I made food: cranberry banana bread

On Friday I decided to surprise my husband by baking something for him. Friday is his toughest day at work, and we had run out of ice cream to eat for dessert, so I knew he'd appreciate something sweet! We had two spotty brown bananas left, so of course I thought of banana bread.

I got this recipe a long time ago from a grad school colleague. It makes perfectly moist, sweet bread, and it's incredibly easy. Give it a try sometime!

Ingredients:

• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. baking powder
• 5 1/3 tbsp. unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 very ripe bananas, mashed
• optional: 1/2 cup mix-ins, like chocolate chips, nuts, etc. I used craisins to add some tartness

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder.

In a separate bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar and white sugar. Then beat in the dry ingredients.

Mix together the eggs, bananas and any mix-ins, then fold into the rest of the batter until just combined (you want to stir the batter as little as possible).

Butter up your loaf pan (or if, like me, you can't find your loaf pan, any bread-shaped dish) and pour in your batter. Stick it in the oven for 50-60 minutes.

While you're waiting, feel free to lick the bowl.

"Hmm, maybe if I lie down very nicely, I'll get a little batter too..."

"SCORE!!"

The bread is done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Try to resist eating it until it cools down a little!

I made food: cinnamon craisin cookies

Another day, another batch of cookies. This is another variation on Mark Bittman's butter cookie recipe; it's the same as my butterscotch cookies except I used 3/4 cup of white sugar in place of the brown sugar, and I added 1 tsp. cinnamon and 1/2 cup craisins to the batter.

These turned out softer and moister than my last batch of cookies. They're like cinnamon raisin except with more zing--the tartness of the craisins really complements the butteriness of the cookie!

It's always nice to have some cookies around the house, especially after the crazy time I had last night...but I'll tell you about that next time. ;-)

I made food: curried couscous

I made another great side dish last night for my fiance! I grabbed this recipe from Ina Garten's The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. If you like curry, you will like this, and it's much easier than making an actual curry. My favorite part of this dish is the dried cranberries--they add a real pop of sweet/sour to the curry flavor.

All you need to do (other than making some couscous) is whip up a dressing of equal parts yogurt and olive oil, a little bit of white wine vinegar, some curry powder, turmeric, salt and pepper. Then add some scallions, grated carrot, parsley, and dried cranberries. The original recipe also calls for red onion and almonds, but my fiance doesn't like raw onion and I don't like nuts, so I omitted those. Ina also notes that you can use lots of other types of dried fruit, like currants or golden raisins.

You can vary the spiciness of the dish according to what blend of curry powder you use; I'm a big baby when it comes to spicy, so mine just had a little bit of heat. Another great thing about this recipe is you could replace couscous with your grain of choice. I'm a big quinoa fan, so I might try that next time!