Something New

Alright, so it's been three months since I've posted anything. What are you gonna do? Work has been all-consuming, and I haven't been doing anything remotely interesting. I saw a community theatre production of Les Mis this past weekend, but I couldn't write a whole lot of positive things about it, so I decided to abstain from a review.

I have barely been cooking and haven't even thought about baking, let alone try a new recipe. Well, this afternoon I woke up (hey, don't judge, I'm on night shift tonight) and saw these three sad brown bananas on my counter. This happens fairly regularly... I buy a bunch of bananas, eat two or three, and forget about them until they're far too mushy for my liking. Today, instead of throwing them away, I decided to turn them into bread.

I started leafing through cookbooks, looking for a recipe. Turns out, I don't have any walnuts or pecans, so Banana Nut Bread was out. I was decided on plain old Banana Bread when I came across a recipe for Banana Bundt Cake. Ooh! Something new and different! I got excited about trying something new, so I pulled out every cookbook and just started looking for the word "banana". There was a recipe for Chocolate Chip-Banana Bars that was intriguing, but a little plain. Let's improvise!

So I took bits and pieces from a couple of different recipes and threw in a few of my own ideas, and we have "Chocolate-Covered Banana" Bars.

"Chocolate-Covered Banana" Bars

Ingredients

3/4 C. unsalted butter, softened

2/3 C. white sugar

2/3 C. brown sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

3 ripe bananas

1 C. all-purpose flour

1 C. whole wheat flour

1/4 C. cocoa powder

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

12 oz. bag semi-sweet chocolate chips

powdered sugar to serve

Method

- In a mixer, cream together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at a time, beating until incorporated. Add in the vanilla. Beat in the bananas until well-incorporated, and no chunks remain.

- Add in the flours, cocoa, baking powder, and salt all at once, and stir until well mixed. Stir in the chocolate chips.

- Pour the batter into a greased and floured 9" x 13" pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

- Remove from the oven and let cool. Dust with powdered sugar to serve.

They're very thick, cake-y bars. Plates and forks might be called for. They're also delicious!

Hopefully this is the start of a new wave of baking in my life. Let's hope you hear from me more often!



Enjoy!

New Things

In an effort to blog more regularly, I am writing about new things in my life and new experiences I've had recently. I want to learn to carry my camera around more so I have more pictures to go with posts like this. If I blog about new experiences every week, I'd like to take pictures to go with it and the camera in my phone isn't going to cut it.

I've been trying to get out of my comfort zone a little and go to new places and make myself get out and do things. This past week, I tried two new restaurants, both in downtown Lewisburg, PA. The first is an adorable little Italian place - Vennari's. I went there after work one day since I wanted to go back to the theatre later to see Hugo. I had an eggplant parm sub that was pretty excellent. It's the kind of place that you can tell hasn't been redecorated since the early 90's, but has a kind of nostalgic charm. I would definitely go back there if the occasion arises.

The other new place I tried was the Cherry Alley Cafe. I had never even heard of it, but a friend invited me to lunch there. I had a Marinated Steak Panini and cole slaw. Oh. my. god. It was probably one of the greatest sandwiches I've had. Marinated steak (I think it was actually just delicious roast beef), tomato, roasted red pepper, mozzarella cheese, and onion jam on a ciabatta roll. It was juicy and fresh and amazing. The cafe itself is a little hipster place with an artsy atmosphere. The guy who took our order looked like he was about 15, and had blue hair and skinny jeans. Despite that, I could see myself killing a couple of hours in there with my laptop and an Americano. I'll definitely be going back - mostly because I want to try some other things on the menu (namely the pulled pork wrap, the grilled tofu salad, and the Cherry Ally salad).

Another new thing in my life is my amaaaazing new laptop. I was holding off on buying a new one until my old Dell died completely, but that wasn't far off and this guy was too good a deal to pass up. It's a Toshiba Satellite P755.



I had been looking at Dells, since that's what my past two laptops were, but to get all the features I wanted it was over $1300. I found this Satellite on the Office Depot website. I know, right? Who knew Office Depot was even still around?! But this one had everything I was looking for, plus some. It was half the price of the Dell, and they offered free overnight shipping. There was no way I was passing it up!

Well, I've spent most the day backing up and transferring files from my old computer, re-downloading programs, and getting my new Toshiba set up the way I want it. I still have to go through my music and get rid of some, organize it, and get it on this computer.

Be on the look-out for more new things in my life, and new experiences. Anything new in any of my readers' lives??