions, teriyaki (or soy) sauce, dry sherry (I used cooking sherry, all I had), sesame oil, fresh ginger, an egg and salt, if it needs it.

I also added a few cloves of garlic.

Mix all your ingredients together. Mine was pretty wet and soft, maybe because I skipped the 1/4 pound of shrimp in the recipe, but it came together just fine. I cooked a small amount in a small frying pan to test my mixture before filling to see if it needed more of anything.

Add just under a teaspoon to your wrapper. And boy you don't want to overfill these, they will not seal right, so better to go a little under while you find the perfect amount. You'll know pretty fast when you've got too much in there.

Then dip your finger in a little water and run it along two sides of the wonton, then fold the top over to seal.

The color of my hands frightens me.

Then, you wet the two side corners and pinch them upwards and hold together for a few seconds.

And repeat a million times. Wontons are definitely a labor of love. Some people might just think it's better to buy them, and honestly, I definitely won't make wontons all the time after having tried it. But it was pretty satisfying. And yummy.

Then you boil them for around 4 minutes. There's this complex thing where you keep adding water to the pot. I kinda half tried it, I don't know if it mattered.

We dipped them in teriyaki sauce and they were awesome.

Here's the recipe for wonton soup, just follow the wonton instructions if you want to skip the soup part.

Wonton Soup (original recipe found here)
For the wontons:

• 1/2 lb. ground pork (you can substitute ground turkey)
• 1/4 lb. peeled shrimp, chopped
• 1/4 cup finely minced green onions
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbs. light soy sauce
• 1 Tbs. dry sherry
• 2 tsp. Asian sesame oil
• 1 tsp. minced ginger root
• Salt, to taste, if needed
• 1 package (1 lb.) wonton wrappers

For the Soup

• 8 cups low-sodium chicken broth simmered with 3 or 4 slices peeled fresh ginger for 10 to 15 minutes
• 1 large bunch spinach, tough stems removed, leaves washed and cut into wide strips   

To make the wontons, in a medium bowl, combine the pork, shrimp, and green onions. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, soy sauce, sherry, sesame oil and ginger juice. Stir the egg mixture into the pork mixture, mixing well. Bring a saucepan three-fourths full of water to a boil, add a small ball of the pork mixture to the water, and poach until cooked through, 2 to 3 minutes. Drain, taste and adjust the seasonings with soy sauce, ginger root or a little salt.

To assemble the wontons, lay out a wrapper and place a teaspoon or so of the mixture in the center of each wrapper. Dip your finger in water and spread along two edges of each wrapper. Fold each in half on the diagonal to form a triangle and press the seams to seal securely. Place on a baking sheet. Repeat until all the stuffing is used; you should have about 48 wontons. Wrap any leftover wrappers airtight and store in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. Refrigerate the wontons until needed.

In a large saucepan, bring the broth to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to low to maintain a gentle simmer. At the same time, bring a large saucepan half-full of water to a boil. Carefully drop the wontons into the boiling water. When the water returns to a boil, add 1 1/2 cups cold water. When the water returns to a boil, add 1 more cup cold water. Return to a boil again, then reduce the heat to low and simmer until the filling is cooked through, about 4-5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the wontons to the simmering broth. Add the spinach and simmer until it wilts, about 1 minute.

To serve, ladle the soup into 6 large warmed bowls, dividing the wontons evenly. Serves 6.
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I've read on several sites that they prefer to boil the wontons first rather than add them to the broth because it clouds the broth a little. I'm honestly more interested in the wontons than the soup. I'll probably just skip that entirely most of the time.

Hope you enjoy them if you try them. They really weren't difficult, just kind of worrying. But I worry about everything. And they turned out great! So don't let that stop you.