Blog Backlog + In the Kitchen: Banana Bread

Dearest readers, I must apologize for my lack of blogging in recent weeks. The start of the school year has been keeping me busy (lame excuse, I know). But I'm back and hope to be posting more in the coming weeks, though my budget and my busy student life may necessitate writing posts less frequently or else broadening the scope of this blog a bit. Since I am currently taking an 'Edible Education' class, taught by Michael Pollan and Nikki Henderson, attended regularly by Alice Waters (I sat two rows behind her yesterday, awesome!), with amazing guest speakers so far, I feel that my thinking about food is shifting and that I am becoming more interested in the food movement and food justice in general. So, maybe a few of my future posts will address this theme, along with my regular restaurant reviews and in the kitchen posts. 


But for now, let me bring you up to date on one my culinary adventures from a few weeks ago. I had just returned from Santa Cruz and had lots of leftover food that was too much for me to eat alone. I recruited Ben and ate Zachary's pizza more frequently than I would like to admit and had been making good progress. But there was one item that I received that I was just not interested in eating: three overly ripe, browning bananas. I found this one item to be so frustrating because I really hate throwing away food, especially when there are others out there who are hungry and I was able to get this for free. (This sentiment has only been reinforced by a recent 'Edible Education' lecture by Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food International, who said that in the U.S. alone, we throw away 22 tons of food a day. Eek!). So it felt wrong to waste these bananas, but it seemed I had no other choice, until Ben suggested that I make banana bread. Such a simple idea had never occurred to me, but as soon as he mentioned it, I was thrilled! This way, I got to use my bananas and eat something delicious, win/win. 

Banana Bread: Waste Not, Want Not. 

We decided to spice our banana bread up a bit with some chocolate chips, and after looking up a recipe, ran down to the store to get some. We returned to Ben's apartment and baked up a banana bread storm, which was much simpler to do than I thought it would be. It was, of course, delicious and the bananas were at the perfect overripeness for making banana bread. We did, however, make the mistake of refrigerating the leftover banana bread, which made it pretty tough when we ate some the next day. While it was still edible, it would have been much more enjoyable had we not done that. Overall, though, I felt triumphant in being able to create something pretty darn tasty out of something I was considering throwing away. 

In the Kitchen: Baking, Blueberries, and the Beatles

Baking, Blueberries and the Beatles. That was my and my friend Eliza’s plan for this in the kitchen experience. And, although things did not exactly go as we intended, Eliza and I ended up making some pretty delicious blueberry muffins. After a lovely pizza- and conversation-filled dinner at Zachary’s Pizza, we headed over to Trader Joes and Market Hall to pick up the few supplies that we needed to make this recipe, aptly named “To Die For Blueberry Muffins”.

            When we returned to my place and finally got down to business, we put Abbey Road on my record player and prepared ourselves for a baking frenzy. I turned on my oven only to discover an unfortunate smell of gas. My oven was broken. I was frustrated with myself for not checking to see if my oven was working, especially since I had had problems with it in the past. I thought (logically I might add) that if the oven worked the last time I used it, it would work this time. So I turned off the gas and called Ben, hoping he might be able to help me fix my oven and salvage our evening. Although he couldn’t fix it, he and his roommate (also named Ben) generously offered to let us use their super nice brand new oven.

            So Eliza and I packed up Abbey Road and all the ingredients into a giant bag and trekked over to their place. Baking was so much easier in their kitchen and this only reinforced the importance of having access to good equipment. But I couldn’t have it all. Sadly, Ben’s record player is old and funky and Abbey Road skipped so much that we couldn't keep it on. Although this marked the death of our planned evening, it was probably for the best; Eliza and I were pretty tired at that point and some silence actually did us some good. We were even able to pull it together enough to bake up some super delicious blueberry muffins. The topping was the best part of the muffins by far: a combination of flour, sugar, butter and cinnamon is virtually infallible when it comes to taste. Although Ben (boyfriend) doesn’t like blueberries, he still enjoyed his muffin and Ben (boyfriend’s roommate), Eliza and I all ate ours with gusto. And, not to toot my own horn too much, these muffins received an abundance of compliments when I brought a batch into my internship at Making Contact/NRP.

My lovely co-baker, Eliza.

The Bens, enjoying their milk and muffins.

            Overall, this was just one of those times when a change of plans worked out for the best. Later, I found a potential explanation for our bit of good luck: unbeknownst to us, we baked our blueberry muffins two days after National Blueberry Muffin Day. The stars must have been in alignment or something, because those muffins were superb.