This was my first time making banana anything from scratch. I’ve been making pumpkin bread and muffins for years, but mashing bananas was overboard for me, so I always just bought a jiffy mix or something for banana. However, I had 4 bananas that no one had eaten and they were ripening fast! So, I went to the Pioneer Woman Cooks site first and found a recipe that sounded okay, so I read the comments to see if anyone had altered anything the way I so often do because I’m lazy and can’t follow directions. Lo and behold, there was a comment about a different banana bread that sounded “easier” which is the equivalent of “lazier” to me!!

I used the recipe as a guideline, and although a couple of ingredients were different, I did measure them out because it’s baking. I used butter flavored Crisco because it’s what I had in the pantry, and whole wheat flour because I was sending these with the health-conscious Clint. I also used regular white sugar because I didn’t have enough of the organic, unbleached sugar I usually keep on hand.

I peeled the 4 bananas and cut out the bad spots and ended up with about 3 bananas.

I mashed them up with a fork, just like the directions said! I did put them into a measuring cup to see how much I had and it was about one and a fourth cups, so I used them all.

Then I measured the dry ingredients into a separate bowl and stirred and fluffed with a fork (my version of sifting).

Then I measured out the shortening and sugar and added the beaten eggs…

set my mixer on “Creaming”…

and prayed this is what it was supposed to look like.

Now I followed the directions in that I did alternate adding the flour mixture and then the bananas, but I did not do this by hand. I let the mixer on “Mix” do it for me. I added the pecans by hand and folded them in with the spatula.

I decided to make these into muffins instead of a loaf of bread so that I could put them in ziploc bags and Clint could just pop them into his mouth when he wanted a quick snack. I wanted them bite-sized without being “mini muffins” because I don’t have any “mini-muffin” papers. I sprayed the papers to keep the muffins from sticking.

I used a large serving spoon to put the batter into the cups and then baked them for 18 minutes in a 350 degree oven. I had to google how long to cook muffins because the original recipe was for bread.

I have to admit, I was scared when I took them out of the oven. They were awfully pale looking. So I slathered them with butter and let it melt across the tops before I took a picture…

Then I broke one apart, took this picture, then made Clint taste. I got a thumbs up so I tasted it. It is good!

UPDATE 2013: I’ve made these numerous times since this first post and they’re way better than the pictures look! I use processed wheat flour now, and it’s a lot lighter than the whole wheat flour, so they look better… I also tend to put streusel on top of all my muffins!!

When I worked outside the home, one of my favorite lunches was a Roly Poly Turkey AppleJack. So, of course, I had to make my own. There’s no recipe, not even a copycat, so I did do some research on apple and turkey wraps to see what it was all about, then I took the ingredients and made my own!

I love how some blogs have a sort of “cast of characters” picture of their ingredients, so I took one too. I gotta give those cooks credit who can take pictures every step of the recipe! I took what I could! I think I blab better than I photog, but I love blogs with pictures, so I can’t do otherwise. Enough, on to the production!

Tortillas
Garlic mayo (Roly Poly’s has Basil mayo but I couldn’t find it at my grocery store)
Apple butter
Grilled onions
Bacon bits (Roly Poly’s has bacon slices but I was too lazy)
Shredded Colby Jack cheese (Roly Poly’s has Monterrey Jack cheese but I have bags and bags of shredded cheese and none are just Jack)
Turkey breast
(Roly Poly’s has grilled mushroom’s but I don’t like them and only include them for Clint)
Honey Mustard Sauce for dipping (no clue if Roly Poly uses Sweet Baby Ray’s but I love it!)

I warmed the tortilla in the microwave for 30 seconds, then I squeezed a line of mayo and spread a heaping, large tablespoon of apple butter on it.

Then I added the shredded cheese, grilled onions and bacon bits. I did not measure anything except by eyeball. I was hungry.

Then I gently, gingerly placed the turkey… nope, slapped it on there and rolled it up!!

I loaned out my indoor grill a couple of months ago, so I bought a new George Forman Grill…

It’s pretty and matches my fridge but not my stove. I was hungry! Grilled my wrap for about 3 or 4 minutes… just to get that golden grill look.

I realized too late that the honey mustard sauce didn’t look very good on my yellow plate, but I was hungry! When the TV chefs speak of sweet and savory in the same bite, I imagine it tastes like this!

I was the cooking queen yesterday. Don’t have much to show for it, though. I did a lot of prep that will make finishing today really easy, so I am happy for that. I cooked breakfast and lunch on top of prepping for a couple of recipes I’ll be making to send with Clint on the truck this week.

We had bacon, eggs and toast for breakfast. I cheat and cook my bacon on a cookie sheet in the oven at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. It comes out pretty crispy which is the way I love it. I fry eggs in real butter on medium heat so that the whites are completely cooked and the yolk is beautifully runny. This simple breakfast is everyone’s favorite. Yes, sometimes I make other things for breakfast, but if there’s ever a vote, it’s always for over-medium eggs, bacon and toast, period.

We made homemade pizzas for lunch. Clint has been craving it and it was one of his special requests for the weekend, so I bought pizza dough in a package, pizza sauce in a jar, and a bunch of toppings. It was a success, and there were no leftovers to send on the truck. The chef-boy chose to make a pepperoni pizza and the trucker wanted hamburger. Here are a few pictures as they were building their pies.

I made the pizza dough according to the directions and baked it for 5 minutes before they began to pile the goodies on. Chef-boy started with pizza sauce, went overboard with the cheese, added diced tomatoes and green onions.

He was very picky about the placement of the pepperonis as he wanted a “pretty pie” in the picture! Then he added more green onions.

We baked this at 400 degrees for 9 minutes and it was probably a minute too long, but overall it was very tasty and we all got one slice… okay, everyone but chef-boy got one slice, he got five. Yes, five. Our future doctor only ate one of his chef-boy brother’s slices.

The trucker likes a heartier fare, even on his pizza. I cooked five pounds of ground chuck with garlic to be used for pizza, sloppy joe calzones and tacos (another weekend request).

He also added diced tomatoes and green onions and then grabbed the mushrooms I had bought for “Turkey Applejacks” I plan to make (recipe coming). The trucker then added more cheese and the future doctor got very excited, which is why he was content with only one slice of pepperoni pizza.

Now most of us would be adding up the calories in there but Clint has been around the same size and weight since he was about 16, so while he tries to eat healthy and watch the artery clogging fat in most foods, he has a super sonic metabolism and doesn’t really have to worry about calories. It also took about 11 minutes for this heavy pie to bake.

Before I started breakfast, I had put a chicken in the crock pot. I found a recipe for “Fauxtisserie Chicken”. Since I don’t follow directions well, I slathered the whole chicken with real butter before I added the seasoning salt.

I cooked it on high, and shortly after the pizzas were devoured, the chicken was reading 180 degrees on the meat thermometer (about 5 hours). It is now “resting” in the refrigerator and waiting to be made into chicken salad.

Now, while all of the above was going on, I had pulled out five loaves of frozen bread dough. Those spent time rising while all the other madness was going on, so by the time I was ready to make calzones, the dough was perfect. Calzones are easy to make, and if you haven’t tried them, I recommend making some today! The beauty of calzones is that you can fill them with anything you like. Anything! I had five loaves of risen dough and I knew we’d have to eat from some of the goodness, so here’s what they became.

I cut each loaf into 4 equal parts (I cut a lot of foods with my kitchen scissors, and this was one of them. The pizzas were another). I take a piece of dough and flatten it out like a small, individual pizza dough. Then I add whatever everyone wants. Clint wanted some that were sloppy joe mix so he wouldn’t have to make a sandwich. So I put about two tablespoons of Manwich sauce on the dough, added some cooked ground chuck, folded the dough in half, squished the sides closed, and baked for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. It was pretty hectic at the end of my cooking day, so regretfully I didn’t get pictures of the process, but here is a picture of a finished calzone.

This is actually a pepperoni calzone and was from the last batch out of the oven. I put pizza sauce, pepperonis, onions, and mushrooms in them. I also made some with pizza sauce, ground chuck, onions and cheese. As you can see, it’s not the look of the food we’re after!! Clint ate half of one of the hamburger pizza calzones and half of a sloppy joe calzone. He approved. He can eat them cold while he’s driving or heat them up in the microwave for a minute if he’s stopped.

Now I’m tired just writing about all the cooking I did yesterday and it’s back to the kitchen today, but I’ll be so, so glad the rest of the week when all I have to do is reheat my own dinner!!

It’s been a long week with the start of school and football practices and trucking!  Here it is Thursday again and I have no idea what I’m cooking this weekend.  I did manage to get a couple of actual requests, which is nice, but the rest I’ll have to find on my own.  I know it shouldn’t be this hard, but I love trying new recipes and hate eating the same thing over and over again no matter how tasty it is.  So, it’s off to the recipe sites and food blogs I go!  I’m looking for yummy, quick, easy and great as leftovers (because that’s what it basically is by the time Clint reheats it on the truck!).

Some of my favorite recipe sites are found in the blogroll, but I just found the Foodie Blogroll website and have spent quite some time perusing new blogs. I’ve only found two recipes I want to try and I’m already on the letter P. Because I need to go to bed, and because I won’t go grocery shopping tomorrow until I have my list, here’s what I’ve got so far.

Breakfasts: eggs, bacon, toast for the house; McLindi’s, bagels, boiled eggs for the truck
Lunch: kids in school, Clint snacks, so chicken salad and crackers, broccoli bites for the truck
Dinners: tacos, homemade pizza requested for the weekend at home; sloppy joe pocket sandwiches or calzones, pork chops, leftover tacos and pizza for the truck

Ahhh… now I can go to sleep! I’ll make my grocery list based on this simple menu plan and go shopping tomorrow. I hope to share a new recipe or two with you this weekend!

I know, I know, I’m supposed to be writing about our auction night, but I talked my future daughter-in-law into making the Modern Lady’s Fruit Salsa. As is usually the case, I don’t measure much of anything and I usually don’t have exactly what the recipe calls for, so this was a lesson in “use the recipe as a guideline”.

We used two small packages of strawberries, one Pink Lady apple, one nectarine, two bananas, a 15 ounce can of chunk pineapple, plum jelly and organic, unbleached sugar.

Fruit Salsa

Then I taught her to make her own whipped topping. We used the Sweetened Whipped Cream recipe found at allrecipes.com and even though my mixer is having power issues, we managed to get the perfect peaks.

Then we served it over the little shortbreads from the store. Another kitchen success because she did all the work!!

Fruit Salsa Shortcake

I really don’t know what to call this, but I made it up today because life in the trucking industry has kept me from being able to grocery shop for over a week and I had to raid my pantry to come up with something to feed the family.

I cleaned out the refrigerator on Thursday as I had every intention of going grocery shopping that night or sometime Friday. Clint came home and we cleaned out the fridge on the truck as well. All that was left in the home fridge was some carrots, onions, and shredded cheese. I had finished off the eggs this morning for breakfast.

Around 2pm I started hearing a lot of grumbling about being hungry, but the guys were all working on the truck and having to make “parts runs” so I had no vehicle to get to the store. I started searching through the cabinets looking for anything I could throw together that would feed them and get them off my back. I started throwing cans on the counter from the cabinets and as they would walk through the kitchen between potty breaks, I got some weird looks. I could hear them even though they said nothing. “What on earth is she going to make with that?” Here’s what I came up with:

some baby carrots cut up small (I had a partial bag left over in a ziploc bag)
1 vidalia onion, diced
dried, minced garlic (about a palmful, a la Rachael Ray)
2 T butter

I sauteed the carrots about 2 mins in butter, then added the onion and sauteed about 5 minutes more, and then threw in the garlic for another minute.

1 can beef broth

I poured in the beef broth and brought it all to a boil, reduced heat and simmered about 15 mins.

1 can green beans
1 can great northern beans
1 can diced tomatoes (basil, garlic and oregano)
1 can tomato juice
1 pkg potato steamers (in a buttery garlic sauce)

I just dumped the rest in, including all the juices, brought it back to a boil, reduced the heat and simmered about 15 minutes more.

We topped our bowls of soup with croutons, shredded cheese, and sour cream.

I’m not sure if this is a vegetable soup or a tomato soup or even a stew, but it’s gone now. They scraped their bowls clean and are now moaning and groaning that they ate too much. I’d call it a success!

On-the-fly tomato vegetable soup

I can’t just post the good stuff, ya know. I mean, if you’re really gonna get to know me, you’ve got to know that I make way more mistakes than it ever looks like from the outside! And not just in the kitchen; that just happens to be the mistake I’m going to share with you today!

So, I’m doing my menu planning today, because I cook on the weekends and send food with Clint on the truck and tuck other stuff in the fridge so I don’t have to cook a lot during the week. I am also a working member of our little trucking business, so after a day of dispatching and doing paperwork, I really don’t want to cook. Anyway, back to the disaster. I’m doing my menu planning and trying to come up with new meal ideas to throw in with the tried and true, and I come across these little gems. I’m thinking I can throw them in ziploc baggies and it’s another quick and protein-packed breakfast idea for the truck (or for those “late to school” mornings). I have all the ingredients already, so I decide to try them out really quick and see if they’re going to work.

Okay, truth be told, I didn’t have ALL of the elements exactly like the recipe calls for. But that’s the fun of cooking, really! A recipe around here has to be flexible and it has to account for substitutions. Well, I didn’t have to substitute anything except the ramekins. I don’t make fancy food, so I don’t have fancy pans. I know some of you don’t really think of ramekins as “fancy”, but when you have five kids (four of them destructive boys), you’re not likely to cook them anything in individual pans. And even if you did, you probably wouldn’t use the word ramekin around them!

So I decided one of my cupcake pans should work just fine, right? WRONG I’m just going to post the pictures first. The pretty yellow is from the Pillsbury site; the gorgeous 50s aqua is from my own humble kitchen. As you can see, mine just aren’t as pretty! (The actual food, not the picture, although that leaves some to be desired as well)

Sunny Morning Star Biscuit Souffle from Pillsbury.com

My Biscuit Souffle

As you can see in my picture, I had big muffin looking souffles and little flat souffles. I’d look up the french word for disaster but I already keep spelling sooflay wrong. Since I used the muffin tin, I had too much biscuit and not enough egg mixture. After spooning egg in and adding cheese and more egg mixture, the cups were overflowing. I cannot waste anything, so the rest of the egg mixture went straight into the cups without any biscuit. These aren’t just a good idea, they’re really a great idea for the truck! Never fear, it’s just back to the drawing board!

Clint was big on taking chicken salad and crackers on the truck because he could munch on it while driving down the road. I guess the word salad implies healthy to most of us, so we thought it was a good thing. However, one day, after one of my “read the label” lectures, we decided to look at the ingredients in his store bought chicken salad. It was not good. We couldn’t even pronounce a couple of the items. But, even more than the contents, was the amount of time between it being made and us buying the product off the shelf. There was no way to determine how long the product had been in its plastic container before we bought it. No way to know if it had truly been refrigerated the entire time or not. Just too many questions! So, Clint says, “can’t you make this at home?” Clever SOB knows to throw me a challenge I can’t say no to!

I started out using rotisserie chickens because there’s already flavor baked in, right? And I *was* right. The salad was very tasty no matter which kind of chicken I bought. I used the “Backyard BBQ”, lemon pepper and even garlic and herbs. The ingredients were fresh and there weren’t a lot of preservatives. Since I was making it at home, I was saving money, too. However, the chickens were a little hard to use because sometimes they weren’t cooked enough and sometimes they were cooked so long they were hard and dry. I wasn’t getting a lot of actual usable chicken for the salad, so I still wasn’t saving as much money as I could. I did learn to make a faux-tisserie chicken and have used it many times for this salad!

I don’t use an actual recipe for my chicken salad, but I added what I did below. I haven’t found one that’s close to what I do, but mine is never really the same each time I make it, either. The most important things for us are the taste and if it can hold up all week in the truck. So far, so good!

The first thing I do is buy chicken thighs on sale. I prefer boneless and skinless because I’m lazy, but if the ones with bones and skins are on sale, then that’s what I buy! Chicken breasts are too dry for our tastes, but I have been known to buy them when on sale and use both breasts and thighs in the salad; and, of course, used the whole chicken when I was using rotisserie chickens. I lightly salt and pepper the thighs and then throw them in the crockpot with some bouillon cubes and a little water. I cook them on low for 6 to 8 hours and they’re always falling apart when I’m ready to use them. If I let anyone else help make the chicken salad, I sometimes come up short in the chicken department because they eat more than they shred. I shred the cooked chicken because it’s quick and easy. I used to cut it up in small bits with a knife, but I’m just too lazy.

I always add sweet relish to my chicken salad. All of my kids have kicked and screamed when I told them it had sweet relish in it because they don’t like sweet pickles. All of my kids have loved my chicken salad and eaten it anyway. They love it so much, I had to teach them how to make it so they can have cheap meals while they’re away at college. I always add sweet relish to my chicken salad! How much? Sometimes a tablespoon, sometimes two tablespoons, sometimes a lot more. I usually err on the side of not enough, because I can always add more after it’s finished and I’ve tasted it. I’ve never had to add more, though.

We like our chicken salad to be wet. That means a lot of mayonnaise, and we know what that means… a lot of fat and calories. Well, to keep that down some, I use low fat mayo (the miracle stuff) for the majority of the salad, then add the regular fat stuff for flavor. No, I don’t make my own mayo (because I’m lazy), but do try to buy the good stuff when it’s on sale. How much mayo do I add? Same as the relish. If it’s hard for me to stir after I’ve added the mayo, it must need more. When it’s a good consistency with the low fat stuff, I add a heaping tablespoon or two of the regular fattening miracle stuff. I usually give the salad a taste at this point to make sure it’s not too dry. I could stop here and Clint would still be in love with my chicken salad, but I don’t stop here.

Boiled eggs. Yup, the kids were like, “yuck” with the boiled eggs too. Now they know how to make the perfect boiled egg. I’m not sure where I found this on the internet, but I take a medium sized sauce pan, layer the bottom with eggs (9 usually fit perfectly), and cover them with cold water. I turn the burner on high (I have an electric stove) and place the pan on the burner. Once I hear the water in a roiling boil (I think that’s what it’s called LOL), I put a lid on the pan, take the pan off the hot burner and put it on a cold burner, set the timer for 15 minutes and find something else to do. I usually start this before I start the chicken salad so the eggs will be ready when I am. When the timer goes off, I pour off the hot water and shake the pan so that the shells break. Then I add cold water to the pan and set aside for a few minutes. I repeat the cold water until I can peel an egg without burning my fingers. Then I cut 3 or 4 of them up into small pieces and add to the salad. The rest of the eggs I dry completely and put in a ziploc baggie for Clint to take on the truck. They make a great high protein snack and he likes them (too dry for me!).

I add onion to the salad. The type and amount always vary with what I have on hand and how much chicken salad I’m making. A lot of the time, I’ve used part of an onion while cooking something else, so the left overs get diced and added. I’ve used yellow, red and vidalia onions. I once bought a white onion already diced up from the store for camping and used the leftovers in chicken salad, but I don’t really like white onions.

Then I add anything that’s in the fridge that I’m probably not gonna use the rest of the week. I’ve added diced cucumbers, avacado, carrots, cooked bacon, shredded cheeses of all sorts, and green, red and orange bell peppers. If you like it, add it!!

I stir it all up again, make sure it’s not too dry, add salt and pepper to taste (sometimes it takes me two or three tastes to make sure it’s just right) and then spoon it into the storage containers. Clint eats his with snack crackers, usually. He just told me this last week that he couldn’t reach his crackers so he ate it straight out of the bowl with a fork; it’s that good! One of my college kids (home for the summer) eats his on bread in a sandwich because he says it takes too long to eat on crackers and he has a big appetite to satisfy NOW. However you eat it, it’s just good stuff!