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Four batches of banana bread

I ended up making four batches of banana bread mini muffins last night, because I’d pulled out 12 bananas from the freezer and they were all thawed, and I started baking a little late, so I needed to ask Kevin to come and help me with the second batch while I sat on the couch and watched The Great British Sewing Bee, because at 11 p.m., I was too tired to be baking, but he was a trooper, and they came out delicious.

I don’t have a written recipe for you, but basically I started with taking the liquid from the thawed bananas and reducing it by half on the stove, to give a more concentrated banana flavor. Then took half of that and made a double batch of banana bread (follow any standard reliable recipe) mini muffins (about 15-20 minutes at 350). Melted about a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips, dipped the cooled muffins, sprinkled them with about 1/2 a cup of chopped salted roasted cashews. Very tasty.

Batch two was spiced mini muffins — I used raw sugar instead of regular, added about 1/2 a cup of chopped cashews to the batter, along with ground cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves.

These will be going in the Patreon boxes for September — there are 15 treat box subscriptions left, $10 / month, 3 boxes / year. If you subscribe this week, you’ll get the September box, so that’s $30 off your first box, which is 75%, so a pretty great bargain. 🙂 I haven’t decided yet what’s going in the September box, though — it’s a bit of a mystery. Definitely some of these and some passionfruit marshmallows, though.

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Suitably birthday indulgent

Birthday food: Anand made my morning tea, Kevin made us breakfast crepes, I indulged myself with Culver’s french fries and a lemon ice with fresh strawberries for lunch at work, we tried a new yummy pizza place (Milly’s Pizza in a Pan) for dinner, and had key lime pie and death by chocolate for dessert.

Everything was delicious and suitably birthday indulgent. Tomorrow, I might need a salad, though. 🙂

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Looking for recipe beta testers!

Looking for recipe beta testers! I’m finally getting around to finishing the little Serendib Tea Party cookbook that I promised as a Kickstarter stretch goal, and I need these recipes tested. In exchange for testing at least 2 recipes, you get a copy of the e-book.
I’d particularly like to get the baked goods tested — I’m pretty confident on the rest of them, but I’m not the most expert baker!
If interested, please drop your name and preferred e-mail in comments below (I’ll only use it for this purpose, promise).
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(NOTE: If you were a Kickstarter backer for Feast, you’re already getting a copy of the e-book. But you can have a second copy to send to a friend!)
(NOTE 2: The menus below are a draft — I reserve the right to tweak them some.)
(NOTE 3: We’ll have a pre-order page up soon! If there’s enough interest, we’ll do a print version of the cookbook too.)
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I finally decided to try it

I’ve been here long enough that the hostas are proliferating — I’ve known for a while that they’re edible, and that people like the early shoots for a sort of leek-like flavor, but I never quite felt like I had enough hostas that I was willing to sacrifice some shoots.

But I finally decided to try it — easy to do, just made up an omelette with what I had in the fridge. I’d say the sautéed hosta shoots have a very light flavor — slightly vegetal, edging towards bitterness, but at this stage, not as bitter as, say, arugula. They’ll get more bitter as they get older, if you like that flavor.

I’m not sure I’d go out of my way for them, but on the other hand, an easy way to add some early spring greens to my diet, and basically free at this point. I’m sure they’re good for me!

I glanced at this as a jumping off point, if you want a recipe to work from: https://www.motherearthliving.com/…/edible-hosta-tart…/

If you like frying things, tempura hostas shoots seem to be quite popular. I don’t fry very often, so don’t know that I’m going to try that anytime soon. If you do, report back!