Paula Deen's Banana Nut Muffins

It's been pretty chilly here in the DC area the last few days, as I've mentioned. It should warm up in the next few days and get closer to where the temperature should be, but in the meantime, I want something warm that requires the oven to be on hot and warm up the kitchen, rather than crank up the heat in the middle of September.

 I've been at home by myself for almost two weeks, with a brief visit from my dad, and in that time, I haven't really been home very much. As such, I'm not usually around to "snack" during the day, and much of the fruit that we have hasn't been eaten. I hate to waste food, so the extra ripe bananas that are sitting on the counter will now be turned into Paula Deen's delicious banana nut muffins, from her magazine.

These are seriously some of the best muffins I've ever had, and shockingly, they don't contain ANY butter. Right?! Incidentally, these muffins were featured in a fall/winter edition of Paula's magazine, as a warm reminder of tropical flavors (also included: pineapple/ham omelette and a smoothie). So, to begin...

 We start with ripe (brown/very dark spotted) bananas:

Then, you preheat the oven to 400° (kind of the whole point of baking today) and gather your ingredients. For this recipe, we'll need:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup mashed ripe banana
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• Garnish: confectioners' sugar, fresh raspberries

I substitute Splenda Blend for the sugar (follow the instructions on the package for the conversion rate, which, in this case is 1/2 cup of Splenda for 1 cup of sugar). You can also substitute the more traditional walnuts for these muffins, but I like pecans in them. I don't put on the powdered sugar, either, but that's because I'm not much for presentation.

I also go VERY heavy on the cinnamon, because I find that the original recipe doesn't have enough of it to even taste in the finished product. I generally put in somewhere closer to 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, so four times as much as the recipe calls for. I also add more banana if I have it. I've found that about three bananas is a cup, and in this case I have four.

Dry ingredients unblended.

Next, combine your dry ingredients (but not the nuts) into a smallish-medium bowl (if you've baked before, you know how big the bowl should be for two cups of flour). When you mix in the cinnamon, the whole kitchen starts to smell like fall and/or Christmas. It's great.

Dry ingredients blended.

See why I go overboard on the cinnamon? Once blended together, you can barely see it and this is with four times the cinnamon. If you're not a cinnamon fan, just add the amount called-for until you've made them once and then play it by ear.




One note: Never measure salt over your bowl. If it overflows the measuring spoon, you could end up with very salty muffins. On the other hand, I always measure vanilla over the bowl, and let it overflow a little bit. It's a tip from Debbi "Mrs." Fields herself. But there's no vanilla in this recipe, so that's a moot point this time.

(Sidebar: I have the last night's Nationals game on TV right now, and there's a commercial for Nissan about how they have so many more vehicles available than Honda or Toyota. It's the second commercial I've seen played on this theme, and I have to say that I find them completely tasteless. Because why are Toyota and Honda having inventory issues? Because their plants were washed away in a horrific earthquake/tsunami. Nissan is counting on you not to understand that they're trying to make money by exploiting a tragedy. It really pisses me off. Unfortunately I can't seem to find the commercial online anywhere to share. Ok, sidebar over, back to muffins.)

Next, put your dry ingredients to the side and combine your wet ingredients into a large bowl.

Now to mix them together. I know that the recipe calls for you to add wet to dry, but I generally add dry to wet. If you want to follow the recipe, just reverse the size of the bowls. I've done it both ways and it doesn't seem to make a difference in how the muffins look or taste.

Once you have your delicious muffin mix batter, it's time to add the nuts. I happen to have pecan pieces left over from... something (likely last year's pecan pie at Thanksgiving), so I'll use those, but you can chop your own just as easily with a large knife and a cutting board. Also, I will be using a cup of nuts, but that's a lot of nuts. If you're not a nut fan, you might want to start with 1/4 cup and work your way up as you make this recipe.

Go ahead and grease your muffin tray. Mine is for a dozen muffins, not 15, like the recipe calls for, so I just make big muffins. I always grease with Pam, never with butter, because it saves you calories. Don't forget to grease the tops of the tin and not just the cups. You don't want your muffins to stick if the end up baking up over the edge of the tins.

I generally use an ice cream scoop to fill my muffin tins (an Ina Garten tip) because it makes consistently sized muffins.







Once you're done, put them in the oven for 12-15 minutes. For my larger muffins, I did 14 minutes and they were perfect.

 
Use the baking time to finish cleaning up the kitchen. When they appear to be cooked on the top, they're done. (Be aware that with all the banana in them, they may appear to be not done, but that might just be a chunk of banana you're looking at. Make sure you look at all the muffins when judging doneness.)

Once you have your delicious muffins you can keep them for several days. I recommend popping them in the microwave for about 10-15 seconds on high to give them that fresh-from-the-oven heat when you have them later on. 

Now you can cozy up with your banana nut muffins in your warm kitchen (the whole point if you recall) and enjoy!

Victory over losers

So, today Jade and I had to go return a lost ID card to the ID office, where my horrible ex works. I generally avoid the office like the plague, but I've since started feeling much better about myself and the bad decisions I made (I still wish I hadn't made them, but I've stopped beating myself up for it) and I decided it was time to go do this. I have no reason to be afraid of going there or of giving him the satisfaction of knowing that he somehow has the upper hand. He doesn't. So, I went there. He hid his face like the coward that he was and forced someone else to help us and then he hid in his computer until I left. And you know what? I felt fine. Great, really. I mean, I used to see him and just start sobbing, and I literally have not felt bad about seeing him for even a second today. Which is pretty awesome. It looks like it took me two years to get over him, but now here I stand and I'm feeling pretty good. He's a loser, I'm not and he and his "fiancee" will be very happy together (until they divorce because he won't stop sleeping with other people, which he won't).

In other news, fall has... fallen. (Ok, so is there some sort of "spring has sprung" equivalent for fall that doesn't suck?) It was a chilly 60 degrees when I left work last night and damp. It got down into the upper-40s last night and it should be there again tonight. I'm absolutely a warm-weather person, but I love the season when it's still warm (70-80 degrees) but there's a crispness in the air and you can wear a light sweater/cardigan. I'm feeling very autumnal. I have a sudden urge to go out to a field and pick a pumpkin, sit on a hay bale, and wear a plaid shirt. I'm not sure why "autumnal" to me means Farmer Jane, but to each their own. I also am interested in sitting around in cable knit sweaters in front of a fire, drinking a hot toddy, and doing something else equally appropriate. I imagine I will be clutching my mug with both hands and have my elbows resting gently on the arm of the couch, with my feet curled up under me in large woolen socks. (Ok, it was like 75 degrees today, so maybe we're not quite there yet, but come December, this is what I want to be doing.) Also, I don't know what a hot toddy tastes like, but I've decided I want one. Cold Weather Project #1: Use Jack Daniels from Nashville trip to make hot toddy.

As it gets colder, my office will inevitably turn into the Arctic wasteland that it devolves into during the winter months. I have an adorable little space heater purchased on the company dime, but last year they told us we couldn't have them because they "fixed the heat." I'm not sure where exactly they did that, but it wasn't at Ice Station Zebra, as I have taken to calling my office.

Anyway, I will likely continue to use my illegal space heater, but in an effort to be somewhat more environmentally conscious (and help the university save a few bucks that they'll pay to a needy employee... what? That won't happen? Oh.) I think that I will get myself an office Snuggie. I already have a regular Snuggie. It is beautiful and leopard print and it is, after all, the blanket with sleeves, so there's nothing that could ever be wrong with it. But my friend Olivia has her office Snuggie and I think it's an awesome idea. Her's is UMD (vomit) so I think I might get a UVA one. I mean, how awesome would it be to look like this in my office:

Answer: SO awesome.

Though I'm not entirely sure how I'll afford to buy my Snuggie (or my new shoes, or anything ever) because we had a Fidelity at-work education presentation today and I decided to up my retirement contributions. I'll now be putting 10% into my 403(b), which I was already doing, and an additional 5% into a Roth IRA. (God, is this the most boring thing I could ever talk about? Possibly.) So I guess we'll see how I make-do with less money. I don't have a lot of it now, but I think I'd rather have a lot of it later. Speaking of which, I finally am getting a real paycheck again because they will no longer be taxing me on my tuition and taking it out of my measly paycheck. Yay for money! Now I can pay down my CC bill that built up while they were taxing me like crazy. Oh wait, now my money is gone. *sigh* 

Sarah is better at blogging than me.

Truer words have never been written as a blog post title. Sarah is better at blogging than me. She has all this personality and spunk and she, you know, posts. I mean, we've had an earthquake, a hurricane, flooding, and Stephen Strasburg and I haven't been able to motivate myself to write a solid blog post.

So, we had an earthquake. At this point it was pretty much a year ago, so I'm not going to go into details. Suffice it to say that in the height of the shaking I said, in an extremely calm voice, "In elementary school, they told us to get under our desks in an earthquake. I'm going to get under the table." And then pretty much everyone else did that. It was strange. Also the pictures fell off my wall in my office and then we got to go home early. Yay!

That's right, the ugly Monet that I don't like and came with my office fell off the wall. I don't know how I'll survive. Also, my office is a a pig sty.

All right, earthquake out of the well. Hurricane Irene was a bit of a disappointment to those of us around here. Let me be clear that I'm not making light of the destructive flooding it caused further north, but I love extreme weather and it barely even rained. Tropical Storm Lee, or the remnants of it rather, have been making crazy rainfall over the last week and I love it, though now half of Fairfax County is underwater, so I'm glad that I was able to get home via I-66 tonight, because all my other routes were washed out.

So, why haven't I posted? It's the same configuration of stuff: work is crazy, school is crazy, life is crazy, can't find the time. But really all of those things are excuses (ok, work really IS crazy, but still) and I just need to figure out a way to make this happen. I like blogging, even if no one is reading and even if I think the word "blog" is an affront to the English language. I don't even have nail polish on my hands right now (or on my feet, for that matter) I've been so busy. But I still just need to make this a regular part of things. Even if it's only a couple times a week, or once a week at first. I find it helpful.

I did succeed in making my blog pretty the last time I was on here and played around with it, so that's good. I like using Memorial Bridge as the picture because it's a beautiful structure and I feel like this could be a helpful place as I move forward with my life, crossing a symbolic bridge into adulthood, if you will. Ok, gross, no. I primarily picked it because it's a pretty picture of DC and I drive over it every morning to work and that's the bridge that Toby, Josh and Donna cross at the end of "20 Hours in America."

So, yeah, I've been watching some Parks and Recreation, doing some room organizing, watching some West Wing, doing presentations on Cathay Pacific marketing campaigns and working 10-11 hours a day. But I went out last weekend and had a social evening with coworkers that resulted in losing my keys and talking about graduate school admissions with anyone who will listen. And a lot of people want to listen to that at bars apparently. Who knew?

All right, I'm tired and this sucks because Sarah is better than me, but I vow I will improve.

Heat wave! This is my island in the sun!

After working out of McDonald's today in Pearisburg to have internet access, I've finished designing my questionnaire for class and am not looking forward to the crazy week of studying and discussion I have in front of me. But it's ok, because two weeks from right now, my class will be finished and I'll have a (brief) respite from homework. Speaking of which, I guess I should sign up for classes for the fall...

We spent the weekend at my grandfather's house beginning the process of moving him out of his home and into our house. I didn't do that much to help out because I was working (at McDonald's), but I'll probably be going down there in the next few weeks to help out fairly regularly. I'm also, apparently, getting a new dresser, which will be nice, though I've had my current one since I was a small child and I've always loved it. But it's not really big enough for an adult so I guess I should move on. *sigh*

With not a lot to do today, and my laptop charging, I decided to go for a run. For those of you who don't know because perhaps you live on another planet (or at least in Europe), it has been insanely hot in the eastern part of the United States over the last week or two.

 So, my grandfather lives up in the mountains of southwestern Virginia and I thought "Well, it can't be that hot. I'll go for a run." Bad idea. It was a mistake in so many ways. First of all, it's in the mountains, which by definition means that it is not a flat running area. I started off running, then switched to running the flat and downhill areas only, then just the downhills, then I pretty much just walked. But for whatever reason, I decided to run up the most brutal hill of the entire route, at which point I probably would have just thrown myself into traffic to end it all, except that Pearisburg has a population of like 300 people and there weren't all that many cars on the road.

I also, in my wisdom, did not wear sunscreen. In fact, I didn't even think to put it on. It's not like I don't put on sunscreen every single morning when I get ready. It's not that I don't know that the sun and I have an adversarial relationship. But, for whatever reason, it did not even cross my mind that putting on sunscreen for a noon run in 90-degree heat might be a good idea. Long story short, my skin has taken on a very pink glow as the day comes to a close and I'm sitting with my beautiful can of spray aloe waiting for it to get worse. Btw, spray aloe = the best invention EVER!

All the years I spent putting aloe in the refrigerator and then trying to squeeze the gel out are at an end! Behold! I also used to have an aloe plant, and that was pretty much heaven on earth. I'm looking into attaining another one, but in the mean time, God bless you, Banana Boat.

I also didn't wear a hat to keep the heat/sun off my face, so now I'll have the sunglasses burn that's always so charming. But anyway, by the time I rolled up to the house on my walk, I was exhausted, dehydrated, and sweating (which is saying a lot, because I don't sweat much). But I got in my run/walk despite my foolhardy attempts to take on Nature. I'll be a little more respectful in the future.

I've got a full day tomorrow, despite it being my day off. (We'll see how long I continue to have Mondays off, but that's for another time.) So I'm heading to bed. Good night to everyone who reads, which at this point, is only Matt.