Bloopers

I enjoy photography; for as far back as I can remember, I’ve always loved taking pictures.  I especially love taking pictures of animals.  With one dog and six cats, all of whom are ridiculously adorable, I have no shortage of photo opportunities.

What I do have a shortage of, though, is cooperation.  Sometimes it takes dozen of attempts to get one great picture of one of the fur kids.  They have a tendency to move, look away, or blink at the last minute.  Sometimes this results in some very cute blooper pictures.  So today, I give you a few of my favorite bloopers.  

Banana Pound Cake

I first made this banana pound cake with my paternal grandmother.  I don’t remember the first time we made it, but we made it together for years.  I always assumed it was her recipe.  I made it a few years ago when my aunt and uncle came for dinner, and learned from my aunt that it’s actually her grandmother’s, my great grandmother’s (she of the sweet tea fame, so you know it’s good) recipe.  Apparently she was quite the baker.  I don’t remember any baked goods from her.  Her arthritis was pretty bad by the time I was a small child, so she didn’t do much cooking or baking.  If this cake is anything to go by, I really missed out!

This cake is incredibly delicious!  It has become a favorite among the security officers at work, and is one of the most requested cakes when I bake for people at Christmas.  My dad’s “subtle” way of asking for it is to inform me of how many sticks of butter they have when I visit them, or to count the sticks of butter we have when he visits us.

It’s not usually an issue because everyone loves this cake so much, but it doesn’t keep very well.  It only lasts for two or three days.  I live in the south, with a lot of humidity, so you may be able to store it for a day or two more if you live in a dryer climate. It’s a really moist cake, so it tends to get moldy really fast, especially if you slice it and store it in a plastic container.  Like I said, it usually gets eaten long before it has a chance to go bad, but it does limit the ability to make it ahead of time for an event.

Banana Pound Cake:

3 sticks (1.5 cups) butter (Not margarine, real butter!)
Additional butter for greasing the pan
2 cups sugar
Additional sugar for coating the pan
4 large eggs
2 cups mashed very ripe bananas (usually somewhere between 3 and 6 bananas, depending on the size)
1/4 cup & 2 Tbsp buttermilk
1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
½ cup chopped pecans

Generously butter and sugar a bundt pan. You want every little crevice well coated in butter, or the cake isn’t going to come out of the pan nicely.

Beat butter at medium speed w/ electric mixer, or in a standing mixer, 2 minutes, or until creamy.
Gradually add sugar, beating 5 - 7 minutes.

Add eggs, one at a time, beating just until yellow disappears.

Combine mashed banana, buttermilk and vanilla in a small bowl.  Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Add alternately to butter mixture; starting with flour mixture, and ending with buttermilk mixture. Mix at low speed after each addition, just until blended.

Stir in pecans.

Spoon batter into buttered and sugared bundt pan.  Bake at 325° for 1.5 hours, or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool pan on wire rack for 15 minutes, remove cake from pan, and cool completely on wire wrack.

Enjoy!

Juggling Letters

For those of you participating, you know the A to Z Challenge is in full swing. For those not participating, the A to Z Challenge is a challenge for the month of April that involves blogging every day except Sunday and following the alphabet (A on the 1^st, B on the 2^nd, and so on). Some letters are easy, and you’re forced to choose between a few, even several, really good topics. Some letters are not so easy. And some letters are just plain hard.

There seems to be a lot of general agreement that letters toward the end of the alphabet are hard. Vowels also seem to be somewhat troublesome overall. Other than that it seems to be based on the individual blogger and possibly their theme (if they have one) as to which letters are hard. Here’s looking at you I, N, R, and U.

I found myself doing a lot of juggling letters around when I was planning posts (they’re not all written yet, so I’ll just say planning) and trying to find ways to make different posts work for different letters. It was helpful to write everything out and think of different titles and different angles for approaching the same subject.

I managed to juggle it around and turn what was going to be my B post into my U post and what was going to be my F post into my K post.

So what about you? Are you participating in the A to Z Challenge? Which letters were hard for you? Did you juggle anything around to suit a different letter?

Birthdays

Yesterday's Surprise Birthday Gift!

Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to celebrate birthdays. My parents adhere to a religion that strictly forbids the celebrating of birthdays. My first experience with a birthday party was at my first job after technical school when there was a birthday party every month for anyone whose birthday fell in that month. Each month had a committee to plan the birthday party. It was great fun, and the beginning of my love of all things birthday. It’s where I learned that birthdays are fun.

Eleven years later a lot has changed; I’ve moved to a different state, gotten married (to a man who’s a Christmas Eve baby), and have a different job. However, I still love all things birthday, and have the fortune to be around people who really get into celebrating birthdays.

Yesterday at work I walked into a lovely early birthday surprise from some of my co-workers. They took the time to choose my favorite flowers and candy. One of the things I love about my job is the fact that we celebrate co-worker’s birthdays. I always bake a cake of the birthday person’s choosing, we all go out to lunch together, and sometimes small gifts are given. It’s really nice because, let’s face it, a lot of us spend more time with our co-workers on a daily basis than we do our families. It’s nice to know that the people you spend 40 plus hours per week with are glad you were born.

Of course, co-worker birthday celebrations don’t replace birthday celebrations with family and friends. I love the traditions and fun that go along with birthday celebrations for my friends and family by marriage.

Since Nick is a Christmas Eve baby I always make sure he has a birthday party that has nothing to do with Christmas. It’s usually chili and a cake that in no way resembles anything Christmas-related. The cake has been everything from Star Trek to frogs.

My best friend Crystal almost always chooses grilling out for her birthday celebration. Her birthday is in early May, so the weather is usually perfect for being outside and grilling. We usually try new marinades or grilling something new.

Because I dislike the cold weather so much and my birthday is in early April, we almost always drive down to South Carolina to go to Riverbanks Zoo. It’s always warm there by then, and the garden is in bloom. I love it.

There’s always cake, too. This year Nicks’ mom and step-dad, Alan, (whose birthday is late March) were in town close enough to celebrate our birthdays together with a chocolate cake with an antique truck for Alan and an adorable white cake with pastel flowers and butterflies for me. I don’t like chocolate at all, so it means a lot that they go out of their way to get white cake for me.

So what about you? Do you love birthday celebrations? What are your traditions for celebrating birthdays with family and friends?

Breadman Bread-Machine Review

My Mother-In-Law gave me a Breadman bread-machine for Christmas last year, and I absolutely love it.  It’s my first bread-machine, so I don’t really have a good point of reference to say it’s better than others, but she has the same one, and it’s her second one.  The first one was a different brand, and she said it just didn’t hold up as well.

My mom had a bread-machine when I was a teenager, and all I remember about it was that it didn’t seem to work very well.  It kind of put me off of the idea of bread-machines for a while. But last year, I had a fairly big health scare, and have been trying to avoid soy since then. Trying to avoid soy is a monumental task because it’s in pretty much everything, even most breads.  I finally found two different breads in the grocery store that didn’t have soy, but they were about $6.00 a loaf, and they really weren’t that good.

I’ve also started reading a lot of blogs about cooking, cooking on a budget, and making slightly better food choices.  Quite a few of them mentioned bread-machines, and I found some bread-machine recipes that looked really good.  The idea of making home-made bread seems a little intimidating, and very time consuming to me, but the idea of dumping ingredients into a bread-machine and coming back to fresh bread in a few hours seemed wonderful.  So I put a bread-machine on my wish list.

French Bread w/ Rosemary 

The bread-machine has been wonderful.  The breads are delicious, and the ingredients are all things I can pronounce.  I really hate math, so I haven’t taken the time to figure out the cost per loaf based on the ingredients.  I do know that a bag of flour isn’t $6.00, and we get a lot more than one loaf from a bag of flour, so I think it’s definitely cheaper than the bread I was buying before.

You have to measure very carefully, and the machine moves around a little bit (don’t put it on the edge of the counter) during the kneading process.  It’s largely just put your ingredients in, push a few buttons, and come back later, which I love.  Oddly enough, you have to stir the ingredients during the Quick Breads cycle.  I didn’t stir the first time I used that cycle and ended up with a floury mess, but it has been fine when I follow the instructions and stir. 

This bread-machine has a delay feature that I love.  You can delay the baking by up to 24 hours as long your recipe doesn’t have dairy products, or anything else that can spoil quickly.  I always make a lot of soups and stews in the slow cooker during the colder weather, and it’s wonderful to be able to set the timer on the bread-machine so that we come home to hot soup and fresh, warm bread. 

All in all, I have to say if you’re considering a bread-machine, go for it.  It seems to be a good investment, especially if you’re trying to avoid certain ingredients in your food.   Breadman seems to be a reliable brand, and has some great features including the delay setting, a fruit/nut dispenser, and the ability to customize and program your own settings.