Banana Muffins Fail

Do you live with a small proto-human referred to as a "toddler"?  I do.  It's interesting.  They can't be reasoned with; they can't -- or won't? -- follow simple instructions; and their manual dexterity is somewhat underdeveloped.  They also insist.  And when they don't get their way, they throw themselves on the floor and scream.  

Yesterday I had two mushy bananas sitting around and I decided that they needed to be made into muffins.  My usual muffin recipe takes 3 bananas, so I had to go trolling the internets for a 2 banana recipe.  I found one and was gonna make it while the toddler napped. 

But the toddler did not nap.  Instead the toddler kept running around the apartment like a bat out of hell, so I decided that making muffins would be a "nice activity" to do with it.

Because the recipe only used two bananas, there was more milk and oil in it than my usual recipe (banana being a wet ingredient), so already the texture of the batter was a bit different than usual.  Then the toddler insisted on stirring the batter. 

Toddler are not very dexterous.  The toddler ended up mixing the batter for about half an hour -- without actually having mixed it! -- before I managed to wrench it away from it and actually mix it.  But by then the damage was done.

The resulting muffin was a barely banana-flavoured, gummy, heavy mass.  Its only saving grace were the Ghirardelli (60% cocoa) chocolate chips I threw in.  Those chips would make cardboard palatable!  Prior to discovering these Ghirardelli chips, I used the same chips that my mom used when I was a wee bairn destroying her desserts: the post-war era chocolate-flavoured foodstuff known as Chipits. 

Anyways, the muffins were the only non-soup food I ate all day.  The toddler ate all the chips in the muffins.  The Spousal Unit just kept repeating, "these aren't the same as usual" and only ate half of one.


I've learned my lesson:  always use the 3 banana recipe and don't bake with a toddler.

Irene and I Have Tea

Irene and I don't live anywhere close to each other, so we didn't have tea together.  But we're both sick today and we both had tea today.

Irene always has a vast selection of tea, both herbal and otherwise.  When I think about her place, I always smell tea brewing.  I, on the other hand, only brew tea when I'm sick.  So if you show up at my place and smell tea brewing, it's cuz I'm sick and maybe you should leave and come back another day.

I had my usual Peppermint Amour tea from David's Tea.  I have other herbal teas, but after two decades of trying to convince myself that rosehip, linden and star anise are flavours I like in my warm water, I've given up.  I don't really like herbal tea.  I bought these two fancy teas from David's -- Vata Ayurvedic and Immunizer -- that smelled beautiful in their tins, but when I brewed them I felt like I was drinking pot pourri.  Like, seriously, I felt like I was sipping the essence of a La Cache store.  (Are there still La Cache stores?) 

The only herbal tea I like is mint tea.  That's it.

I brew my tea in a Bodum.  Yeah.  Leave me alone.  At least my mug is cute, though some would say that it's culturally insensitive.

Meanwhile, back at Irene's, she was having a lovely breakfast of Ovaltine sprinkled on bananas.  I thought that sounded kinda revolting, but she assured me that it's the tastiest thing evah and that she's been having this for breakfast since she was a little girl.   I know she's a good cook and all, but I still wouldn't try it.   

I think she also drank some Ovaltine with it.  But that looks like a cold drink and Ovaltine's usually hot.  Maybe you can make Ovaltine cold?  I don't know.  I don't like Ovaltine. 

Apparently I don't like a lot of things.






Then she had her tea.  It's apparently called "Éveil des fleurs" and it's a Chinese Green Tea.  Not only are her dishes, tablecloths and teapots cuter than mine, but her tea even has a cuter name!  Anyways, this tea is apparently a mix of green, white, rose and flower tea.  So there.

The one thing we had in common is that we both used our tea to wash down some Tylenol.

And there you have it:  A tale of two teas. 

Irene Has a Cold, But She Still Ate

Today is a special day.  My friend Irene (pronounced EE-ray-Nee, like in that song by Caetano Veloso -- not because she's pretentious, but because she's Brazilian) heard about the blog and wanted to contribute. 

I was like, Irene, honey, you're an awesome cook and I loves ya to bits, but we neither work in the same office nor live anywhere close to each other.  But she was all, "I'll email you my pictures and tell you what the food was!" So I said OK.

Now a note about Irene:  she's an awesome cook and she was the only person I knew in grad school who knew how to make a proper quiche, so she's going to elevate the level of this blog quite a bit.  She's also an awesome photographer and will make me look bad.  But since no one's reading this, it doesn't matter.

Anyways, on with Irene's lunch.

As the title of the post indicates, Irene has a cold.  Hence, she didn't have a very complicated lunch.  The first picture she sent me was of this lovely clean bowl. 

I called her up and asked her what was up with the cute picture of the clean bowl. 

"Oh.  I washed my dish and fork before I remembered that I was supposed to take pictures of the finished food.  It was risi e bisi, because I'm sick and didn't want to make something too complicated."

There you have it:  When I'm sick, I make frozen fish sticks; when Irene is sick, she makes risi e bisi.  (Risi e bisi, btw, is the fancy Italian name for rice and green peas.  Knowing Irene, they were probably from frozen rather than from the can.)

Next she sent me the picture of her afternoon snack: a banana.  She said it was very sweet.  She couldn't really taste it since her nose is blocked.  She also lamented the slow decline of the banana and the sad news that they were going extinct because of some virus.

The last picture she sent me was of three Ricola wrappers.  "They're for my cough," she said. 

"Do they work for you," I asked.  "They don't work for me at all."

"I don't know.  They taste good, though, and make me feel better."


And there you have it:  The food Irene ate. 

She's very much into this, so I'm guessing her food will feature prominently here.  In fact, I'm guessing her food will appear more often than my food.  If anyone's reading this, you'll probably be happy about that because there are only so many pictures of coffee mugs and tupperware a person can handle.