This ish is Bananas.....

To say that I'm particular with bananas is a bit of an understatement. In fact, there is a pretty small window of time in which I LOVE bananas, a little bigger window in which I tolerate them and a gaping swath of time in which, unless used in something else, they gross me out. The gaping swath starts when the first spot appears on the banana. Soon thereafter, they're going to start to smell like bananas and their skin gets all papery. Sick. Anytime after the banana is able to be peeled, I'm in. Bring on the green bananas.

That being said, I end up with a lot of bananas that cross the line before I can eat them. The husband loves the spotted bananas because he mashes them up in his oatmeal in the morning. My only use for this stage of banana was either (a) make a small batch of muffins or (b) cut and freeze for use in protein shakes. Turns out, when I'm on path (b) with frozen bananas, there is something else I can make with them. Something magical.

Behold, what becomes of bananas, once gross and spotty, then chopped up, frozen, then blended.
Magical indeed.

It actually tastes like pretty sweet ice cream. Hoo-boy. This ish is bananas.

From the lovely www.thekitchn.com who fills my Reader with more posts than I can generally get through in a day. And yes, we have tried a batch with an added dash of peanut butter. A good decision as well.

Enjoy!

Asian Chicken Salad, Modified

The original version of this salad, the one I have had pretty regularly throughout my life, has ramen noodles and the accompanying packets of chicken flavored MSG. I modified my original recipe and nixed the noodles altogether (although in the future I may mix in some rice for bulk) and used some Chicken "Better than Bouillon" in the dressing to make up for the lack of poultry flavor. The ingredients:

Salad:

One head cabbage (or a bag of shredded)

1 T Sesame Oil

3 T Sesame Seeds

6 T Sliced Almonds

3 Chicken Breasts, Cooked and Cubed (I only had two, le sigh)

Dressing:

3/4 cup Vegetable Oil

6 T Rice Vinegar

4 T Sugar

1 tsp Pepper

Better than Bouillon to taste - maybe 2 tsp?

To make:

Shred the whole cabbage:

Toast the almonds in the sesame oil, adding the sesame seeds after the almonds have a little color:

Mix sesame seeds, almonds and chicken into shredded cabbage. Mix dressing together (it takes a bit of whisking to work the bouillon into the dressing) and stir into cabbage mixture.

Mix all well and you're done!

Bullion ... Veggie, Not Gold.

Soup Monday. I've been on a recent trend of cooking soup every Monday. At first it was by chance and then it just seemed like a nice trend to keep up. Gluten-free broth is sometimes hard to find and frankly, broth is expensive for what it really is. I've had Heidi Swanson's Homemade Bullion {{http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/homemade-bouillon-recipe.html}} on my to-make list since I first saw it on 101cookbooks and realized it was a great chance to save some money (it makes a lot!) and also control what was going into the base of my soups.

I had a lot of veggies on hand from that week's CSA delivery (shout out to farmfreshtoyou.com) so I added a few things from the store and ended up with this lot:
What's that thing on the right that looks like it belongs in a Harry Potter potion you ask? Well that's celeraic, or celery root. And its just that. The root from the stalks of celery. And it tastes like, well, celery, but in more of a jicima texture. A closer look:
Admittedly I've never used it before and clearly I'm not the only one. The clerk at the grocery store check out said, "Ew, what is this?" when it came across the belt. Nice.

The final product looked a lot like Heidi's and has been successfully used in many soup recipes. I keep it in the freezer and since it has salt in it (although we halved the salt amount in order to be able to add it to each recipe as needed), it doesn't freeze solid and it is very easy to pull a few teaspoons out for each recipe.

I used approximate measurements given what I had on hand. My sun-dried tomatoes were not fresh and didn't grind up as well as they should have. Lessons learned.