Happy Halloween

The Merriest of Halloweens to you all! It's So spooky!
~the little pink fairy

nummy nummy pancakes

The nummiest pancakes Ever! I just made them, less than half an hour ago.

I altered a recipe from my new birthday cookbook from my mother, The Cook's Illustrated editors' cookbook. Which goes against the very idea of using a perfected recipe(which is all they have in their book), but I never make a recipe correctly, ever.

Mix 1 cup flour, 1-2 teaspoons sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon baking soda together in a bowl. In a 2 cup measure, mash 1 banana and whip it until it is mostly smooth. Then add milk(I used almond breeze) to the one cup measure mark and mix again, then add one egg and whip it up. Then add 2 tablespoons melted butter to the liquids and mix again. Add liquids to the dry ingredients. Spoon little pancakes onto a med-hot oiled skillet. While the wet batter side is still up, place two thin slices of banana on top. Flip over then they're ready. The banana caramelizes a bit and gets soft while the second side cooks. These are very very good with sliced banana and Hawaiian coconut syrup on top. Like I ate way more than I would have if they were just regular style pancakes.

Like I've said before....

...Only the cute will survive. And this proves it. Cute, but scary. Make sure to look at the small print at the bottom of the page!! Some people have been confused. Thanks to Cole for the link.

Forgetting

Yesterday was the second time in the past couple weeks that I have forgotten that my grandfather died, it just happens for a second but it really knocks me for a bit of a loop. It's such an overwhelming surprise to be going along, thinking about him in the present and what I'll say to him the next time I see him, but then I remember that it isn't possible.

Since Matthew's parents are in town, they wanted to tour the Midway, so we went along(we'd never gone before). At one point while I was traveling through the corridors of Engineering I briefly thought, "I've got to tell Grandpa about going through the engineering section and tell him how difficult it looked to work in that section." I was a little worried that I'd become hysterical while wandering around a museum; the emotion was that strong.

It was enough to make the rest of the visit a bit less cheerful, well that and the fact that we were touring planes that were designed for and that had killed many people. I think the museum has a certain weight of darkness just by virtue of it's purpose.

All in all a very interesting opportunity to understand the military and to understand my grandfather from a totally different perspective, one I never would have been able to imagine. I kind of wish I'd done it while he was alive.

We're turning into little bears!

Well almost...we sure are sleeping a lot and then waking up and wanting to sleep some more. I think our little bodies are trying to hibernate. I wore a thick fall coat(two in fact) because it was so cold and rainy yesterday. If I suddenly start sprouting little round ears on the top of my head and my nose become big and pointy and my body doubles in size, we'll know what happened.


Aaaaarrr!

tasty little cakies

My plucky little food processor once again performed the task I set before him quite admirably. He whipped up some sweet little chocolate zucchini cakes in a very short time, the butter was even half frozen. Didn't faze him. I got the recipe off Clotilde's website, Chocolate and Zucchini, which was the first food blog I ever read. It was the delicious girl drink that lead me down a long and bright path of addiction, a delightful addiction to food blogs, I just couldn't get enough of them. Thank goodness that's over, it took all my time and drove Matthew crazy. And while I don't want to write a food blog, since they are way too much work, my life does revolve around food so if I'm writing about my life, the boring little one that it is, then I am obliged to post a few recipes now and again.

All that little tangent to say, I'm not writing a food blog(Matthew!) so don't mistake it for that =).

Instead of making a full on cake I decided to make a half batch of the recipe and to put the batter into little shell shaped madeline molds that I stole from work(they were rusting at the bottom of a bin). They were darling and delicious, but not too sweet, which is why I always like Clotilde's recipes. I, of course, did not follow the recipe exactly; I never do, much to Matthew's consternation. I left off the topping since I was not making a normal cake and I didn't put in the chocolate chips because I'm still trying to lose a bit more weight and I was already proud of myself for baking anything at all, baking being an activity I've tried to avoid since the tragic weight gain of '05.

Basically the impetus behind this project was a couple containers of grated zucchini in the freezer. It was going bad, I had to save it, so I stuck it in the freezer. Like I always say, "I'm a child of the Depression without ever having been within 50 years of it, all because my dear Grandmother passed on her depression era values so well when I was a child. So, I didn't even get to grate the zucchini in my new baby processor, but he didn't seem to mind.

Matthew really liked the wee cakies too, so they must have been good!

Success

I used an old sock as a rag just 2 minutes ago. I cleaned my computer screen with it. I think the sock belonged to my mother and I took it from her my freshman year of high school. It is a happy little sock now.