a haircut and cute little meatloaves

Some girls are into make-up and hairstyling and other sorts of beauty routines.  I'm not really one of those girls.  Now, don't get me wrong, I love a killer sparkly eyeliner.  But make me actually have to style my hair and I'm done.  I went to get my hair cut this week for the first time since our wedding.  Yes, four months +.  Needless to say, my hair was long.  And annoying.  As in, hair-in-a-ponytail/bun-everyday annoying.  So my hairstylist chopped it.  I asked for shoulder length.  It ended up more chin length (my hair is getting a little curlier every year since I hit 30).  And I really don't care.  Less shampoo to use, I figure.

I make up for my non-girly tendencies in the beauty routine category by being super-girly in other categories.  Number of decorative throw pillows?  Check.  Cute shoes and scarves?  Check.  Pretty dresses?  You bet.

And I like putting on a frilly apron and baking up a meatloaf.  Meatloaf made of oatmeal (yet another thing in our pantry that we have way too much of) instead of meat.  Baked in muffin tins for cute little meatloaves.  Yes, sometimes food does = love.  I find baking meatloaf for the hubby a romantic enough gesture that it'll be what a serve him on Valentine's Day for dinner when he gets home late.  Maybe with a BBQ sauce heart on top.

Poplar Forest and slushy

May has flown by - filled with busy days at work and busy days with friends and family.  This holiday weekend I had a blast at a friend's barbeque and enjoyed a visit with my parents.  Made Southern Comfort slushy for the party and sent some home with my mother.  She used to make the slushy for neighborhood cookouts when I was growing up and for her regular "Gone with the Wind" parties (which I naively assumed as a child was centered around movie-watching, but as an adult I can now imagine was more for the slushy and just hanging out with friends).

Southern Comfort Slushy

(Source:  my mother who got it from who-knows-where)

4 tea bags

2 cups boiling water

2 cups sugar

7 cups cold water

1 1/2 cups Southern Comfort (or bourbon)

1 12 ounce can frozen orange juice

1 6 ounce can frozen lemonade

Steep tea bags in boiling water for three minutes.  Remove bags and add sugar.  Add cold water, bourbon, orange juice, and lemonade.  Mix until combined.  Freeze until firm.  Spoon into cups and enjoy as it melts in this 90+ degree weather...

The parents and I trekked out to Lynchburg, Virginia to visit Poplar Forest, taking the house tour and also enjoying the GPS landscape tour that adds a little extra information to what you can see and read.  It seems like I should be sick of house museums on my days off, but I'm not.  I cannot, however, turn off my 'curator mode' and just enjoy the experience as a regular person.  Need to work on that a bit before my England house marathon....

crock pot banana nut bread

I've been away for about a week for work - at a conference enjoying great lectures and house tours (as well as afternoon teatime).  Before leaving last weekend I was able to pull out the crock pot and bake some banana nut bread.  The crock pot I use is my mother's old 1970s version.  In avocado green.  Stylish.  But I also have a Rival crock pot bread pan that makes making banana nut bread a cinch (and prevents more in-depth cleanup of a crock pot without a removable insert).

The freezer is chock full of frozen bananas that get a little too ripe and never get eaten.  But instead of composting or trashing them, I just throw them (peel and all) into the freezer.  So I pulled out three frozen bananas and set them on a plate to thaw while I researched a new recipe to try.  Here's the one I used (using pecans instead of walnuts), but there are plenty of versions out there.  I liked that this included the use of dark corn syrup - an ingredient I have in the cupboard but never seem to need.  In order to veganize it, I also used Ener-G egg replacer and Earth Balance vegan buttery sticks.

The bread is not too soft and works well for slicing and topping with peanut butter for a quick breakfast.  The rest can be wrapped in foil and thrown into the freezer.  Along with all those bananas.

little treat

For the past few years, I've been making chex mixes for the tour guides at work and my mailman at Christmas. Random, I know, but it is easy (when you pick the microwavable recipes) and I think people like to have something to snack on. At least my mailman sends me a thank you note saying as much. He also says that I'm the only one on the street that actually does something for him for the holidays, which is just sad, but another story.

So this year was back to the barbecue snack mix. Bundled into little treat bags for the mailman and a big Christmas tin for the tour guides. Plus a little extra for taking to my parents' house. I mean, if you are going to get all the ingredients out and the kitchen all messy, then you might as well go for gold.

Lesson learned this time around: drying the snack mix on paper towels is not a good idea. I use Seventh Generation paper towels and they ended up sticking to much of the mix. And my first round came out a little chewy. Second time around I used aluminum foil to dry the mix and it turned out much better.

retro recipe: banana bread

In my cookbook library I have at least a dozen vintage cookbooks that I've bought or others have given me as gifts. I have a thing for old cookbooks - their flair and their illustrations. The latest retro recipe comes out of the Encyclopedic Cookbook published by the Culinary Arts Institute in Chicago in 1949. The color illustrations are amazing and the chapters include "Your Fine Art of Carving" and "Your Leftovers," as well as food facts and instructions on how to monogram and fold napkins.

The recipe for Banana Bread can be found on page 141 in the Quick Breads section. I made one substitution - using butter/margarine instead of shortening - but otherwise followed the recipe as written.

Banana Bread
From the Encyclopedic Cookbook (Culinary Arts Institute, 1949), p. 141

1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 cups sifted flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup nut meats, chopped

Cream shortening and sugar together. Beat eggs until light and add. Press bananas through sieve and add lemon juice. Blend with creamed mixture. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together and mix quickly into banana mixture. Add nuts. Bake in a greased loaf pan in a moderate oven (375 degrees F) about 1 1/4 hours. Makes 1 (1-pound) loaf.

Now, 375 degrees F seemed a little high to me, but not having a setting for "moderate" on my oven, I just went with it. I took the bread out when it looked done - i.e. nice and golden brown - but it was still raw in the middle.

Back it went into the oven until done in the middle (and lightly burned at the edges. No problem - just cut off the ends of the bread, discard, and enjoy the rest. Lesson learned: next time try a 350 degree F oven for more cooking and less burning. But otherwise, the bit of lemon juice added an acidity to the bread that I've not experienced before in other banana breads.

I'll be making this again, because as promised in the cookbook: "Your popularity will rapidly spread when you serve specialty fruit-nut bread."