Curried Pineapple Banana Bread

(recipe courtesy of closetcooking.blogspot.com)

I loves me some bread. I also like to bake it. However, although pie crust is my nemesis, bread can be fickle for me. Therefore, I generally tend to stay with batters and mixes versus yeast, rising, et cetera and so forth. I saw this bread and though it looked good. I love pineapple and bananas and the thought of curry intrigued me, so I saved the recipe and recently tried it out.

Each set of ingredients makes one loaf.


Ingredients:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons curry powder
3 ripe bananas (mashed)





1/2 cup butter (melted)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 cup pineapple (I used Dole pineapple tidbits)
2 tablespoons unsweetened coconut flakes






Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix the flour, baking soda, salt and curry powder in a bowl.



3. Mix the bananas, butter, sugars, egg and lime juice in another bowl.













4. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet.
5. Mix in the pineapple and coconut.
6. Pour the batter into a greased 9x5 inch loaf pan.


7. Bake until a tooth pick pushed into the center comes out clean, about 60 minutes.



Unfortunately, I have an ancient digital camera and the picture of the finished product is not as sharp as I would like it to be. Let me point out, however, that the bread itself is YUMMY. It's very moist, almost cake-like. For anyone who thinks the curry sounds weird, it hits your tongue in a way that's very similar to cinnamon. The curry powder combined with the sugar and the banana registers as much more of a "sweet" heat than a "hot" or "spicy" heat like it does in more savory dishes. In fact, if I didn't know I'd put curry in the batter, I would have thought there was cinnamon in the bread instead.

This would also be good toasted on a rack in the oven for a few minutes to dry it a little bit and give it a little crispiness on the outside, then buttered. Or, as a dessert (again toasted) with some vanilla ice cream on it.

This will definitely go in the keeper file.

Gimpy the Eighth Dwarf checking in

Once again, my klutzy side has decided to share itself with the world. Bleah.

When I was training and fighting, getting injured was just part of the deal. Bruises, bloody noses, black eyes...all part of the plan. The credo in the gym was the bigger the bruise (or other injury), the sexier it was. (You should see my Self-Portrait of Hematoma. Rooooowwwwrrrr!!).

One of the things I did while cutting weight was to ruck. In other words, I took an Army pack, shoved two 20-lb bags of kitty litter into it, strapped that puppy on and hiked 10-12 miles while wearing layers of workout clothes and sweats. This occasioned comments ranging from "hardcore" to "My god, I always knew you were insane."

On one of these walks, I had barely gotten started when I tried to step to the side of the road, misbalanced and fell. Hard. Trust me when I say that 40 pounds of kitty litter increases your downward velocity like a mofo. However, I couldn't just go straight down. No. That would be too easy. Instead, I rolled my left ankle over so far that the ankle bone met the pavement before the rest of me.

Sitting on the ground, multiple thoughts ran through my head, but they all centered around a few key points: (1) Owwwwwwww!!!!! (2) I'm tough. I'm a fighter. I can take this. Pain is weakness leaving the body. (3) Owwwww!!!!!!...with a few swear words thrown in. (4) Pain is weakness - dude, this hurts! (5) Swear some more. Finally dragging my thoughts out of their cyclical nature, I used my cell phone to call the Spousal Unit and ask for a ride home.

Which brings us to now; almost a year later. I've had my fight and retired due to a long-term back injury, but I like to try and keep somewhat active and fit. Thus, I run/walk quite a few miles each week. On Thursday, I wasn't looking forward to the treadmill and thought I'd go for a walk/run for about five miles; walk some of it and then do sprints/cooldowns on the way back. Easy. Done it a hundred times before. It'll be a nice change of pace.

Yeah. Sometimes I should just stick with the plan.

I made it 2.5 miles out and turned around for the home stretch. I've got my track pants on, black sleeveless top, my old Navy cap...feelin' good, feelin' sexy, feelin' oh-so-very good. Which, looking back, really should have been my first clue something was about to go wrong. The universe likes to give me the middle finger at times like these.

I'd gone about three miles when suddenly...cue the ankle totally collapsing again and I go down (coincidentally, about a mile from the first incident). Suddenly, I'm sprawled over a busy intersection at a time approaching rush hour for this town. And did I mention I'm bleeding? That sleeveless top that I was feeling oh-so-sexy-and-good in? Didn't exactly save me from the marriage of asphalt and skin.

I managed to roll myself out of the road much like I imagine a salmon flops around when it's trying to hurl itself upstream and get upright. Running is out of the question. Walking normally may happen at some point but not before the general population of my town that travels this road daily around this time will get to see me limping like Igor trailing after Dr. Frankenstein. There was even an "M" word coming out of my mouth. It just wasn't "Master".

I've got road rash, various scrapes and small divots all down my left arm (but the tat is fine!). Also, my ankle once again looks like it's swallowed a tennis ball and I'm trying to find shoes that I can wear to work that allow me to wear an ankle brace underneath. I tried treadmilling yesterday and got about a mile before I said to myself, "Self, a strong work ethic is fine; admirable, even. Gritting your teeth while you injure yourself further is something the natives refer to as 'stupid'. Perhaps we should stop this for now."

"You think?"

"Does the universe need to flip you off again?"

"Um, no."

*look around furtively* Stupid universe.

Excuse me. My ice pack is calling.

Chicken Chimichangas, Part II: The Filling

So, to briefly recap...first we made the tortillas (which turned out wonderfully) and now we're on to the filling for the chimichangas. This recipe also had the option of adding refried beans to the chimichanga by spreading them on the tortilla before adding the chicken mixture but I chose to forgo that step.

1 small onion, chopped
2 1/2 cup chopped cooked chicken



1 tbsp oil
1 1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups salsa
1/2 tsp cumin
1 pinch salt



1. Saute onion and garlic in oil. Stirl in salsa, spices, chicken and salt. Cook until heated through.





2. If using, spread about 2 tbsp of refried beans on each tortilla then add about 1/2 cup of the chicken mixture. Fold like a burrito and secure with a toothpick or metal skewer.



3. Spray all sides with cooking spray and bake at 400F for 20 minutes (until golden brown) OR fry in a small amount of olive oil until brown on both sides.



4. EAT!



OK, first? Yum. Realllly good eats :).

As far as the folding went, I found it worked best if I laid the chicken filling down a line in the middle like the picture above, leaving some room around the edges. I took the top part of the tortilla and folded it over the chicken like I was starting to roll a cigar. Then, I folded the sides in towards the middle to create the beginnings of a tube shape. Then I folded the "tube" over.

(And how many times can I say "folded" in one paragrah?)

I didn't really need the toothpicks or any kind of skewer. As long as the tortillas aren't overstuffed, the mixture won't come out the sides or anything like that and the edges all meet, so there is a solid seam all the way around the chimichanga. I also chose to bake them in the oven rather than deep frying them; personal preference :).

The cinnamon may sound kind of odd but go with it. It will smell almost sweet - like baking sweet - when you're heating the chimichanga filling or they are cooking in the oven. When you're eating them, the spice translates into heat more than sweet. It adds another layer to whatever salsa you may have used and feels warm on the back of your tongue.

These were very tasty and kept well over the two-three days we ate them as leftovers.

Chicken Chimichangas, Part I: Homemade Tortillas

I love Mexican food - the more authentic the better. It's sommetimes hard to find the good stuff but we've managed to scope out some of the more "local" joints versus the ones that serve more Americanized versions of Mexican food. In between, I work on increasing my own repetoire. Something I hadn't really tried to this point was tortillas. For some reason, the making of them reminds me of my one true nemesis of the cooking world - pie crust. I cannot make a decent pie crust to save my life. I think tortillas seem similar because there is resting and rolling and such involved - similar to pie crust. But then I saw this recipe and the idea of tortilla-making suddenly seemed, well, simple. The only real difference I found was the use of shortening versus lard.

Flour Tortillas (makes eight 10" tortillas)

2 cups flour
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 to 3/4 cup warm water















1. Whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder.

2. Cut in the shortening until mixture resembles course meal.

3. Add warm water a little at a time, until mixture forms a soft dough without being sticky.

**Here is where you want to be careful. Don't just pour water in thinking all that flour will absorb it. Keep adding slowly and then knead the forming dough until all the water is absorbed before adding more. It's kind of like making risotto. As the liquid is absorbed, you add more. Same idea here. If you do add a little too much, keep working the dough gently. It may seem a little sticky at first but it will largely disappear with some patient kneading.

4. Knead until smooth and elastic. Roll into 8 equal size balls and cover with plastic wrap. Let rest for 30 minutes.



5. Roll each ball out on a lightly floured surface until very thin and about 10" in diameter. Layer them between sheets of plastic wrap and let rest for 10-15 more minutes (or until you are ready to cook them).





6. Place in a dry (no oil please) non-stick frying pan over med-high heat for about 1 minute on each side. You know its read to flip when it starts to puff up a bit.

7. Wrap with a tea towel while you are cooking the rest, so they don't dry out. Serve warm.



These were wonderful. They were pliable enough to roll into chimichangas with a nice, chewy texture. They also were good as soft tacos or just warm out of the pan with some butter or some butter/cinnamon sugar.

But since we're talking about chimichangas here, we'll get to that part next :).

Italian Casserole

I made this on one of those nights when I came home and wondered exactly what the heck I was going to do for dinner. It's not haute cuisine (or hottie cwi-zee-nee as my husband likes to pronounce it), but it's tasty and can be ready fairly quickly with minimal ingredients and minimal mess.

The evening's guests of honor:

It's one pound of regular sausage, a box of pasta, a 32 oz can of crushed tomatoes and a 2 cup size bag of cheese. I like buying the sausage "plain" as it were and adding my own spices to control both the flavor and the heat rather than buying the "Italian" sausage links. The pasta is whatever will hold the sauce so I will usually go for radiatore or something with ridges, and the cheese is just whatever grabs me. Mostly it's mozzarella or a mix of mozarella and parmesan, but I have made a Mexican version of this with sharp cheddar and sharp cheddar/queso fresco.

Brown the sausage in a pan and add whatever spices follow along with the theme. If I'm making an Italian version, I'll usually throw in some salt, pepper, oregano, and just a touch of cayenne for some added heat. I just season to taste and the heat level my family is comfortable with. If I'm making a Mexican version, I will usually throw in some cumin and some chili powder as well; again, tasting as I go to make sure that nobody will (as Lisa Simpson says) "see through time".



As the sausage is cooking, I also get my pasta water started and my pasta cooking. Once the sausage is all cooked and the spices have been added, open up the can of crushed tomatoes and pour them in. I will sometimes add a few teaspoons of sugar to this to cut the acidity of the tomatoes (the Spousal Unit doesn't do so well with that sometimes). Stir to combine and let heat through. Mmmmmm...



By this time, the pasta should be ready. Go ahead and drain it and either dump it into a bowl or into a 13x9x2 casserole dish already sprayed with Pam. Add the meat/sauce mixture and stir to combine. Now comes my favorite part. Break out the cheese!



Put it in the oven at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes or so - give or take on whether you like your cheese melty or more brown and crispy on the top with meltiness on the inside. And...voila! Dinner.





The SU instantly liked this and has requested it nearly weekly ever since. He prefers the Italian over the Mexican but I like both. I've also played with adding veggies to it such as crimini mushrooms or zucchini that I've cubed or cut into small matchsticks. I'll cook the sausage first and then saute the vegetables in the drippings left over before adding the sausage back and then the crushed tomatoes. It adds more "good" filler to the casserole and I can cut down on the pasta used. I've also used ground turkey, but if I do, I try to get at least the 85/15 version so it's not quite so dry as the 90/10 can be.

Plus, you know, there's cheese. You can never go wrong with cheese :).

The child is becoming the parent

Am tired. Am so very, very tired. (Started with a typo of "I'm tied". At least then, I might be able to be stuck in a dark closet somewhere where no one could find me and I could at least sleep!).

The usual suspects are still making me tired: working at my regular job plus learning the opening business of our restaurant so I can come in on Saturday mornings and allow the Spousal Unit at least one day where he can sleep in past 5:30. I'm getting there - the lunches and dinners are easier somehow and I don't know why. I can make lattes and coffee well enough but I have to think about the breakfast items a little longer, be a little more deliberate whereas the coffee drinks are, mentally, much more of a 1-2-3-done kind of deal.

The thing that is really exhausting me, though, is my mom. I knew there would be caretaking involved when my dad died in 2007 simply because my mom has never really been on her own in her entire life. She met my dad when they were 14, she went straight from high school to nursing school to marriage at age 20. Then, through a combination of my dad's own particular issues and her acceptance of them, she learned basically nothing about the requirements of running a home and paying bills beyond the basics of groceries, laundry, cleaning, etc.

Now, before I go any further, I need to express a caveat for myself if nothing else. Those things she did all through my growing up years and working as an OB/GYN RN on top of it were important things. I am utterly grateful to her for them. But the fact remains that there was a lot she was very content to let my dad take care of and was largely an observer of life in general.

While she's certainly made fantastic strides in learning how to deal with things like taxes, home maintenance, et cetera, she is still remarkably, almost aggressively, passive about her own life. My brother and I work on making her get out of the house for something besides a grocery or post office run, but since he is an hour away and I am across the country, it is unfortunately easier for her to ignore our efforts than we would like.

I think she gets that we are wise to her attempts to be a hermit so now things have turned to matters of her health. She sees a doctor every few months for bloodwork, checking up on her diabetes, etc. However, she also has a host of other symptoms that are worrying: random vomiting with no apparent trigger, bowel issues, incontinence issues, and sleep issues. It took me a few months to get her to mention these issues to her doctor at all after several iterations of this basic conversation:

Me: "Mom, make a list of these things. Take it to the doctor and ask him the questions."

Mom: "Well, it's just stuff. It doesn't happen all the time/it went away/other random excuse."

Me: "Mom, take the list to the doctor. Ask him the questions. I will call you after the appointment. If you didn't ask the questions, I will call your doctor and have this conversation with him."

The latest struggle has been over her potential sleep apnea. The Spousal Unit has it so I'm familiar with the signs and she has many of the same symptoms; has her whole life. I can remember her snoring like a house afire from the time I was a wee hermit. I finally got her to agree to ask the doctor about it, telling her that the CPAP device had helped with the SU's sleep, memory issues, fatigue, etc; all things she was experiencing. What does she tell the doctor?

Well, my daughter thinks this might be what I have but I won't wear a CPAP.

Cue now-slightly-bigger hermit banging her head against her desk in frustration. When I talked to her on the phone, I wanted to say, "So, you'll bitch about this ad nauseum to me but you won't do anything that could take care of the issue and improve your quality of life?" What I did say was, "You know, mom. That's your choice. I think you would be much happier getting a full night's sleep but obviously that's up to you."

Because, really, short of hogtying her to a bed and supergluing a CPAP to her face? There isn't anything I can do. And that's probably one of the hardest things to deal with as this one-eighty from child to caretaker-parent continues to take place. As a former health-care provider, I know she cared deeply about her patients and their care. She would fight doctors if she felt what they were doing was incorrect, not enough, or that they weren't providing a high enough standard of care. But, as herself, as a 70-year-old woman mired in depression who has just...given up, she doesn't care enough about herself to fight for the things that could help her.

It's so frustrating to watch this. Both my brother and I are physically limited in what we can do based on time and distance. Plus, she is not at a stage where we feel we can or should make decisions for her living arrangements and care that force her into a situation she is not ready for. That will only serve to alienate her and make her feel like we're trying to push her off somewhere where neither of us have to deal with her anymore. But, dammit, it's so frustrating to be constantly met with a wet blanket of learned helplessness that she stays in because it's comfortable and it's what she knows. "No, I won't..." is her mantra. Won't learn how to hit "reply" on an e-mail (so she reads e-mail only and that took a year to get her to do), won't listen to voice mail on a cell phone (so don't bother to ever call it), won't ask her doctor for tests or help in diagnosing issues because "they go away", won't get estimates on work because she "doesn't know how to do these things" and continually tries to put these things off on me or my brother...but refuses our help if we offer it in the first place.

I am...emotionally drained. But I can't give in. I need to keep calling her every night to talk to her because I'm pretty much the only human interaction she has during the day besides the drive-thru clerk at McDonalds or the cashier at the grocery store. I need to keep trying to be there for her because there is going to come a time where she is no longer able to be on her own, to keep the house up, to take care of herself and will need the resources of both myself and my brother to help her move on to that next stage.

But it's hard.

Chocolate Stout Cake with Bailey's Cream Cheese Frosting

I used to bake a lot when I was younger but I'd moved out of the realm of desserts and much more heavily into dinner-type foods and more savory dishes (e.g. appetizers) before my last break from cooking. However, I still like to bake and when I saw this recipe, I knew I had to give it a try. Chocolate and beer! What's not to like?

(recipe from Closet Cooking)



Ingredients:


1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

1 cup stout (such as Guinness)

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 cups all purpose flour



2 cups sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

2/3 cup sour cream









Directions:

1. Melt the butter in a sauce pan, remove from heat and let cool a bit.

2. Mix in the stout and cocoa powder.

3. Mix the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.

4. Mix the eggs and sour cream in another large bowl.

5. Mix the stout mixture into the egg mixture.

6. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet.

7. Pour the batter into one or two greased and parchment lined circular cake pan(s).

8. Bake in a preheated 350F oven until a toothpick pushed into the center comes out clean. If you bake it in a single pan then it should take about 40-50 minutes. If you bake it in two cake pans then it should take about 20-30 minutes.

**The batter itself is fairly loose. It's not a particularly thick batter like you might think considering the quantity of dry ingredients. I found it worked better if I popped open the Guinness, poured approximately half a cup into the measuring cup and then waited for the head to subside a bit before pouring the rest.


Since I had made cakes before in these particular pans and had not used parchment paper when it was called for (since the cakes had turned out fine), I didn't this time, either. When I make this cake again, however, I will definitely use the parchment. The cake itself is moist. Very moist. And it sticks to the bottom of even a non-stick, greased cake pan. I lost a little bit of the first cake to the pan and the other layer, even after cooling, was still somewhat firmly attached to the bottom of its pan and I had to coax it out. Heeeere, cakey-cakey. Good cakey-cakey. Who's a good cake now?

Yeah, okay. So I didn't just put Guinness in the cake!



Bailey's Cream Cheese Frosting Ingredients:

4 ounces cream cheese (room temperature)
1 cup confectioners sugar
3 tablespoons of Bailey’s Irish cream


Directions:

1. Mix everything.

**On Closet Cooking, the picture is of a single layer cake. I, being me, which means not wont to entirely follow directions sometimes, decided I would make this a two-layer cake and doubled the icing recipe. Still not enough. There was about 1/4 to 1/3rd of the cake in back that was not iced on the outside (there was icing in between the layers, though). That, combined with an almost overly moist cake that added crumbs to my icing was a bit...annoying, shall we say? Still, I managed to get most of it iced and put it in the fridge to set up a bit.



Finished product? Duuuuuuuuude. Even with setting up in the fridge (which can sometimes dry cakes out), this cake was still soft and spongy. You could definitely taste the Guinness. Combined with the unsweetened cocoa, it made for a more earthy taste than I might have thought, but it was leavened by the sweetness of the icing. The confectioner's sugar and Bailey's cut the slight bitterness of the Guinness and the cocoa and stout helped make not the icing not so sweet, which it might have been with a lighter cake both texturally and taste-wise. I will definitely be making this again.