the best banana bread ever

One of my good college friends sent me this banana bread recipe and its perfect.  Moist, tasty, super easy and 100% J friendly without any substitutions.  

 1/2 cup butter (unsalted) (1 stick)
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp vanilla
3 mashed bananas

Preheat your oven to 320 degrees:

Mush your  3 almost black bananas and let them sit while you prepare the rest, the gooey-er the better.

Cream the butter and sugar.  (My house is too cold to leave butter out for that "room temperature" texture, but I've discovered this wonderful MELT button on my microwave and 15 seconds for 1 stick turns it the perfect cream texture.  

This was about where I realized that I have a Kitchenaid mixer and why was I doing this by hand?  I finally started my new (actually 2 week old untouched) exercise video routine on Sunday afternoon and my arms and back were killing me!  Luckily, it creamed up pretty quickly. 

Add the flour, salt and baking soda and mix!

Add the cinnamon and vanilla - true to my friend's original recipe notes, I always add extra of both of these :)

See how much gooey-er your bananas look now? 

Add the bananas to the rest and mix until just combined.

Toss into your greased bread pan and bake for about 50 minutes.

and perfection:

Enjoy!

My weekend was pretty great.  Beyond the usual amount of cleaning and laundry, here's what it was full of:

This movie was fantastic, I've always loved Colin Firth and I was in no way disappointed. 

I made it about half-way through this book while waiting for the movie. Its your usual terrible teen fantasy romance, i.e. also fantastic.  Can't wait to finish it next weekend!

J and I love the Saturday night SyFy movies.  The one this weekend was superb.  Giant pythons battling Alligators pumped up on steroids in the Everglades.  Plus, a mega girl fight between the 2 main characters.  Priceless. We ended up watching most of this movie in bed, making it all the better.  

Baked beans attempt number 1.  The other weekend, J made 2 pounds of baked beans, and they were delicious.  This weekend he attempted again and the batch failed, we're not sure why.  So Sunday he tried again and they were still cooking when I left for work this morning...

This is the beef stew I came home to yesterday after my day of reading and movie watching.  Its soo nice to come home to excellent food that's ready when you walk in the door. 

And last but not least, my favorite snuggle buddy and frisbee partner:

 

Pocket pies! - the blueberry version

I can't remember the blog that inspired these beauties but the hubby loves them and with his ulcer has been asking for them like hotcakes. 

First you need crust.  I've been using the crust recipe from The Gypsy Chef's guinness stew because it always seems to turn out and its 100% J friendly without me having to alter anything. Actually, I guess I just skip the egg wash.  Whatever, its good.  I've also tried using a sweeter crust with sugar and oatmeal but then I get complaints about the 'oatmeal texture' so fine.  

 

I usually get about 4 pies out of the recipe and am very informal about making it into pockets.  Just divide into 4 sections and smash each section into a rough circle with either a rolling pin or I just use my palm. 

I forgot to take a picture of my pockets, but they're about the same size as these tops here.

For the filing:

I just threw these together and for the filling tossed in:
1 Tbsp of Flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
4-5 good shakes of cinnamon
and about 1/2 cup of frozen blueberries (fresh are always better if you have them)

clearly, this is too much brown sugar for the small amount of blueberries I needed. Next time I'll use about 2-3 tablespoons and see how that looks.

Add the filling to the pocket and smush the edges together to close the pie.  Mine never look great, and often pop open during baking but they always taste good and that's what counts.

Line your cookie sheet with aluminum foil to help with clean-up and toss them in the oven for about 35 minutes at 400 degrees!

leftover pot pie?

The hubby wasn't too fond of dinner on Wednesday, and he was almost horrified when he heard it was all from leftovers - but after TRYING IT, he decided it wasn't "too bad".  Boys. What can you do?

The leftovers: rice, onion confit, and chicken breast with kale and mushrooms

Leftover Pot Pie and some Trader Joes Cornbread (J-friendly style)

A good pot pie has to have a good crust.  I like this recipe from the Gypsy Chef - the Old Timer's Steak and Guinness Pie is also amazing.  While the dough was chilling in the fridge, I shredded the chicken.

and added it to the rice. 

Everything is better with bacon, so I decided last minute to add that to my pie. (I also love the taste of kale cooked in bacon fat. )

 

Once the bacon was done, I drained about half of the grease and then added the leftover onion confit and let it simmer.

While that was simmering, I crushed the bacon and added it to the chicken and rice mixture.

Then I sliced up some mushrooms and add them to the onions.

While that cooked, I cut up some kale.

and then added it to the pan and let cook for 2-3 minutes.

Once the kale was bright green I added about a 1/4 cup of water to the pan, and let it simmer until the water had almost completely evaporated. 

Then I added another 1/4 cup of water and simmered until the kale was cooked.  

Meanwhile, I started on the dough.  I usually get about 4 small crusts out of the recipe, in this case 2 for dinner and 2 for dessert!

I don't usually use a bottom crust, my ramkins are so tiny I like to get as much filling in them as I can. Here are my two tops.

When the kale was cooked, I added it to the chicken and stirred it all together.

  Then I filled the ramkins and added the tops. 

They took about 35 minutes in the oven at 400 degrees.

I'm not sure I'll ever make this again, but as an I have no plans for dinner, what do I make? I thought this turned out pretty well.