While I was retrieving our food, I stopped by a farm. I've said before how much I love all of the farms around here; you don't see this in the south. We have 3 or 4 of them within a mile or two of our house. If you remember, I visited one last year at the end of the season. All I got was some not-so-good end-of-the-season corn. Today, though, I was seeking two specific things: farm fresh eggs and local honey. I got both at one stop...eggs only a couple hours old and honey from hives right there on the property. ("They" say consuming local honey can help if you have allergies; we'll see if "they" are correct.)
I also had other things to do like teach the kids school, sign Michael up for swim team, and find some new running shoes for me that will hopefully help my painful ankles. As expensive as they are, they ought to enable me to comfortably run a marathon.
All this to say, today was more of a prep day than a day to focus on making elaborate new and healthy snacks for the kids. I did, however, have some yummy banana bread on hand that I had made the day before Irene visited so we would have a ready-made breakfast.
In college I had this yellow cookbook that, though lost, I can still picture in my mind. I also still use some of the recipes from it, like the banana bread recipe. Here it is:
Sift together:
1 3/4 c. flour
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
In separate bowl, eat until frothy:
3/4 c. sugar
1/2 c. oil
2 eggs
Add:
1 c. mashed banana
Add wet ingredients to dry and fold. Bake at 325 for about an hour.
I used freshly milled flour in this - hard white wheat. I only use my hard red wheat in bread as it does definitely have a stronger whole wheat taste. Honestly, you really can't taste that much of a difference between the processed white flour you'd find in the store and freshly milled hard white wheat, but the health benefits for the freshly milled flour are plentiful! Don't be fooled by "whole wheat" flour in the store either; it is still processed in order to allow for a long shelf life. I will tell you more about fresh milled wheat later this week when I make bread.
Anyway...for the sugar, I used the last of my honey granules; thankfully, I have my new bucket arriving sometime this week from Bread Beckers. I didn't quite have enough bananas to make a cup, so I filled the rest of the cup with organic plain yogurt, which I actually think made the bread more fluffy; I may make yogurt a regular add-in!
I meant to add some ground flaxseed because, honestly, that can be added to ANYTHING, and it's so healthful! But I forgot. I also often add chocolate chips and/or finely ground nuts of some kind (the kids don't like big pieces of nuts in bread or cookies).
So that was their snack today - whole, real food, just leftover whole, real food! Tomorrow hopefully there will be less running around so I can get more creative.
2 comments:
That sounds like the same banana bread recipe I make. Only I don't have that natural flour and I'd never even heard of honey granules. We do get raw sugar here, though, and we use it in most of our baking. The good thing for us is that we can't buy hardly any packaged foods, and of course all of our meat, fruit and veggies are organic!
We met a new friend the other day who raises chickens and has fresh eggs every day - I agree; whole, real foods sounds good (at least to me - maybe not the rest of the family :-))
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