A Monkey Wrench in the Plan

Welcome friends, well here we are! My first blog post. It is a weird time to start a blog, the country is under quarantine, with the spread of COVID-19 scaring the living shit out of me, I find myself NEEDING to write. But this was not part of the plan.

My plan, really, was to start a blog to keep myself occupied while job hunting, just a little something to keep me busy, keep my mind engaged, and fill my hours alone at home while Red and Buhbah were at school and work, respectively.

Surprise! I now have no alone time, everyone is here, everyone is on top of each other, everyone is fighting for screen time. Laptops, tablets, phones, and various other electronics are being charged and drained and charged and drained again all day long as we jockey for information, try to get (at least some) work done, and attempt to find the bright spots within the mess and chaos.

To quote John HannibalI, "I love it when a plan comes together" err...or not!

I am a person who loves to plan, I am not always great at following through, but man do I love to PLAN! The plan was to fill my days of unemployment by blogging.

To share some fun recipes, tips on shopping, meal prep, dealing with leftovers and keeping your family meals organized in a way that is easy and accessible, in other words, sharing a plan, that can be followed through!

The Quarantine has thrown a monkey wrench into the plan. How can I concentrate, when I can't tear my eyes away from what is happening in the world? How can I meal plan, when my trips to the grocery store have now been cut way back? How can I project enough confidence in myself to be able to put anything together that anyone out in this world-gone-mad will want to take time out of their own struggle to read, let alone play in the kitchen with me? Fucking quarantine monkey wrench.

This is stressing me the hell out.

When I am stressed, I hit the kitchen, one of the first things I do is take inventory and see what needs to be used up. The first day of quarantine, we are stocked to the rafters with stuff that needs "used up" or really just eaten, everything is pretty fresh, plenty of junk food to sustain whiny children, plenty of booze to sustain whiny husbands, plenty of wine to sustain whiney me. And then I spot them, over in the corner, my natural born enemy, the disgusting banana.

They had seen better days, they were at the point where they would just peel themselves when you tried to remove them from the bunch (shudder).

I am pretty grossed out by bananas, and the only reason they are in my house, is because the menfolk like them. So it always gives me pleasure to take them out. Bam! Smashing banana feels like a good way to get out my frustrations.

Got some bananas withering away as your family inhales all the quarantine junk food?

Grab em and smash em!! Feel better?

Good, now let's make some Almond-Banana Bread and chill out.

Almond-Banana Bread

This recipe is pretty banana forward, just a whisper of almond and a bit of almond-y crunch, in fact almond doesn't really deserve top billing here, but I can't give bananas top billing, it goes against my moral code of hating bananas. Sorry for any confusion, if you want almond recipes, hang in there, eventually, I will ramble my way to something more your liking.

Warm up:

Preheat oven to 350

Equipment: 8x4 Loaf pan- Spray it with cooking spray or hit it with some melted butter- you are in quarantine, use all the butter you want, you now live in stretchy pants for days.

Assemble your crew:

(1 stick) unsalted butter (melted)

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp almond extract

3 medium bananas (yuck), very ripe

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup Sliced Almonds

When life gives you bananas, make banana bread:

Combine the melted butter and the sugar, and whisk until combined.

Add the eggs. Whisk until completely combined and the mixture is smooth

Add the milk and extracts. Whisk the milk, vanilla and almond extract into the batter

Mash in the bananas. Peel the bananas and add them to the bowl. Using a fork, mash

them into the batter. Leave the bananas as chunky or as smooth as you want! I don't like chunks of banana, so I go ahead an pulverize them into a smooth batter.

Add the flour, baking soda, and salt. Measure the flour, baking soda, and salt into the bowl. Stir until the ingredients are just barely combined and no more dry flour is visible.

Fold in the nuts. Scatter them over the batter and gently fold them in.

Pour the batter into your greased loaf pan.

Bake for 50 to 65 minutes. Baking time will vary slightly depending on the moisture and sugar content of your bananas — start checking around 50 minutes and then every 5 minutes after. You want the top to be a dark caramelized brown with the light interior starting to show through a cracked top.

Cool in the pan for 10 minutes- Be patient! Remove it when it is too hot and you can crumble that beautiful loaf into oblivion- remember those failures I talked about? Yeah, you need to listen to me here, please. I fail, so you don't have to!Give it 10 minutes or so to firm up.

Remove from pan and cool another 10 minutes before slicing.

Awww, muffin...Don't feel like loafing around? Try these instead!

Banana muffins: To make muffins, line a muffin tin with paper liners and fill each cup to roughly 3/4 full. Top each muffin batter with some sliced almonds and sprinkle a little sugar on top to make them crunchy and sparkly muffins- I mean obviously you want them sparkly, right? Bake at 350 for 19-25 mins- Muffin Time!

Even I, the great banana hater, will inhale a slice of this warm banana bread, it is that good. Give it a shot, and let me know what you think!