Thursday, May 30, 2013

Strawberry-Banana Bread Goodness!

As of late I have very little time to cook...or energy. But after a long weekend of catching up on sleep and being lazy ie: letting my mom do all the cooking (thanks Mom) I decided to bake! I found a strawberry banana bread recipe on Pinterest and decided that my black banana's didn't have to go in the trash. 

I modified the recipe a little. I didn't use anything organic and I didn't have plain yogurt so I substituted strawberry and I wasn't about to buy unrefined granulated sugar but, everything turned out great!


Yum!

Ingredients (The Abby Modified Version)
  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 3 1/2 overripe medium-sized bananas, peeled & mashed 
  • 2 Tbsp plain yogurt (I used whipped Strawberry)
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 cup chopped and hulled strawberries- *quick fun fact-you can hull a strawberry with a straw after you cut the leaves off!
Directions
Preheat oven to 325°F. Butter, oil, or spray a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
In the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a medium bowl using a handheld electric mixer) beat together the sugar and eggs on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.
On low speed, slowly drizzle in the oil. Add in the mashed bananas, yogurt, and vanilla extract; mix on low speed just until combined.
Using a rubber spatula, fold in the flour mixture and chopped strawberries just until dry ingredients are fully moistened (no flour streaks should be visible).
Pour batter in the prepared loaf pan.
Bake for 1 hour, or until golden brown on top and a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 30 minutes, then finish cooling on a wire rack.
Nutritional Information Per Serving (1/12th of the loaf): 222.1 calories


Original recipe, directions and nutritional info from http://www.healthyfoodforliving.com/strawberry-banana-bread/

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Adventure

From time to time I like to ask Alex off the wall questions. The other day I asked him why he liked being married to me. I wasn't expecting what he said but, it made me think. He responded, "I can't say that there is any one favorite thing, but I do like the everyday adventure of our marriage."

I don't think that we're the most exciting people on earth. We watch a lot of Hulu and Netflix, we don't go on exotic vacations or dates, we're just normal people with a crazy dog. But, we're very happy with our lives. We spend our weekends either working on our house, spending time with family and friends or finding adventure within our own backyard.

Lately our adventures have included going garage sale-ing, visiting the farmers market, celebrating a lot of birthday's, watching star-trek (not my personal favorite), learning how to grill, and jogging on the trails and paths around our neighborhood and community.

What are your adventures?

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Monday, May 27, 2013

Special thoughts for a Monday...

Happy Memorial Day! I am very thankful for all those who have served and are currently serving. A special thank you to my big brother, Jim. You're the bravest man I know! I'm very proud of you and can't wait until you come home! Stay safe.

On a side note...


Happy Happy 4th Birthday (tomorrow) Ethan! 
You truly are an awesome little boy!

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Make Your Own Hand Soap!


After I made our laundry detergent I began thinking about making our own hand soap. So, I Googled recipes for hand soap and of course scoured Pinterest and found that you only need 3 ingredients! 



Ingredients: 
Water -1 Gallon
Bar of Soap (without moisturizer)
Liquid Glycerin - 2 TBSP

I used Distilled water and had no problems, but I'm sure you could use any water you'd like. As for the soap, a lot of people who had made their own hand soap had problems when using a moisturizing soap, like Dove, so I chose Dr. Bonner's Magic soap- it's organic and fair trade- in peppermint, it smells wonderful. I found the liquid glycerin in the cake decorating isle at Michael's. So, the total for this experiment has been:

Water: $1 from Target
Soap: $4.17 from Target
Glycerin: $2.99 from Michael's
Totaling: $8.16 + tax

To make the soap  all you do is grate your bar of soap, which I repeatedly called cheese (due to the grating).


Pour your gallon of water into a HUGE pot, add your grated soap and glycerin. Stir over medium heat until all of your soap is dissolved and then let your mixture sit overnight- for at least 10 hours. 


It won't look very exciting before you go to bed...just be patient. :)  In the morning, it will look much more soap like. Stir it around to make it more consistent and then viola you have a year's (or more) supply of liquid soap!!


All of our soapy goodness!!
Enjoy!