Banana Bread recipe

OK, here's our "roll your own" banana bread recipe.  We studied about 20 online recipes and kind

a morphed them into this recipe.

Four over-ripe regular size bananas.

1/4 cup plain Greek Yogurt.

One stick salted butter

1/2 cup brown sugar.

1/4 cup coarse organic cane sugar

3 large eggs

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

OK, we knifed the bananas into small pieces, added the Greek yogurt and used a hand mixer to really blend the two together and pretty much puree the mix.

Next we creamed the butter and used the hand mixer to thoroughly blend the butter and sugar together.

Then we added the butter/sugar mix to the banana mash and used the hand mixer to blend them together.

Then we added one egg at a time to the mash and blended it thoroughly before adding the second and third eggs.

We mixed all the dry ingredients together and then added them to the wet mix.  We heeded the admonition "don't over mix."  The final product went into the loaf pan and was baked at 350 for a little more than an hour until the proverbial toothpick came our clean.

Casserole Capers Continue

 
We all go way back with casseroles, don't we? Casseroles were a all-too-predictable and boring part of my childhood.  I didn't really rediscover casseroles until the River Guide phase of my life came along.  Back then it was called "dutch oven" cooking or baking or whatever.  Nobody called it casseroles but a lot of it was sort of the same kinda thing.  And then casseroles once again dropped off the radar. Out of sight. Out of diet.

But now casseroles are BAAACK!  Why?  Well, oddly enough, it has to do with heating our tiny 16-foot travel trailer.  Lately we've been doing some mildly cold weather camping. For example, the morning low September 8th was 23 degrees in Grand Teton National Park. Numerous things happen when it gets that cold.

First thing is that it gets danged cold INSIDE the travel trailer, too.  Second thing is the cold affects our 12 volt storage battery, making it far less efficient. Third thing is we're tempted to turn on the forced air furnace inside the trailer trailer.  Well, when we do that, it really drains the battery F-A-S-T!  The 1988 forced air furnace in our trailer uses a 12 volt fan to push the heated air into the trailer's living space, such as it is.  As anybody who uses 12 volt stuff knows, old electric motors suck a battery down like you read about.  

SO what to do?  Bake, bubba, BAKE!

Something in the oven quickly brings the trailer interior to a very comfortable, cozy level.  Yes, we keep a state-of-the-art carbon monoxide detector deployed at ALL times.  And we replace the detector every two years.  

Well, it's EZPZ to think of all sorts of things to bake in the morning....cornbread being a GOTO staple with muffins coming in a close second.  But what about a chilly afternoon? 

That's why and how casseroles suddenly reared their baking dish and caught our attention after all these years.  What a perfect afternoon way to heat the trailer.  Bake a casserole!  YEA!

First, we had to find a baking dish.  The traditional glass casserole dishes are out of the question in an over the road travel trailer.  What a nice way they would be to fill your living space with glass shards.  If would not be a matter of "if" they would shatter, simply a matter of "when."  A cast iron dutch oven is also out of the question.  Too bulky, too heavy, too unwieldy and too cumbersome for our arthritic wrists to handle....PLUS the fact most dutch ovens wouldn't even fit into our tiny travel trailer oven in the first place.  And there's more.  We sometimes camp where there is no water supply so sometimes conserving water is a Big Deal.  That means we sometimes don't have lots of water to wash dishes.  We needed an easy-to-clean casserole dish.

That's when we thought of a metal non-stick loaf pan.  We found a great one at Target for $7--two coats of ceramic on it.  It's the only online item we've ever found that had 100% 5-star reviews.  It's a Sweetie for sure.  It fits the oven perfectly.  It's lightweight but very stout.  The ceramic coatings are awesome non-stick surfaces. It easily fits into our "baking box".  I love the thing.

OK, so we have a casserole dish.  Now what?  Because it's been years since we baked a casserole, we were stumped.  First we turned to our cookbook library.  We have about 50 pre-internet cookbooks down in the basement pantry.  We picked out five books and combed through them looking for the proper recipe.  We thought we had a winner in a chicken-apricot casserole with water chestnuts. HAHAHA!  It turned out to be an epic disaster and went straight to the trash.  UGH!  What a mess.

So that firmly placed our casserole tale between our legs and we sulked off pouting for a few days.  How could a guy screw up a casserole?  Well, let me count the ways, buddy.  Finally on Sunday, September 20, 2020, we regained enough courage and optimism to try something else and it worked.  WHEW!  Now we can breathe a sigh of casserole relief and proceed on.

First, we bought a tray pack of 10 chicken thighs.  We pressure cooked them four at a time in the Insta Pot.  This removes most of the fat and really tenderizes the brown meat.  Then we removed the rest of the fat by hand and separated all the meat from the bones. There's still a little bit of fat in the meat itself but it's just enough to keep that meat from drying out.  We don't want to use chicken breast meat because it's so easy for that white meat to dry out and get really tough.  So, anyway, we now had our primary meat for a casserole dish but what to do next?

It didn't take long to decide on a casserole course of action.  We chopped up celery, red pepper and yellow onion.  Then we cooked up a batch of basmati rice.  We added one knife level cup each of celery, red pepper and onion to a saucepan.  We simmered the mix in one cup of lite coconut milk until the chopped veggies were almost "al dente."  We definitely didn't want them mushy.  Next we mixed in the can of cream of mushroom soup.  Then we measured two cups of the coarse-chopped chicken and two knife level cups of the rice and stirred all that into the veggie/soup mix.  We didn't add any herbs or spices because we wanted to see how the "native" mix would turn out. This mix was then poured into the loaf pan and baked (covered) at 350 degrees for 45 minutes in our travel trailer oven.  

Susun's a pretty fair-minded critic of my cooking.  If it's bad she tells me it's bad.  After my chicken apricot fiasco she said, "You better stick with cornbread."  So, I can trust her to tell me the truth and nothing but the truth.  We both enjoyed the delightful dish last night.  I woke up this morning and opened the refrigerator to grab some milk for my coffee and what should I see?

Ah...Sweet Success!

PS--The objective is to have the entire casserole mix pre-prepped, vac-packed in the Seal-A-Meal and frozen.  That way when we want to bake a casserole, we just open the pack, put it in the dish and, voila, the trailer is nice and cozy warm and we get a fun din-din, too. 

Dormant blog revived

We created this blog in February 2009. The "youngest" post here was over six years old.  Most of the posts dated to 2010 and 2011.  Somehow the blog fell off the table and disappeared down the drain.  Luckily we rediscovered it September 21, 2020, and it is now alive again.

Thy Thigh Time

I am reactivating this blog again. As you can see, the last post was in March 2009, about 18 months ago. I love the title of this blog--If You Eat. Fun, huh?

OK, let's Talk Thighs. Here's the Game Plan. Buy the best thighs you can find--don't buy cheap thighs--they are worthless. Buy name brand really good thighs that are fresh and look fresh and smell fresh. Hopefully, you can find them still partially frozen. Don't buy thighs that are nearly out of code--get the freshest code date you can find. Some stores sell thighs that aren't fit for pet food. Others supply a consistently high quality thigh. Learn which stores sell which thighs and don't ever bother even LOOKING at cheap thighs. Got that?

OK, now let's begin. Take your thighs home pronto and process them immediately. Don't let them lollygag around in your fridge. Set up a processing site on your counter. Put down a lot of newspaper. Have a double plastic shopping bag on one side, a clear workspace, the thigh tray pack and then a large stainless steel bowl next to it. Grab a paid of meat scissors and put on some food service gloves. Then start flailing and cutting away. Your goal is to strip off ALL the fat and skin from each thigh. Be ruthless and spare no fat bits! Also cut off that small triangular thingie on each thigh. Find that huge glob of fat hidden in each thigh muscle and cut it out, too. Go over each thigh with a the proverbial fine tooth comb and strip them of Demon Fat!

This is the hardest part of messing with the thighs. It makes a great big mess and it's hard work. I do it early in the day because if I wait too long into the late afternoon, I never seem to have the energy to mess with the cleaning process. Also, once I've got a great big mess of fat and skin all bagged and rolled up, I can take it to a trash can at the next grocery store I'm visiting that day and get rid of it pronto so it won't stink our own own garbage cans. Trust me, chicken trimmings go rank really fast in the hot summer sun. If I can't dispose of them immediately, I freeze them until trash pickup day.

OK, let's proceed. Now you have 10 chicken thighs sitting in a stainless bowl. Make up your favorite marinade and pour it over the thighs. Turn the thighs so they are totally coated with the marinade, cover with foil and put in the fridge for a few hours, preferably at least four hours. Meanwhile go on about your day and forget about the thighs. They are safe and OK now.

Here's my marinade: I pour a lot of vinegar-based Mexican hot sauce into a bowl and then add a little canola oil and some Worcestershire sauce. That's about it. Marinades span a whole universe of permutations so have at it in whatever way you prefer.

OK, time to bake the thighs. I line a 13 x 9 baking pan with double foil and then put an oven grate into the pan. I fork out the thighs and arrange all ten of them neatly BONE DOWN on the grate. NEVER put the thigh BONE UP on the grate. The bone helps the thigh bake evenly and correctly in a way you simply cvan't achieve with a boneless product. Next, I grind out my Secret Ingredient all over them. What's the Secret Ingredient? Well, it's somewhat easy to describe but you might have some trouble replicating it. I go to WINCO and buy a little bit of "this & that" and mix it all together and then put it in a pepper grinder. I have no idea of the quantities of weights of the stuff I buy--it's just whatever strikes my fancy on any particular day. Here's what I think I put into the mix: dried minced garlic, oregano leaf, some dried chopped onion, Italian seasoning blend, pizza seasoning blend, and hot crushed red chile peppers. Maybe there was some other stuff, too, I can't remember. That's why it's a Secret Ingredient. Heck, if I can't remember it, who can?--it must be a secret of some sort.

Now, I use a spoon to generously coat the tops of each thigh with the thick marinade. The oil helps the mix cling to the top of the thigh and not run off into the pan. Then I grind away and lay down a thick coating of dust from the Secret Ingredient mix, taking great care not to let the pepper dust get in my eyes or nose.
Be careful with a pepper grinder filled with some hot chile pepper--it's a dangerous combination.

I have preheated the oven to typical chicken baking temperature--300 to 350 depending on when you want to eat. The lower and slower you bake them the better they turn out in my humble opinion.

I put them in, note the time and forget about them for about an hour.
I don't turn the thighs or mess with them in any way while they are baking. I leave them alone. No more marinade, no more nothing. Leave them alone.

Then I go out and sniff around and see how they are doing with regard to the vaunted "smell test." Most any baked thing will reach a peak of aroma when it's done just right. That aroma fades as the dish gets overcooked. There's no way to tell you how to judge the aroma necessary for the thighs to pass the "Smell Test." Just bake a lot of thighs and you will come to know the smell when you smell it.

When they are peaking, turn off the flame and let them hang out in the oven for awhile longer while you get your din-din fixing's all prepped and ready to eat.

The baking pan makes a nice presentation--simply pull it out of the oven put it on a suitable trivet and enjoy!

That's all there is to is. Cheers! jp