Tag Archives: cooking

Banana Bread – Share the Love (Easy Family Baking!)

28 Mar

I’ve never been much of a baker – I’ve probably mentioned that I am no good at following instructions – but this banana bread is very forgiving of people who are more “more or less” than precise.

It’s very child-friendly. Leandro and I put it together often and he takes slices to school to dip in yogurt. I especially like to double it (using about 8 bananas total) and slice up some for his caregivers and my colleagues – everyone feels appreciated and esteemed when they are on the receiving end of home-baked loaves of something. I get a lot of requests for this recipe, so here it is! It also freezes well; check the bottom of the recipe for storing instructions.

Easy, Moist and Yummy Banana Bread

4-6 overripe bananas*

1 Cup sugar (1/2 light brown and ½ white works well, but any combination will do; we’ve used a bit of dark brown as well)

2 eggs, beaten

½ Cup vegetable oil

2 Cups flour (up to one cup whole wheat, but beware stone-ground as it may be too coarse)

1 tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350°. Mash bananas in mixing bowl. Add sugar, eggs and oil, one at a time, mixing well with each addition. Sift dry ingredients together (I use a big strainer) and add to banana mixture. Pour in greased 5×9 loaf pan (or 8×8 oven dish) and bake 55-60 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.

*We eat a lot of bananas here, but sometimes I buy too many and they get overripe, even for my son, who likes them sweet and eats the dark spots. Or he just wants half of one and I don’t want the other half. Any overripe or half-bananas get thrown into a plastic freezer bag and when I have approximately six, I make banana bread!

Storage notes: Banana bread should be cooled completely before slicing (I know, fresh-out-of -the-oven warm is so cozy! But it slices much better later on). It stays fresh tightly wrapped out of the fridge for two or three days. The refrigerator isn’t great for it, but you can warm it up a bit before serving. To freeze, slice first, then wrap in foil or plastic wrap and then place in a freezer bag. It’ll keep for at least a month and you can take out a slice at a time when you need a treat.

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Skagen Salad; Scandinavian Shrimp Salad (dill-icious)

25 Mar

 

Creamy, sweet, tangy, chunky, light

 

 This is how the stars aligned. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo got my friend, Ashley, in the mood for Scandinavian food. I had a couple of bags of frozen shrimp and prawns in the freezer and a hankering for dill. It was the third Friday night of Lent  (which I take to mean that God wants me to be creative with seafood). My Swedish sister-in-law has instructed me in the mystical art of extracting relatively authentic Swedish flavor from American ingredients (yes, IKEA plays a critical role). Thus, the following shrimp salad became the basis for a minimalist Swedish tapas night.

We also had brie on pumpernickel toast topped with lingonberry preserves (like I said, IKEA is crucial here) and, since this is being written in real time, there may be some herring and smoked salmon later on, although as there is no more sauvignon blanc to accompany it, maybe not.

This is really quick to make and yet is cool, unhurried and elegant. Maybe one day I will start playing around with the sour cream and mayo proportions and use plain nonfat yogurt, but virtue is not one of my virtues at the moment, so here it is in all its lush glory.

Scandinavian Shrimp Salad

4 Cups peeled, cooked and deveined shrimp (your choice of size*), chopped into small chunks

¾ Cup sour cream

¼ cup mayonnaise

½ cup red onion, minced

½ cup dill, finely chopped

3 Tsp lemon juice

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl, leaving lemon juice for last, salt to taste and serve with toasted pumpernickel , crisp crackers or atop a salad.

*My sister-in-law Annika, who is actually Swedish, was the one who found the original recipe that this is based on. For her, the flavor is not authentic unless you use those tiny, coldwater cooked and peeled Greenland Prawns that she gets in frozen 500g bags from IKEA. It is true, they have a distinctive sweet tang that regular bagged supermarket shrimp don’t, but I don’t like their texture thawed. So I use a strainer to dip them in the same water the rest of the shrimp are cooking in for just a minute which tightens them up without losing too much flavor. I use one bag of the tiny prawns and about a pound of other bagged shrimp (works out to half and half), but you can use whatever you have on hand.

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