Pinned this...made that! Raspberry-Chocolate Banna Bread

Who doesn't like a little decadence. I made raspberry-chocolate banana bread for my parents while they were visiting over the 4th of July. I had quite a time trying to find non-moldy raspberries at the grocery store. So alas, only one of my mini loaves had chocolate chips and raspberries.

Pinned this (these)...

Source: 8weekstoabetteryourecipes.blogspot.com via Janet on Pinterest

Source: recipeboy.com via Janet on Pinterest

made that!

Nathan's creative styling - including an iced mocha!

Here's my version of these two recipes combined.

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup honey

1/2 cup sugar free applesauce

2 large eggs

1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana (about 3 bananas)


1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chunks or chips
1 cup halved raspberries

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. Combine dry ingredients in a small bowl

3. Mix wet ingredients, minus the banana into a larger bowl

4. Mash banana

5. Combine dry ingredients slowly into the wet

6. Add banana, mix until combined - a few lumps is fine

7. Add chocolate and raspberries, mix lightly

8. Pour into pans

9. Bake 35-40 minutes (I made 4 small loaves)

The raspberry chocolate and the plain chocolate versions were pretty good. The plain version was tasty but, I like my mom's better!

Pinned this...made that! Iced Mocha

I don't actually like coffee. I hate wasting food - even food I don't like, apparently. So after Nathan forgot his morning coffee (how he did that I don't know), and after spending $5ish dollars on a Starbucks Iced Mocha for Nathan in the afternoon (because I'm a good girlfriend), I decided to try making him an Iced Mocha. I searched until I found recipes that only used ingredients that I already had in the house, or could be adapted to only use those ingredients. So I

Pinned this (these)...

Source: copykat.com via Janet on Pinterest

Source: yummly.com via Janet on Pinterest

 and

made that!

I used the hot coco recipe to make the chocolatey part and then added an equal part of coffee to the mix as the cocoa recipe called for milk...does that make sense?

Nathan said it needed more coffee so the next time instead of 3.5 cups milk and 3.5 cups of coffee I used 3.5 cups of milk and 4 cups of coffee. After letting the coffee simmer in with the cocoa for a few minutes (2ish minutes with a little stirring) I let it sit and cool and then transferred it to a pitcher in the fridge. He whisks it again in the morning and pours it over ice in his travel mug. He didn't make any comment about it the second time around, so I figured it tasted good to him.

Pinned this...made that! Cupcakes for 2, well 3

I've been craving dessert for a while now. Not just any dessert but home made dessert. So, today I had the perfect opportunity to bake. Tomorrow is Quincy's birthday so I made her cupcakes for our evening of crafting, which in fact was more like an evening of chatting.


Pinned this...

Source: howsweeteats.com via Janet on Pinterest

made that!

Yum! (Never mind the Christmas wrappers)

These were quite tasty! A few things:

1. Recipe says it makes 2. I got 3. I'd say that's not a bad problem to have!
2. They only took 5 minutes to whip up! Took longer to pre-heat the oven and bake than to make.
3. All the ingredients are things I had on hand in the house!
4. They were a little dense. I generally like cupcakes light and fluffy, but over all, not bad.
5. They took 14 minutes to bake. The recipe says 10-12. But again, oh well.
6. Seems a little silly though to turn on the oven for three little cupcakes. 

I could make these again! I will probably make them on a day when I have the oven on for another reason!

Reflection

Tomorrow is the last day of school in my first year of teaching.

1.     I applied for 21 jobs and had 3 interviews. I got my job 3 weeks before school started, while I was still working 3 part time jobs. I was completely unprepared to start the school year. I faked it for the entire first semester. I really didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I cried a lot. I spent a lot of brainstorming and redoing lesson plans, classroom management strategies, gradebooks (never mind that we don’t use traditional grading or behavior management strategies at our school). I tried to be productive over fall break, but I was so drained I just slept.

2.     I fake that I know what I’m doing better. I have consistent gradebooks. my lessons align better with my standards and school wide themes.

3.     I was starting to feel confident about entering my second year of teaching, and then I got thrown a curve ball.

4.     I will be teaching K-12 PE and health. I am scared to death about it and don’t know how I will be able to teach anything with so many variations on a theme to teach. How will I assess students to know when to change what I am doing. How can I possibly develop relationships with students when I have so many and only 40 minutes with them a week.

5.     I feel as though I’m going to be a first year teacher all over again.

6.     Why the change? Politics.

7.     I wrote about trying not to take politics personally back in November. But, it is so hard not to, when it’s politics that is making it harder and harder to educate the whole child.  When politics is what cuts their PE time from 165 minutes a week to 40. When I no longer get to teach Health and PE, but an integrated “wellness” class (I know to some this sounds great – but I can tell you why it’s not).

My students have been fantastic guinea pigs. I have to thank them for making my first year rich and colorful. I have to thank my colleagues for being INCREDIBLY supportive and wise. I have to thank Nathan, my family, and Rachel for listening to me rant, cry, brainstorm, and reflect.

I did a lot of changing and growing this year as an educator. Here’s to the next teaching adventure. I am curious to see where it leads.

Meet Detour

I sleep a lot in the car when Nathan drives. I think it makes him a bit crazy, but I just can't help it! We went on a mini road trip the day before we picked up Detour. We came back after being out in the sun for 12 hours and Nathan was trying desperately to keep me awake. So, we started trying to name the kitty. We were having a hard time coming up with names so we started randomly calling off the words we could see on road signs and store fronts. The "Detour" sign made us giggle for some reason. Then later in the drive, we started listed orange things and "Detour" signs came up again. So the name "Detour" was added to list.

Detour was a nameless kitty for about 6 hours until we agreed that "Detour" was the right name for our new kitty!

Pinned this...made that! Talapia and Parmesean Broccoli

Pinned this...

Source: anediblemosaic.com via Janet on Pinterest

made that!

So, I should have used fresh not frozen broccoli because while the flavor was pretty good, the texture was terrible! Live and learn. There is a time to be cheap and a time to break out the big guns and buy fresh broccoli!

The talapia in the picture was made with panko and parsley for the crust. I had pinned it, but the link no longer works, so I can't tell you where it's from and I don't remember exactly what I did. Should have printed it out!

The rice - nothing special. Just cleaning out the cupboard of the last of the food from Nathan's apartment...never mind that it was expired :)