Holly Grande: Short and Sweet

This recipe came about mostly by accident. I had some ripe bananas that I stuck in the freezer to use in banana bread, and after thawing them, I found out I was a cup short for the recipe. I had already mixed the butter and sugar at this point, so there was no turning back. Fortunately, I spied a can of mandarin oranges I had bought for Cole slaw, which reminded me of the banana orange shakes my mom made for my sister and me, and this recipe was born.

The wheat flour makes this recipe healthier than traditional banana bread, and it is still moist and flavorful. After baking, my whole house smelled like banana bread. :)

First, you'll need to assemble your hardware:

9x5 inch bread pan
Two mixing bowls
A whisk
A spatula
Parchment paper (or tinfoil)

As for your software:

2 cups wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup dark brown sugar (light is fine, too)
1 1/2 to 2 cups mushy, rip bananas (about three bananas)
6 oz. can mandarin oranges
1/2 cup raisins or walnuts (optional)

Executing the code:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line your bread pan with tin foil or parchment paper--this makes it a lot easier to get the bread out later. Set aside.

2. In your first mixing bowl, mix together the flour, salt and baking soda. Set aside.

3. Strain your oranges in a colander. You can discard the juice. In the second bowl, whisk together the butter, sugar and eggs. Add the bananas and oranges and mix until thoroughly combined. The orange slices will break up as you mix them, but big chunks are okay (and delicious).

4. Add in your flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir just until wet. Using a spatula instead of a spoon makes this easier--if you mix too much, the bread will come out hard. Gently fold in the raisins or walnuts and pour the mixture into your pan. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes--you may need to cook for a little longer or a little less. A butter knife stuck in the middle should come out clean when it is ready.

5. Let the bread cool completely before you slice it. Seriously. Your kitchen will smell amazing right now, but you need to wait. After 10-15 minutes, pop the bread out of the pan and let it cool on a wire rack (or, you know, a plate). When it is fully cool, slice it in thick 1 inch slices and serve with butter or margarine. I like toasting the slices for breakfast. Yum! Serves 12.

Posted by Holly at 10:22 PM 0 comments  

Labels: dormet, recipes

This is adapted from the official Jiffy Cookbook. Short on the ingredients for a Mexican Cornbread Pizza, I altered the recipe. When I moved back home this summer, I made it for the family, and it has since made regular appearances at our kitchen table. We usually use leftover sauce, but the jarred kind is equally delicious.

Ingredients:

1 box Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix
(1 egg, milk, etc)
1 package pepperoni
2 cups of red gravy, or a jar of Ragu
16 oz. Mozzarella cheese
Salt, Pepper, grated Parmesan to taste
Olive Oil

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Prepare your cornbread batter according to the directions on the box. let it rest for a few minutes while you grate the cheese.

3. Grease a 9x13 inch casserole dish with the olive oil. Pour in the cornbread batter and shake the pan slightly until the batter is fairly even.

4. Line up your pepperoni slices on top of the batter. You probably only need half a package of pepperoni, but our family ends up using the entire thing between munching on a few and adding extra slices. Try to reserve a few to put on top of the cheese.

5. Pour your sauce over the pepperoni, and then top with the grated mozzarella. if you haven't eaten the rest of the pepperoni, put those on top, too. Sprinkle on salt, pepper and Parmesan to taste. Cover dish with tinfoil.

6. Cook in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove the tinfoil from the top, and cook for an additional 10 minutes, or until the cheese is starting to bubble deliciously. Serves 8...or, you know, two. Yum.

Posted by Holly at 6:54 PM 0 comments  

Labels: dormet

I haven't made a cooking post in a while, and this weekend proved the perfect opportunity to take some delicious photos. We're celebrating my dad's birthday, and a celebratory staple in our house is Dirt Cake. Little Brother and I made it last night and I "passed down" the recipe to him.

Dirt Cake is a super-easy no-bake cake. My grandma gave us the recipe, but I am not sure of the origins. In recent years, we stopped using flower pots in favor of clear containers--we like being able to see the delicious chocolatey layers. What follows is my edited version.

Dirt Cake

Hardware:
Food Processor, blender or a plastic bag and rolling pin
New, medium sized 8" flower pot or about 10-12 small flower pots

Software:
2 large bags of oreos
1/4 cup softened butter or margarine
8 oz. cream cheese
1 cup powdered sugar
3 1/2 cups skim milk
2 small packages cheesecake pudding (I use Jello brand, original recipe calls for vanilla)
12 oz. cool whip
Gummi worms, silk flowers, toy bugs or other decorations

1. First, crush your oreos in the food processor. If you don't have a processor or blender, you can put a couple of handfuls in a gallon-sized bag and crush them with a rolling pin...or your hands. Put crushed oreos to the side.

2. In a large bowl, cream together the margarine, cream cheese and powdered sugar. I recommend not using a wisk for this part--a wooden spoon works best.

3. In a second bowl, mix together the milk and the pudding. Fold in the whipped topping.

4. Gradually pour and mix the pudding mixture with the margariney-sugar. Mix thoroughly--a few lumps are okay, but coming across a big ol' chunk of cream cheese is unpleasant.

5. Layer the oreos and the pudding mixture in your flowerpot in 1" sections. (If your flowerpot has a drain at the bottom, put a small square of wax or parchment paper in the bottom over the hole.) You should get about 5 or 7 layers, ending with the oreos.

6. Decorate! I like using gummi worms, but I remember my mom once used seed packets taped to popsicle sticks in individual sized pots to great success. Finally, refrigerate for two hours so the oreo layers get nice and soft and yummy.

This is one of our favorite cakes to make in the Grande household, It's way easy and so delicious. For a "Sand Cake" version, replace the oreos with graham crackers and use either the cheesecake, vanilla or butterscotch pudding. Yum...

Posted by Holly at 12:02 PM  

Labels: dormet, hip domestics

Where has Holly been? I've been focusing on my final papers and projects. One more week to go. Friday, I participate in a focus group on technology--that'll be neat. I get to talk about how much I use the internet every other day except these last couple weeks. :)

On to the peanut butter goodness! Supposedly, these were one of Elvis's favorites.

I hated peanut butter and banana sandwiches as a kid. They tasted funny, and the first time I had one, I didn't like it at all. But now, a fried PB and banana sandwich is a tasty alternative to grilled cheese.

This is not difficult at all, and you can find the recipe on a lot of those mom-cooking sites. No picture in this episode of dormet because I ate my sandwich so quickly, I forgot!

You need:

2 slices bread
2 tsp butter (didn't say this was healthy...)
1-2 Tbsp peanut butter (I use natural, but I am sure Jif works great, too)
1/2 banana (I eat the other half, yum)
honey

What you do:

1. Melt your butter in a pan over medium heat and swoosh it around with a spatula. Spread your peanut butter on one bread slice and put both pieces in the pan, peanut butter side up.

2. Slice your banana into thin disks and lay on the non-peanut-buttered bread. Drizzle honey over the bananas. I don't use very much, maybe a couple tsps?

3. Check your bread for golden brown crispyness. When they look done, flip the peanut buttered side on top of the banana side.

4. Slice and serve. Your inner components will be gooey, warm and delicious and your outsides toasty and crunchy.

Posted by Holly at 8:51 PM 3 comments  

Labels: dormet

I promise I will have a real Dormet entry for you soon. In the meantime, my fellow BU blogger Corinne has posted a fantastic recipe for Raspberry Angel Food Cake Cupcakes here. Go forth and bake, and if you are in the Boston area, share the resulting deliciousness with me!

The Walk for Change was absolutely amazing. I met up with my girls and we wore our Lotus Elephant T-Shirts. It was a little cold and misty, but we kept warm by moving. I was very impressed (and heart-warmed) by the amount of people who showed up. There were a lot of families, and a lot of dogs, too. I wanted to take all the puppies home with me. :) We looped around the Charles River a few times before enjoying a concert, raffle prizes and a moon bounce. The girls and I were nearly brought to tears by the T-Shirts from a local Take Back the Night event. It was a very good experience, and I hope to participate in the Atlanta events next year.

Posted by Holly at 1:38 PM 1 comments  

Labels: college, dormet, Walk for Change

One of my favorite web cartoonists, K. Sandra Fuhr, has been posting recipes this week. Today she posted a Sweet and Sour recipe that looked delicious. I made it tonight using Hot Italian sausage and brown rice, and it came out amazing. The sausage tastes like summertime.

You can find the recipe here.

Posted by Holly at 8:02 PM 0 comments  

Labels: dormet

This is one of those 'What's in the fridge? Leftovers!" concoctions that turned out extremely well. It's hard to go wrong with chicken broth, and I pulled this together with my little brother's help. The results were delicious--even my 10-year-old brother thought so.

What you'll need:

Two cans (or three cups) chicken broth. Bullion is fine, too.
1/4-1/3 cup of fried or Buffalo chicken, diced into cubes. I used leftover boneless Habanero wings from Chili's Bar & Grill.
5-6 mushrooms, sliced. (In retrospect, carrot curls and diced onions would have been great additions, too. Any "soup veggies," really. )
1 tsp. fresh parsley, chopped
1 Egg
salt, pepper to taste

What you do:

1. Heat your broth in a quart-sized pot over medium heat.

2. Add your chicken, mushrooms and parsley.*

*If you are adding carrots and onions, you'll want to add those first and let them soften before adding the chicken or mushrooms, or pre-cook them in a pan over low heat with a little olive oil. The onions are done when they are clear; carrot curls (which are made using a potato peeler to make thin carrot-y slivers) cook pretty quickly.

3. Bring the soup to a boil and lower the heat to simmer for a few minutes.

4. Scramble your egg in a small bowl. Add it slowly, without stirring, to the simmering soup. This will make egg-drop-like strands of delicious. Shut off the heat immediately. Serve with crackers. You can add salt and pepper to taste, but if you use spicy Habanero chicken, you won't need to! Our soup was very hot, but not too much so.

Servings: 2

Posted by Holly at 1:29 AM 0 comments  

Labels: dormet

You need:

8 oz. can Sauerkraut
1 lb. corned beef, sliced thin (alternatively, you can use smoked turkey.)
¼ lb. Swiss cheese, sliced thin
4 slices rye or marbled bread
Butter
Thousand Island dressing

This will make at least two dinner sized servings, but you could probably get three or four out of it. Just get more bread.

1. Get out your hardware. You will need at least one frying pan—two if you have them. Heat the first pan to medium.

2. Take your slices of bread and lightly slather them with butter on one side. Place all four pieces, butter side down, in the pan. You want one side of the bread to brown and get all crispy and delicious.

3. While your bread is turning toasty, get the corned beef out. Heat up your second pan. If you don't have a second pan, go to step 5 before step 4.

4. If your pan is not nonstick, either spray it with butter spray or melt a small amount of butter in the pan. Separate the slices and throw them all on the second pan. You can lower the heat, you just want to warm it for now. Once it is sizzling nicely, use your spatula to push the meat into four piles and place once or two slices of Swiss cheese on each meat mound.

5. Back to your bread! Check it for done-ness. The facedown side should be light brown, and you can smell the rye seed. Yum. Remove the pan from the heat and put the bread slices on plates, crispy side down.

6. Keep an eye on your meat! At this point, the cheese is probably all melty, and you can take each mound and put them on a bread slice.

7. Quickly rise out your pan and dry it before returning it to the heat on low. Get your can of sauerkraut and open it up. Dump as much as you want onto the warm pan. I would use all of it, but I love sauerkraut. It will sizzle deliciously. Use a wooden spoon to mix the sauerkraut so it doesn't burn—you just want it to warm.

8. Spoon the sauerkraut over the cheesy meat mounds. Pour the Thousand Island dressing over the top and serve.

Posted by Holly at 11:32 PM 0 comments  

Labels: dormet

I was absolutely craving Pasta-roni (TM) with my dinner tonight. Alas, I hadn't a single box in my dorm's kitchen, and it was way too cold for me to trek to Shaws. So, I decided to make my own Pasta-roni (TM), and this is the delicious awesomeness that resulted.

Not-A-Roni

2 TBL butter
1 TBL flour
1.5 c. water
.5 c. milk
1 tsp chicken boullion (or one cube)
4 oz (about 1/4 package--I just used what was left in the box) linguini or fettucini broken to half-length.
Spices to taste

1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Once it has melted, add the flour and mix until it's coated.

2. Add the milk, water, boullion and pasta. Crank up the heat to medium and bring to a boil. While you're waiting, add the spices. I used garlic salt and oregano, probably about half a teaspoon each--I just eyeball it.

3. Once it comes to a boil, lower the heat and cover. Let simmer for about 10-12 minutes. I checked on it a few times and stirred to make sure nothing was sticking to the bottom. I also tested the pasta at around 10 minutes to see if it was soft.

4. When done, turn off the heat and let it rest for a couple minutes so the sauce can thicken. Then you are finished with a delicious fake san francisco treat.

Servings: 4



Yum, so delicious!

Posted by Holly at 6:44 PM 0 comments  

Labels: dormet

I love Bruschetta. I think it is my favorite antipasto, besides fresh mozerella and tomatoes. Last year, we made it for Easter and it was like serving food from an Italian Bistro. It's so easy to make, too. Even if you don't dice everything perfectly, it's okay. You can even use a toaster oven instead of a full oven to conserve energy on smaller portions.

Here is the recipe I use.

1 loaf Italian bread (no sesame seeds, Cuban bread is a great alternative)
1 clove garlic
olive oil

2 beefy tomatoes
1 clove garlic
2 TBSP olive oil
~1 tsp tarragon
~1 tsp basil
Kosher salt
Pepper
Fresh grated parmesan (optional, but tasty)

1. Slice up your bread into half- to one-inch slices. You can toss the ends, but I eat them with margerine (yum!). Sprinkle lightly with olive oil and toast in the oven under the broiler until light brown.

2. Meanwhile, cube your tomatoes and put into a bowl with the 2 TBSP olive oil, spices and salt and pepper to taste (about a pinch each). Mince your clove of garlic and add, then mix everything together and let rest. Before serving, grate cheese over top of

3. Remove your toasty bread and get out that other clove of garlic. Cut in half and rub against the top side of the bread. Arrange in a delightful pattern on a platter. Serve with the tomato salad and a couple spoons. I like to let people put thier own tomato salad on their bread. If you want to make it look really pretty, before serving, put a sprig of fresh basil on top of the tomato salad.

4. Enjoy.

Posted by Holly at 4:40 PM 0 comments  

Labels: dormet