Cooking with Kathleen

I have been feeling a little down and out this past week so a good friend came by and dropped off a beautiful bouquet of tulips; magenta with pure white centers and lovely spring green leaves.  They really lifted my spirits.  The weather here in Michigan is a bit fickle this time of year (60 degrees and sunny one day and 18 degrees and snowing the next…no joke!) so having the flowers in a vase that I can move around the house with me helps brighten my day.  I move it from my office to the kitchen to the laundry room, back to the kitchen and then back to the office.  Laugh if you want but this is all true and it works!

Here is a tip that I learned years ago when studied perennial gardening - cut tulips will stand straight up if you keep no more than 1″ of water in the bottom of the vase - making sure all stems are reaching the water.  Also, check the water level daily to insure the stems are always submerged.  Maybe you can go out this afternoon and pick-up a small bouquet of fresh tulips to brighten your day…or maybe someone elses!

sweet and saltie…kathleen

I taught a cooking class this past weekend in Grand Rapids.  It was done at the library and it was for teens.  I had a blast and I think the teens had a good time too.  We were having so much fun, a few of the librarians snuck in to see what all the excitement was and decided to stay!  Cooking with teens helps me learn more about their life on a day by day basis and it  helps them understand the ideas of cooking in a fun casual way without the pressures of impressing anyone at home (mom, dad, grandma or other siblings).  One of the recipes we made was my Peanut Dip.  A great substitute for that carmel apple dip one would find in the produce department so popular in the fall.  This dip has real ingredients with real flavor - no preservatives and no secrets.  My teen students loved the flavor and were dipping all kinds of things in it - from rigatoni dippers, apples, bananas, orange slices, to seasoned pita chips, etc…  I have also thinned this recipe with low-sodium chicken broth and a bit of crushed garlic - toss in a pound of elbow pasta and some cooked chicken chunks and walla - a great meal!

PEANUT DIP

1 cup creamy or crunchy peanut butter

5 tablespoons light maple syrup

2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce

Combine all of the ingredients in a small bowl; whisk to blend.  Serve or store in the refrigerator up to 2 weeks.

Have you ever gone into the grocery store and buy a few bottle of wine and the cashier packs the bottles in one of those re-useable bags specifically designed to carry glass bottles?  Well, my local grocery store does this and I had accumulated a fair number of these bags (over a long period of time of course…) so I decided to bring them back and let others have the opportunity to use them.  Well, the cashier and the manager of the wine department refused to take them back stating that once the consumer uses them, it is against the law to re-use them for a new consumer.  Kind of like re-gifting being agains the law.

So I decided to be “Martha Stewart on a budget” (a nickname my sister gave me) and take the scissors to my bags.  I cut out all the sections within the bag except for one.  Now I have a stash of bags in my trunk that I use to run into the store and carry home a bottle of wine, a chunk of cheese, and a loaf of bread.  Oh yah, a bottle of cheap wine if Martha was wondering.

I just recieved an itouch via my generous son, a few months ago.  My daughter and her boyfriend are having alot of fun with it, posting pictures and downloading applications.  The problem is that I have no idea how to use it!  I have an ipod and can navigate through my itunes account with just a bit of assistance from my kids, but this itouch is confusing.  It plays music (like my ipod), I have a shotgun app. (not my idea), bible app. (this helps when I am praying for my ineptness), I even have a calculator, but why do I feel so “i”-illiterate”?  …I can read, but I can’t seem do much else.  I must schedule a time with my son and get some lessons.  Do you think I would need to pay him for his time…I mean, this might be like a tutoring session!  More later! Kathleen

My bananas are about to walk off the counter.  I love yellow bananas with lots of freckles.  They are sweet, soft and the perfect comfort food for me, but my husband and 2 two kids won’t touch them like that.  They prefer their bananas practically all green - yuck!  So I buy a  bunch of bananas (green) and put them on the counter.  They eat them, but occasionally some are left over and within 2-3 days the bananas are ripe for me, but way over ripe for them.  I leave them on the counter hoping some one will be hungry enough to eat them in any state…that’s when they take a quick turn for the worse…brown, then black..oh dear!  So today I had a sweet tooth, but just couldn’t bring myself to eat something totally unhealthy, so I decided to make a Banana Chocolate Chip Snack Cake with these lovely, rich colored bananas left on my counter; cake sweet enough to satisfy my sweet tooth, but still healthy enough to feel good about eating a piece, or two, or three…  Sorry, no photos.  The cake was so good, it was consumed before I was able to pull the camera out!  Make sure you cool cake completely before slicing into so the chocolate doesn’t ooze out everywhere, also the flavor will be much better.

Banana Chip Snack Cake

3 cups all-purpose flour (can substitute 1 cup whole wheat flour with 1 cup white)

3/4 cup white sugar

3 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups mashed bananas

2 eggs

1cup unsalted butter, melted

1/2 cup skim milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 ¼ cup semisweet chocolate chips

1.      Preheat oven to 350⁰F. Grease 9×13 inch pan.

2.      In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking soda and salt.

3.      In a separate bowl, combine bananas, egg, melted butter, milk and vanilla.

4.      Stir banana mixture into flour mixture until blended. Be careful not to over mix.

5.      Stir in chocolate chips.

6.      Pour half batter into 9×13 inch pan; sprinkle with chocolate chips; spread remaining batter over top. Bake 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean.  Cool completely before slicing.