From Our Kitchen: Banana Bread

I buy a lot of bananas. Sometimes they all get eaten (yay!). Sometimes I cut them up and freeze the ones that are starting to brown to later use in smoothies. And sometimes, like last week, they have not all been eaten and I have too many bananas already in the freezer, so I decide to make banana bread. I absolutely love banana bread, and so does the hubs, and it is so incredibly easy to make! This is a nice treat to have for a snack, post-dinner, or even breakfast!

What You'll Need:

• 3 - 5 bananas (I use 5, which seems to make the bread extremely moist, but 3 will work if that is all you happen to have on hand!)
• 1/3 cup butter, melted
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• Optional mix-ins: chocolate chips, walnut pieces, pecan pieces, 1/4 cup of peanut butter!

What You'll Do:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 5 x 10 bread loaf pan with Pam.
2. Mash bananas (I used the paddle attachment on my Kitchenaid, but you could easily use a potato masher to do this).
3. Either by hand, or with your mixer, add melted butter to mashed bananas.
4. Add sugar, egg, and vanilla to mashed banana mixture and incorporate well.
5. Add baking soda, salt, and flour, and mix well. If you have any optional mix-ins you want to add, go ahead and mix these in now.
6. Pour mixture into bread pan.
7. Bake for 50 - 60 minutes, or until bread is golden brown and center is set.
8. Remove from oven, cool on wire rack, and slice to serve.
9. Enjoy!

Note: You can also sub the bananas for another fruit, like strawberries! I honestly couldn't tell you which I like better, they are both so good! If you use strawberries, I used almost a whole container of fresh strawberries (I had probably eaten like 4 of them beforehand). I did everything the same, except that I mashed the strawberries up by hand before putting everything in my Kitchenaid (strawberries don't really mash like bananas with the paddle attachment :)

Left: Strawberry Bread
Right: Banana Bread with Peanut Butter!

From Our Kitchen: Whole Wheat Pasta w/Garlic White Sauce

Folks. I concocted this recipe all on my own! Here's the story: yesterday I realized I was very limited in what was around the house for cooking. While I adore going to the grocery store (this makes me weird, yes), I was morally opposed to going to the grocery store on a Friday afternoon for ingredients for one meal, and then turning around and going back for my weekly shopping this morning. Moral opposition is a really hard thing to overcome, you know. So, I rifled, I pillaged, I dug, and I decided that whole wheat pasta, asparagus, and turkey bacon would naturally go together very well, but that I would certainly need some sauce to bind it all together. I have never attempted a homemade sauce before (Harris always makes our homemade red sauce - it's one of his specialties). So, I used the powers of Google to determine what the makings of a basic white sauce would be. I didn't have all the needed ingredients, surprise, surprise, so I improvised, and came up with something I (and the hubby) found pretty tasty! Yay!

What You'll Need:

• Bunch of asparagus
• 1/2 pack turkey bacon
• 3/4 box whole wheat pasta (I had penne, but use whatever, you know)
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup cheese (Parmesan is probably the best option, but I had extra sharp cheddar, and it worked fine!)
• 2 cups milk (I used skim - you could also use whole milk, heavy cream, so on and so forth)
• salt & pepper, to taste

What You'll Do:

1. Snap ends off asparagus, and blanch in boiling, salted water for 3 minutes. Drain, rinse with cool water, and set aside.
2. Prepare turkey bacon (I baked mine in the oven, but feel free to fry, microwave, what have you). Chop turkey bacon into small-ish pieces
3. Prepare pasta according to package directions. Set aside.
4. In a medium saucepan, melt butter.
5. Saute garlic in butter for 2 minutes.
6. Whisk in flour and milk. Stir continuously until well incorporated.
7. Add in cheese. Continue stirring.
8. Add salt and pepper to taste.
9. Add pasta, asparagus, and turkey bacon to sauce.
10. Enjoy!