PB-Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips

There are few things better than the smell of baked goods in the morning. To partake in this experience, you could either a) walk through the snow (yep, snow in March... I know...) to Lucia's Bakery and spend $4-5 on a pastry and coffee, OR b) throw together a loaf of banana bread with random ingredients from your pantry and those bananas that are slowly deteriorating in a bowl in your kitchen.
We all know what this means in baking land... BANANA BREAD!! Preferably with peanut butter. And as long as we're abandoning all reason, let's throw some chocolate chips in there too. In full disclosure, I did not have regular PB on hand so I used PB&Co's White Chocolate Wonderful and cut down the sugar.


The resulting bread is moist, substantial and delicious. It is also officially guy-approved (if I weren't already engaged to Ben I think this bread would have done it). Seriously, make this now. NOW. DO IT. Sorry for being so demanding, I just want the best for you.


I couldn't handle waiting for it to cool before cutting it, so some of the slices turned out more like piles. Delicious, toasty piles of banana-chocolate awesomeness, but piles nonetheless. By the way have you seen my Harry Potter mug? I think it's probably the greatest thing ever.


I also apologize for eating half the slice before getting a picture of it, but what can you do?


In other news, I now have a sink full of dishes. In OTHER other news... I won't have to deal with sinks full of dirty dishes much longer because... drumroll... we are moving to a NEW APARTMENT! With a DISHWASHER!!! I honestly can hardly contain my excitement. We won't really officially move until May when Ben gets back, and my current lease isn't up until June but the credit checks are clear and the lease is ready to sign!

I'll put up pics as soon as I can...and get ready for lots of geeking out over new furniture and rugs. Can't wait!!

And I guess you will probably be wanting that Banana Bread recipe.... :)

PB-BANANA BREAD WITH CHOCOLATE CHIPS
Adapted slightly from Joy the Baker

Dry Ingredients:
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour (or regular WW flour)
1 cup unbleached, all-purpose flour
1/4 cup ground flaxseed meal
3/4 tsp baking soda
scant 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8-1/4 tsp ground allspice

Wet Ingredients:
1-1/2 cups mashed ripe bananas (if you come out slightly less than this amount, as I did, fill the remainder with applesauce or yogurt)
1/3 cup plain yogurt
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
3 tbsp butter, melted
2 large eggs
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Add-Ins:
1/4 cup chopped dry roasted peanuts (unsalted)
1/2 or so bag of chocolate chips

In a large bowl, whisk the dry ingredients together.

In a less-large bowl, mix together the banana, PB, yogurt and melted butter. Whisk in the eggs, vanilla and sugars until no clumps of sugar remain. Then, pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold together with a rubber spatula.

Add in the chopped nuts and chocolate chips and mix until incorporated (but do not overmix). Pour into a buttered and floured 9x5 inch loaf pan and bake at 350 for about 55 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for about 20 minutes before running a butter knife along the edges and removing to a wire rack to cool completely**.

This bread will last well-wrapped at room temp for around 4 days, or alternatively if you have leftovers (doubtful) the loaf can be wrapped and stored in the freezer.

** I did not follow this step.

Giving Up

Ben and I decided to start the Lentin season off right: with a giant whoopie pie and four bags of candy.


About 12 years ago today, I walked into the library at my high school to study and sat down next to my friend Paul, who was dilligently studying for a math test. Before I'd even said hi, I noticed a big, black smudge on his forehead. In an effort to be a good friend, I blurted out without thinking: "hey you have a big black smudge on your forehead." You know, the same way you would tell someone they have spinach in their teeth. Instead of thanking me, Paul just looked at me like I was the biggest moron to ever walk the planet. "It's Ash Wednesday."

I'll be honest, the whole concept for giving things up for lent has always confused me a bit. I get that the point is to experience suffering as Christ suffered, but I guess I don't totally see how a bunch of privaleged white college girls nobly declaring that they are giving up chocolate is in any way comparable to fasting in the desert for 40 days. Maybe my lack of understanding is due to the fact that I'm agnostic, which I've been told means that I just can't make up my mind about anything.

I'm also not really a big fan of self-punishment in any form. I feel like if you're going to give something up, why make it something totally meaningless chocolate or potato chips? Why not give up something that actually changes the world for the better? Why not give up gossip, or negativity - equally as difficult to give up as cookies, if not more, but with an actual point besides our own struggles. Anyways, just something to think about.

P.S. The Green Tea and Lemon Whoopie pie is delicious.

So. Much. Food.

We had our first caterer tasting yesterday! We decided to book Deco Catering based on recommendations from my parents and a couple of other friends without having ever tasted anything they'd made - in retrospect, maybe not the wisest choice but wow did we luck out!

Good thing I didn't eat lunch beforehand, because I had no idea they were basically going to serve us three entire meals. We could have split everything between my mom, Ben and I and probably still had leftovers... the 9x13 box pictured above is about 2/3 of what we ended up going home with. First we tried a salad with strawberries, blue cheese and a vinegarette dressing, followed by an italian vegetable torta for the veg option and salmon fillets with creamy dill sauce.

My mom is sort of in charge of dealing with Deco (like any good MBA I took a project managerment approach to my own wedding and delegated tasks and deadlines to all my loved ones. Wow I am such a nerd). The final course, which I didn't even realize was coming, was a beef tenderloin with roasted carrots and butternut squash. YUM.

When I saw beef tenderloin as one of the options, I'll admit I was a little skeptical. I've had enough lackluster meat entrees at weddings to know that these things are often not as good as they sound, but this was honestly maybe the best beef tenderloin I have ever had anywhere. And we all know I could eat roasted veggies till the cows come home.

Pictured above, Soile (owner of Deco Catering), me and Ben after the tasting. I didn't know this until we met her, but Soile used to own the Taste of Scandinavia Bakery near my parents house - I eat there all the time! She sold off the business a few years ago when she realized she much preferred catering to running restaurants, but still owns the finnish deli attached to the Dunn Bros on Como (which I have ALSO been to not knowing it was hers... crazy). Also she lives in my parents' neighborhood and they have several mutual friends. And just to reiterate how awesome this lady is, here is a picture of her several-page feature spread in Martha Stewart Living:

Wowza! You can view the whole article here: http://www.decocatering.com/images/martha2002.pdf

It is quite awesome, I recommend you check it out. OK now I have to do productive things like laundry and school work... and eat some of that food that's left over from yesterday. I'm pretty sure we will each get about 2 more meals out of that box!

Happiness is a brick, and what should Unicorns invest in?

Yesterday, Ben and I drove down to St. Olaf with two of our good friends, Tessie and Evan for the 30th birthday of the Great Conversation. The Great Con is a two year, discussion-based series of classes on philosophy, history, art and literature from ancient Greece and the Bible through the 20th century, and for me, those four semester and an interim will always hold some of the best memories from my college years.

The theme of the Con's birthday party was "What is Happiness," and the day centered around a lecture by Ed Langerak. Ed has a deep voice full of wisdom, and likes to spout off such gems as "always look inside yourself to find the truth...unless you're a weirdo," and, "we all know that relentlessly chipper people are annoying." He is a philosophy genius in the guise of a bearded, twinkly-eyed grandpa and has always been one of my favorite professors. I took no fewer than four classes from him in college, and always brought my rough drafts to him so he could rip them to shreds before I turned them in. I've gone to a couple of his lectures post-graduation and we're always happy to see each other. For some reason, he's decided that I am OK - beats me.


During the lecture and post-lecture discussions, we tried to answer two questions: 1) what is happiness, and 2) how do se pursue it. The epicurians (contrary to the misrepresentation presented by websites like epicurious.com) espoused that tranquility and moderation, not pleasurable experiences, were the source of a happy life. If you had a lot of peak experiences, they belived, the valles would be just as deep and twice as wide. Aristotle, on the other hand, belived that happiness was living the virtuous life (he then proceeds to tell you what these virtues are) - and that ultimate happiness lies in the life of contemplation, aka being a philosopher like Aristotle. Brilliant. We also discussed Jeremy Bentham, who claimed to have discovered an exact algorithm for calculating happiness (it terrifies me to think what this guy could have done with an excel spreadsheet), and the utilitarian John Stuart Mill who belived that happiness was the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

After the lecture, Professor Groton, another of our favorite profs, handed out door prizes - Ben was lucky enough to win one by being the person closest in age to the Great Con. The "prize" as it turned out, was a brick from the old Ytterboe building. During a break in the action Professor Langerak hurried over to proudly tell Ben that he had actually stolen the brick from its prior position of helping to hold up a statue on campus. Actually he told us that he had "liberated" it.

Then we broke out into small discussion groups - technically we were assigned to groups, but Ben, Tessie, Evan and I decided to just stick together and go to whatever room we felt like, so we just followed Professor Groton to join her group even though we were supposed to go to a totally different room. The theme that came up again and again during our conversation was that family, friends and community are a huge part of what makes us happy.

Ed mentioned in his lecture that joining a social group that meets once a month can increase happiness the same amount as if you were to double your income. I think our society seriously overvalues money and undervalues time and people. No amount of money should be worth letting our relationships with friends and family slip - but just think of how often that happens, and how often it is seen as totally justified. Past a certain point - I think it is $77K for a family of four (although some adjustments should probably be made for cost of living), the amount of money we make has no bearing on our happines. Why, then, do people strive for more prestigous jobs with higher paychecks that require them to work 80 hours a week and make them miserable, and give up the things that would make them happy?

This got me thinking about what a fantastic community the Great Con itself is. I met many of my best friends in those classes, including my fiancee, and got to know some of the most amazing professors and mentors I have ever encountered in my life. I also found out that Rick Fairbanks, who led my Con-affiliated study abroad session, passed away two weeks ago from cancer. I hadn't known he was ill, and it was a little rough to learn about his passing during a slideshow commemorating the professors the program had lost. One of the other profs told me she'd tried to contact people by e-mail before the event so we wouldn't find out this way, but hadn't been able to get in touch with everyone. It just made me think even more about how much we need to cherish our time with the people who are important to us.

The friendships, community and common language of the Great Con creates a sort of family that spans generations. I was amazed at how easily my friends and were able to jump into very personal conversation with alums from 1985, and how we knew their thoughts on happiness and the meaning of life before we found out their last name or what they did for a living. Fake bullshit networking sessions can suck it, as far as I'm concerned.

After the event, we all drove to Tessie's house for dinner with her and her husband Mark, also an Ole and a good friend of all of ours. As we made homemade pasta, drank wine, and talked about every subject from Lybia to the protests in Wisconsin to what we would invest in if we were Unicorns (don't ask!), I realized how lucky I am to have such amazing friends, who are smart and thoughtful, and who think that sitting around eating delicious food and talking about politics and unicorns is the best Saturday night ever.


Like any good day at the Con, yesterday's events helped me get a little closer to figuring out the answer - happiness is good friends and great conversation. And a brick from Ed Langerak.

Let the nightmares begin....

It happened on Wednesday night. My first wedding nightmare. I had no idea such things existed until it happened, and then I was reading through the archives of another favorite blog, The Daily Garnish, and author Emily mentioned HER first wedding nightmare so apparently it's like, a thing....
It's understandable that wedding nightmares exist - after all, it's a very stress-inducing situation with a lot of anxiety and expectations around it. Everyone wants their wedding to be perfect, but no wedding ever is and that's what makes them fun. One of my mom's friends recently told her that what you really remember from your wedding day are all of the funny things that went wrong.

For example, the only story that comes to mind when I think of my parents' wedding is how one of my dad's friends got beat up cowboys at this hole-in-the-wall bar in Red Lodge Montana after the reception, and the whole wedding party ended up hiding the hotel as these guys drove around looking for them to...finish settling the disagreement I guess.

Anyways, the basic premise of my nightmare was that my wedding happened this week. Somehow, all these balls got rolling and the next thing I knew we were at the church, my hair and makeup weren't done (but somehow I was wearing my dress and my photographer was there), and the ceremony happened and then it was all over. I told my mom we HAD to get the July 9 date back because this wasn't how I wanted it to happen at ALL, and she was like "well, I don't think it's really realistic to have two weddings." This made me very upset.

I think the most interesting thing about nightmares is that they tell you a lot about what is really important to you. Obviously even in the dream I was happy that Ben and I were married - but to be honest, the thing that I'm excited for with Ben is the relationship and the marriage, which are and will be awesome independently of the wedding. What the wedding really represents, for me, is a chance to share that excitement with all of my friends and family and to celebrate our future with everyone we care about. What upset me in the dream wasn't that we didn't have flowers, or cupcakes, or that my hair and makeup weren't done (I actually remember thinking I looked quite awesome in my dream-pictures) - it was that the whole thing had gone down without any of the people I really wanted to be there, and now that gathering would not happen.

It took me a good 20 minutes after waking up to realize that the dream wasn't real, I was not married, and everything with the wedding would go forward as planned. But still, an interesting insight into my wedding-psyche.

Berries and Cream Breakfast Muffins

When the temperature dips below zero in March.
When your sister is laid up in the hospital post-appendix.
When you are inexplicably awake at 5am and don't have to be anywhere for three hours.
...why not make some muffins?

I promise you won't regret it. These are really, really good - not too sweet, and just a little different from your average muffin. The inspiration comes from Smitten Kitchen's Ricotta Muffins but these are totally different, mostly because I had to make do with what I had in my fridge. Like many great things, such as the wheel, Milk Duds and Post-it Notes, these muffins were born of necessity and small accidents.

Things the recipe required that I did not have:
- Ricotta
- Fennel (which is probably OK because I'm not a huge fennel fan)
- 1.5 cups of yogurt
- pecans

Things I had instead:
- Random mascarpone left over from a party (and seriously, what am I going to do with a tub of mascarpone? Make Cannoli?? Let's get real here. Cannoli is just not practical. It's what one leaves when one takes the guns, or so I've heard)
- Cinnamon and Vanilla
- 1 cup of yogurt and some whole milk
- Several jars of almost-finished jam
- Walnuts
- Sheer willpower

These ended up with some fillings that were quite random... a few had jam, a few had apple butter, and some had a bit of smashed up banana (left over from the half I didn't use in yesterday's oatmeal). The jam ones definitely turned out the best - both the apple butter and then banana got a bit lost (maybe I should have just used more)... and I imagine fresh fruit puree would be even better than jam. The tartness would add a nice touch.

Don't be afraid of the thick batter... these guys get nice and fluffy in the oven. Also do not fear the lack of eggs... it seems really weird to be making a muffin without eggs, but just have some faith and everything will turn out alright. Cross my heart.

Then, before it's even time for breakfast, you'll have a delicious snack to take to your sister in the hospital, and also your parents who are taking care of her. Just try not to eat all of them yourself before you leave the house!

Also, my sis is doing just fine - she went home today, the surgery was totally routine and she seemed great when I saw her this morning. No jumping for two weeks though, and no weights for almost a month which knowing her is going to be tough. With my sister and my dad, we are now 2 for 4 on Gorder family surgeries this year... let's hope it stays that way! OK back to the task at hand:

BERRIES AND CREAM BREAKFAST MUFFINS

1/2 cup walnuts or pecans
3 cups unbleached flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda (I may have accidentally used 3/4 Tablespoon... so keep that in mind)
1 tsp cinnamon
1-1/4 cup plain, full-fat yogurt
1/4 cup whole milk
3/4 cup vegetable or canola oil
3/4 cup mascarpone cheese
1 tsp vanilla

Brown sugar to sprinkle over the top

Preheat the oven to 425 and toast the nuts until they are... toasted. Remove the nuts, reduce heat to 325.

In a large bowl, sift the flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder and baking soda together to combine. Make a large well in the center and pour in the yogurt, milk and oil. Whisk the liquids together and gradually draw in the dry ingredients, mixing until imcorporated. The batter gets thick so you might need to switch to a wooden spoon or spatula partway through.

To prepare the filling: place the mascarpone in a small bowl, with the vanilla, stir together to comgine and keep stirring a little to warm it and make it more spreadable.

Line a muffin tin with paper liners, and fill each one about 1/3 full with batter. Deb suggests using a pastry bag or a plastic bag with the corner snipped off. I imagine this would have worked perfectly - however I had neither of these things in my kitchen so I went with the failsafe method of "spoon what you think is probably the right amount of batter into the muffin tin and then squoosh it down with your fingers until it covers the bottom." Worked like a charm.

Spoon a little less than 1 tablespoon of the mascarpone, vanilla mixture over the first layer of batter, and cover that with 1 teaspoon of your filling of choice: jam, fresh fruit puree, fruit butter, nut butter (ooh! just thought of that... that could be delicious). Spoon the remaining batter into the cups to cover the filling, and sprinkle walnuts and brown sugar on the top of each muffin.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the edges are beginning to turn golden brown. Be VERY CAREFUL not to overbake these... the batter is naturally a very light color, so when they start to turn a little golden they are done. Finished. Etc.

Enjoy with coffee. Then bundle up in a thousand layers and head into the freezing cold.... I REALLY hope spring comes soon.

Yikes!!! (and enchiladas)

It's always exciting to suddenly get a text message from your mom that says: "FYI - your sister has appendicitis. Heading to Abbott now for an appendectomy! Will keep in touch."

The fact that she took the time to include an exclamation point after the part about the appendectomy told me that it probably wasn't extremely serious. But, I was driving at the time and may have freaked out a little... I carpool with a friend to my Tuesday night class, and she said it was pretty funny yet at the same time not funny to hear me go "Holy shit! My sister has appendicitis!" in what was apparently a very matter-of-fact way as I was turning to get onto 94 West.

Turns out, everything is fine - they caught it early, she had enough time to go back to her apartment to get her stuff before my mom took her to the hospital for the appendectomy...she's actually probably in surgery right now.

The real bummer for her is that now she won't be able to run in the MIAC indoor track championships this weekend....although she did ask her doctors if they could hold off on the surgery until after Friday so she could do the long jump. Hilarious.

(They said no.)

Anyways, I'm going to bed so I can head over to the hospital bright and early before my class. What an intriguing evening.

Oh.. I almost forgot. In other news, I give Kashi's new Spicy Black Bean Enchiladas a thumbs up.