Chocolate Banana Pancake Dreams...

Like many things, an invention of necessity. When I lived in Dublin, I sadly discovered that the ridiculous piles of beautiful beautiful carbs available at every Denny’s, Ihop and cheesy diner 24/7 in America were simply absent in Ireland. It turns out, when hungover, that is what my body craves. In self defence, armed with creativity and my trusty copy of The Joy of Cooking (likely to be the subject of a subsequent Ode) – the chocolate banana pancake was born.

If you have had chocolate chip pancakes in restaurants, do not be fooled into thinking you have had had what it is that I make. The proportions are all wrong. In certain moods these become more like chocolate banana fritters – with just enough batter to hold together the fruit and chocolate long enough to melt chocolate on a hot pan.

I start with a basic buttermilk pancake recipe. I like the extra fluffiness and tenderness from the buttermilk recipe. Mine is from the Joy of Cooking, as reference above. It has seen better days...

Then, I use a lot of chopped bananas – nicely ripe. And more bittersweet chocolate chips than you think you need.

I use an 1/8^th of a cup scoop to measure out the batter. Cook on a preheated medium/hot griddle until they start to bubble through, and turn them.

Toasty brown on both sides, dress with butter and sprinkles of powdered sugar and plenty of COFFEE.

Ambition Update

The cake!

Was lovely, but no longer a wedding cake contender. Actually the consensus was that it was entierly too rich all together. The frosting (German Cream Cheese Buttercream) will likely make an appearance again. That one you make a vanilla custard, cool it, and whip tons of butter and cream cheese into it until it is fluffy spreadable frosting.

Ambition!

It is an ambitious afternoon on the domestic goddess front. The plan: clean the kitchen, then mess it up again really good -- from scratch chicken, mushroom wild rice soup (including the stock which I must get started lickety split) AND a new cake recipe that is auditioning for the role of wedding cake flavor.

The cake is an old fashioned red velvet cake that I found here:

http://www.gilttaste.com/stories/2292-the-original-red-wine-velvet-cake-recipe

Ever since I found it I have been reading and re-reading the recipe -- can you have a crush on a recipe? Because I think I do.

I shall omit the white chocolate shavings as I do not care for such things, but I will let you know how the rest of it goes.

(not)goddess 101: intro to me

Have you ever met someone at a party and all you have to start a conversation with is... "so, what do you do?" There are a lot of ways this can go wrong. The ones I am thinking of is when they say "I broker contracts for <insert something obscure and mind numbingly boring> to someone or other" 


I swear that is exactly what they say. 


And it strikes me -- how do you wake up one day and that is not just your job, but your career? This is What You Do.  Is it interesting? Is it fun? Does it bear any resemblance to any childhood dreams? I think it is just one of those growing up moments - 


The other answer to the cocktail party question that can go terribly awry is the one that I give: 


I am a full time mom. 


Not only is this a conversation killer, but it is a shock to me sometimes that this is What I Do.  I was a crazy feminist in college (crazy for the Midwest anyway), law school was on the books for a while - lost out in favor of midwifery. When I was a kid, we didn't play house. My sisters, cousins and I played "apartment."-- we were single women with great jobs living in an apartment in the city. At the same time, I always assumed that I would have kids. 3. No idea how I thought it would all come together, and honestly, all in all, I am super lucky (or Super Lucky! if I am wearing a cape)


As it turns out, there are aspects of being a domestic (secular)deity that I am very good at and I enjoy. Cooking, baking, sewing, a little bit of gardening, making beautiful things. These will feature prominently in the entries to follow. 


There are huge stretches of the gig that I am good at, but find to be mind numbingly boring. I will complain from time to time about these. (Seriously, from whence does all of this laundry come?)


Inevitably I will brag and complain in turn about these wonderful small people I live with, as they are who brought me to this unexpected occupation. And because they're super cool. 


And, it turns out, having been to college, and traveled, and trained to be a midwife (practiced for a bit, then needed to stop for kid stuff), I have thoughts and opinions on other things, so that might come up too.

Almost my mama's chili

The guts of a good meal

A lot of my basic, go to recipes are variations on something my mom used to make. Classic comfort food. This is a chili that I have been making since forever. For a long time it was a never-the-same-way-twice kind of dish, but I have settled into some basic proportions that work pretty well. I make this almost every week - in large volume - and it makes lunches, snacks and forgot to make dinner nights a little easier. It is made from almost entirely pantry items - and if you freeze ground beef you can have the ingredients on hand all the time.

I will start with my theory of chili. I like to make a really concentrated flavor base in the onions and spices - it will seem way too spicy at this point; it burns my eyes a bit. Then I add beef (vegetarian option too - I will make a note at the bottom); then the tomatoes, let it simmer to pick up all the yum. Then beans (and sometimes corn) and let it simmer for as long as there is before dinner.

My cousin claims that every recipe her mom ever gave her starts with - first you take an onion, chop it up and cook it in oil. That is where this starts too. For this quantity, 2 medium-large onions. I keep about a third of a cup out of the chili to put on top of my bowl at the table (no one else in my house likes this, if more do at your house, you'll need more raw onion, obviously). I heat oil (2 tablespoons-ish, olive, canola, etc) in a large stock pan, and then add the onions and a scoop of pre-chopped garlic (feel free to chop your own, but I got over that after my first baby was born - gotta learn to let some things go). Sometimes I add diced carrots here - I like the color, and always good to have more vegetables around. Now...spices!

I use a lot of spice in this dish (but it isn't too spicy for my kids, 4 & 9), and spices are expensive. So I would either get them in the bulk spice section, or even easier, I usually get these packets from the Mexican food section of the grocery store. Not all of the stores I go to carry them, but it is worth seeking them out. About a dollar for one of these -- spices in a jar are usually 3-4 times more expensive. I use one bag of chili powder and one of ground cumin (1 oz each), then a teaspoon or two of black pepper, and the same of oregano.

Since I am a visual cook, this is what I mean by 'until it looks right' for the spices in the onions:

Stir them all up cook until the onions are soft and the flavors get all aromatic and yum. Then put them in a separate bowl. Add the ground beef, a little bit of oil if it is very lean, and brown it in the same pan - this will get some spice into the meat as there will be a residue left in the pan when you take the onions out.

The rest of the construction of this dish is opening cans and pouring things into the pan, so not super photogenic. Add the onions back in, then the tomatoes, then the beans.

My proportion is 4-5 cans of beans (14.5 oz), rinsed and drained to 2 large (28oz) cans of chopped tomatoes with their juice. I like the whole tomatoes in tomato sauce, and then I just roughly chop the tomatoes with kitchen scissors. I like the texture, but I don't always bother with it. If it seems a little dry (as it may when I use 5 cans of beans) I will add tomato sauce if I have it, or beer, or water and a bit of beef stock concentrate. This time I added some frozen sweet corn at the very end. I like the sweet against the spicy and my kids like corn a lot.

Ingredients:
2 large onions, diced
1 Tbs chopped garlic
1/2 cup diced carrots (optional)
2-3 tablespoons olive or canola oil
1-1.5 pounds lean ground beef (I use 7%)
1 oz chili powder
1 oz cumin
1 tbs black pepper
1 tbs oregano

4 14.5 oz cans beans (kidney, black, pinto)
2 28 oz cans of chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup frozen corn (optional)

to top:
chopped onion
grated cheese
corn chips or saltine crackers.


Veggie variation:
I used to be a vegetarian, and I would use textured vegetable protein (TVP) in this chili. If I re-hydrated it and added it to the onions and spice mixture, it soaked up the flavor nicely. Then no need to remove onions to do the meat, just add tomatoes as soon as the onions (and carrots) are softened.

Barley:
My husband thinks barley is a magic food, so I sometimes add about a cup of barley to this, and add some extra liquid (about a cup and a half, two cups). This can be water, beer, stock, etc. Then it needs to simmer at least 45 minutes. I like it this way ok, but the leftovers take on a different texture as the barley continues to soak up the moisture in the chili. It is just fine, just not the way I want it all the time.

Enjoy - let me know how it turns out!

me, amidst all my domesticity 

why 'domestic'?
turns out, much of what I am good at and do for fun is domestic. old school. I cook, bake, sew, garden, and am a midwife.


why 'goddess'?
because it is awesome :)


why '(not)'?
a: I don't believe in deities of either gender
b: sometimes I am not awesome at this domestic business (see pile of laundry in my room, pile of dishes in the kitchen..)
c: I have more than a little ambivalence about being a full time domestic (not) goddess. 


meh, what are you going to do?  ...bake, sew, cook, garden and now, blog.