Banana (no nut) Bread

I believe the unseasonably warm Seattle weather earlier this month caused my bananas to ripen faster than I would have liked. (I made this recipe in early June) What’s to be done with ripe bananas other than make banana bread? However, I didn’t have nuts on hand, and most recipes I saw were for banana nut bread.

But then I found this recipe from my alma mater, The State News. I was interested to see the recipe was attached to an article about banana bread being a healthier snacking alternative. Really? Healthier than what? With butterbutterbutter? It wasn’t like this was a Cooking Light banana bread recipe… Healthier than Twinkies and Sour Patch Kids, perhaps. You can read the comments below the story if you want a more biting, condescending version of my critique.

I figured I’d give the recipe a whirl, even if the health information wasn’t exactly correct and even if the recipe was snagged from the Food Network.

Banana Bread

1 cup of sugar
8 tablespoons unsalted, room-temperature butter
2 large eggs
3 ripe bananas
1 tablespoon of milk
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

The oven should be preheated at 325 degrees and a 9×5×3-inch loaf pan needs to be buttered.

The sugar and butter need to be creamed together in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Each egg then needs to be added one at a time and beaten into the mix as they are added.

1. In a separate bowl, the bananas need to be mashed with a fork. Then, mix in the milk and cinnamon. In another bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

2. Stir and combined the banana mix to the creamed mixture, then add the dry ingredients, mixing until the flour disappears.

3. Once everything is mixed together, pour the batter into the pan and bake for one hour. Use a toothpick to determine if it’s cooked entirely. Poke the bread in the center with a toothpick. If it comes out clean, then it is finished. Allow the bread to cool for 15 minutes before removing bread from the pan and slicing.

Notes:

• I’m still interested in if you think it “counts” as a newspaper recipe when the newspaper snags the recipe from another source. For more of my musings on this topic, read this earlier post.
• I didn’t get any pictures of the bread. Whoops. But it looked like pretty much every other loaf of banana bread that has ever been baked in the history of humankind, so you’re not really missing out.
• I thought the bread was rather bland when I ate it the morning after I made it, but Toby really loved it and was sad that I took half the bread as a thank-you gift to a school that let us observe their reading classes.

Teacher Resource Room at Adelaide Elementary -- we hope you enjoyed the bread!

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Our other homes on the Web

We love newspapers and food, but that’s not all we love. Here are the other places you can find us online:

In Olympia

Read more about my class adventures here: http://mshoughtonsclass.wordpress.com

And read more about Toby’s lifehacking here: http://www.tmckes.com/blog

Toby at the DXARTS show

We are also Twitter-ers, if you’re into that sort of thing:

Shannon is at http://twitter.com/beforetoday

And Toby is at http://twitter.com/Trademark

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Life Hacking

Hello, fair readers. We’re back. A lot has changed.

We moved (to a place with windows! And a larger kitchen! And windows!).

Toby graduated from the UW with his BFA in digital arts and experimental media.

I’m getting ready for a trip to China and for my third year of teaching.

Although summer is often seen as a time to recharge, it’s frequently been a time for us to reflect on the previous school year, and to ponder what’s ahead.

It’s a hard job market, and it’s particularly hard if you’re a nerdy computer programming audiophile trying to find some inspiring work. I’d been thinking a lot about my friends who are similar to Toby, and what they have in their lives that makes them feel fulfilled.

I thought of Jana, who is living her life and raising her daughter in a way I hold in highest regard as a stay-at-home-mom. I thought of Jamie G., who is about as up-to-date on news and “new media” as they come, yet she has become a total DIY home-fixer-upper bike rider. I thought of Anne and Kate, who live on Anne’s teacher salary while Kate holds down the fort as a badass at home. They manage to go on all sorts of adventures, afford all local and organic food, and have a freaking blast on and off the grid.

Toby seems happiest when he comes up with a dynamite recipe, when our finances are organized, when we find a killer new natural cleaner, or when he discovers some other new way to hack our lives. So we’ve decided he’s going to become our resident Life Hacker.

The deal is this. I’ll carry on with the whole teaching thing. Toby will get a retail job 3 days a week or so (we’re thinking he’ll take over the shifts I’ve been working at Display and Costume when I head off to China) to help pay for rent. The rest of the time he’ll spend working on art, shouldering the bulk of the household tasks, and hacking our lives so we can be frugal and more self-sufficient. He’ll continue looking for work in his field, but there will be no more moping about and refreshing the Craigslist page 2873466527 times.

There are so many neat projects we’ve been dying to undertake, but there never seems to be enough time. Now, there will be.

Does this sound like a cop-out? Like Toby’s staying at home to be my man-bitch? Like we’re making excuses for him not getting a job? I’m sure it could seem like any of those things, but this feels absolutely right. Toby is already much happier than he was when he was thinking of the prospect of just clocking in at a 9 to 5, I will feel less stressed out about money and meals and cleaning because they will be more under control, and we’ll be enjoying each others’ company more completely because we’re embarking on an adventure we’re both thrilled about.

And, of course, we’ll be cooking more meals from newspaper recipes.

Won’t you join us?

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Getting Braver

I’ve been getting more daring in my cooking attempts. While visiting friends in Boulder, Colo. (food pictures and stories forthcoming), I made guacamole and even helped prepare a slow cooker chili recipe. They sound simple enough, but they were a real stretch for me.

Now that I’m home, I’m attempting to get back on the healthy, home-cooked band wagon. This morning I decided I wanted hard-boiled eggs, yet… I had no clue how to make them.

Searching recent newspaper articles, prompted by the recent Easter holiday, I’m sure, I discovered there are a lot of people who stress out about eggs.

Luckily, Moyra Fraser answered my call. This Telegraph reporter explained how to create hard-boiled eggs that will offer sunny yellow centres. I’ll post later with my results.

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Just an ordinary guy

Before we left for Michigan, Toby and I made our trip to UW to scrounge through the L.A. Times microfiche. We were on a quest to satisfy my inexplicable curiosity with what sort of students would undertake a marinated flank steak salad.

The grad school library, Suzzallo.

Suzzallo is probably my favorite building at UW, and it didn’t let me down.

Locating October 2004.

The fiche readers they have are pretty high-tech. They’re great quality, plus you can highlight any part of a page and instantly e-mail that portion to yourself. It was extremely convenient, considering that the machines I use at the Seattle Public Library require you to do a preliminary scan, a crop, a final scan, then a save onto a thumb drive (or print it and never have access to it again).

Searching through the archives.

The pictures were pretty muddled, but it looks like the gents who crafted the marinated flank steak salad are just ordinary college students. I did notice that the article gives the disclaimer that these are part of the “essential (but adventurous) kitchen.” So these aren’t run-of-the-mill Top Ramen guys. That makes more sense, then.

I realized I never posted our final product, so here’s that as well:

 
Ta da!

And so we arrive at the end of our L.A. Times marinated flank steak salad adventure. Thanks for playing along with us!

Join us next time, where we will either:
a) show you my awesome newspaper-related Christmas presents or
b) share the culinary results of Pat Nixon’s favorite banana bread recipe (true story).

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

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Coming down the pipeline

As I have no recipes to share (Toby promises me he will return to the world of the living by tomorrow night at the latest), I figured I’d give you a taste (insert rim shot here) of what’s to come.

I already mentioned that I’ll be doing heavy-duty work on my mom’s recipes when I go home for Christmas. We’re honestly to the point where we’re debating bringing our scanner with us. It might be cheaper and less of a hassle to just buy a cheap one in Michigan.

My overseas el-jay friend has already hooked me up with NY Times recipes from the 1800’s, and he pledges to send me international newspapers when he has access to them.

Do you have any requests? Toby and I have noticed that people writing in to a newspaper for specific recipes seems to have fallen by the wayside. We posit that this is because access to archived recipes has gotten so much less cumbersome. Unless, of course, you want the pictures that accompany said recipes…

Which brings me to my last bit of good news! I might be able to get a copy of our LA Times photograph as early as tonight. Apparently, the University of Washington library also keeps fiche copies of the Times. Perhaps I can convince Toby to let me stop there on our way home tonight…

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