Fall is here!

Fall has arrived in Northeast Indiana!!!!!! Here are a few pictures from my parents house!

Banana Bread

I realized that we had some bananas that were going bad so I decided to make banana bread the other day. I could not remember my mom's recipe so I had to go with the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook's recipe. (My mom has the Good Housekeeping Cookbook and I absolutely LOVE it! I want it so bad!) It wasn't too far off of my mom's recipe though.

The recipe was:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
2 beaten eggs
1 1/2 cups mashed bananas
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup cooking oil or melted butter or margarine
1/4 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

1.Grease bottom and 1/2 inch up the sides. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and 1/4 tsp salt. Make well in center of four mixture; set aside.
2.In a medium bowl combine eggs, bananas, sugar, and oil. Add egg mixture all at once to flour mixture. Stir just until moistened. Fold in nuts.
3.Bake in a 350 degree oven for 55 to 60 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.

This is what it looked like before I put it in the oven....and I forgot to take pictures of after it came out!

Breaded Green Beans

The other day I was off so I decided to go to the grocery store and of course I was hungry. So I picked up a few extra things. (My mom would always have to ask if I was hugry before we went to the grocery store and if I was she would have to get me something to eat first because I would always put extra things in the cart!)

One of my extra things this trip was fresh green beans. I have had a recipe for breaded green for a while and have wanted to buy some and try it. So the green beans looked fairly decent so I grabbed some.

Here is the recipe that I used:
1 egg, beaten
1 cup milk
4 cups chicken broth
6 to 8 ounces fresh green beans
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup plain, breadcrumbs (like Progresso brand)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

6 to 12 cups vegetable shortening or oil

1. Prepare beans by bringing 4 cups of chicken broth to a boil. Boil beans in the broth for 15 minutes and then plunge them into ice water to keep them from getting too soft.

2. Combine beaten egg with milk in a shallow bowl. Measure 1 cup of flour into another shallow bowl. Combine bread crumbs 3/4 teaspoon salt, black pepper, onion powder and garlic powder in a third shallow bowl.

3. Working with a small handful of beans at a time, remove them from the ice water and coat them with flour. Shake off any excess flour. Dip the beans one at a time into the egg and milk mixture and then coat each one with the breadcrumb mixture. Lay the coated beans on a plate until all of them have been breaded.

4. Heat shortening or oil to 350 degrees F. Use the amount of oil require by your fryer.

5. Fry the beans in bunches for 1 1/2 minutes or until golden brown. Drain on a rack or paper towels, then serve them up with the wasabi-cucumber ranch dip.

Serves 2 to 4 as an appetizer.

I don't have fryer so I just pan fried them.

Here are a few pictures:

New Favorite Salad

So I am about the worst blogger ever!!! I'm sorry I haved posted anything in a long time. Life is just super busy and after being on a computer all day long, the last thing I want to do when I get home is get on the computer at home.

In other news, I made the best salad ever on Saturday. Angi was nice enough to have me over for dinner with her and her husband. She made the best lasagna and you should check out her post about it at www.angiy.blogspot.com. (I still need to learn how to do links on words!) But I asked her want she wanted me to bring, and she suggested a salad, like Olive Garden's house salad. Which is awesome!!! Well I googled Olive Garden's salad and found a recipe, which turns out that I already had it in my computer files!

Here is the recipe that I have (I don't remember where I got it or else I would give them the credit):
Olive Garden Salad

Olive Garden Salad Dressing:
½ c. mayonnaise
1/3 c. white vinegar
1 tsp vegetable oil
2 Tb. corn syrup
2 Tb. Parmesan cheese
2 Tb. Romano cheese
¼ tsp garlic salt – or one clove garlic, minced
½ tsp Italian seasoning
½ tsp parsley flakes
1 Tb. lemon juice

Salad:
1 large head romaine lettuce
slices red onion
black olives
2-4 banana peppers
2 small tomatoes, quartered
½ c. croutons
freshly grated Parmesan cheese

For homemade croutons:
4 slices sandwich bread
1 clove garlic, minced
3 Tb. butter
salt and pepper
dried parsley flakes

Mix all dressing ingredients in a blender until well mixed. If this is a little too tart for your own personal tastes, add a little extra sugar.
Chill one salad bowl in freezer for at least 30 minutes. Put lettuce in bowl. Place on top of lettuce red onions, black olives, banana peppers, tomatoes, and croutons. Add some freshly grated Parmesan cheese if you like, and add plenty of Olive Garden Salad Dressing on top.

For the homemade croutons:
Cut off crusts of sandwich bread, and cut bread into cubes. Melt butter in small saucepan and add minced garlic. Toss sandwich cubes in the butter and spread out in a pan. Sprinkle salt and pepper and parsley flakes to taste. Bake for 15 minutes at 350°, turning half way through baking.

Sorry I don't have any pictures, I forgot to take my camera to Angi's. The best part of the salad was definitely the croutons though. The are so easy and SO good!!

Another One to Add to the List

I love my lists! I make them for everything! But this list I am talking about is my favorite stores!! I have a lot of them...Target, Barnes & Noble, Old Navy, Bath & Body Works, Ulta (thanks Angi!) I have a new one to add to it....the Family Christian Store (Thanks to Angi again!) :-) After going to dinner with Angi and her husband, we went to Best Buy and then the Family Christian Store. I fell in love! I seriously could spend HOURS in there! It was amazing. I got a couple of books and a ring. I really wanted so many more things, but had to control myself to what I got. Haha. There were some pictures that I would love to have for my house that I will one day have. One of the books I got was only $5 because I got their Family Perks Memebership Card. It is called For Women Only by Shaunti Feldhahn.














Here is what Barnes and Noble.com says about it.

Yummy Salsa!

I just finished making salsa for the first time. It is really good but next time I need to step away from the jalapenos. It's a little spicy! OK....a lot spicy!! It is the simplest recipe ever. I took one large green bell pepper, 2 medium white onions, 4 large tomatoes, and 2-3 jalapenos with the seeds removed, and a handful of cilantro. Add salt to taste and anything else that you might think of. Its not really a science, I just taste it at every stage of adding things. When it is the right heat and taste for you, its done!!!

I tried to take pictures but they don't look so good. Maybe next time I post a recipe I will try harder to take good ones!!

The Love of My Life.....

....Well, at least one of the many, THE YANKEES!!!! My dad was born and raised in Bronx, New York, so I became a Yankees fan as well. I am sitting here wathcing a Yankee v. Red Sox game waiting for my other shows to start, and it got me thinking about the game that my brother and sister-in-law got my dad and I tickets to. It was a couple of years ago and it was in the old stadium that they have now demolished after they built the new stadium. That weekend was a fun one. My dad and I flew out just for the weekend. My aunt stil lives on Long Island so we stayed with her and my brother got use four tickets so she and my dad's best friend came with us. It was my first major league baseball game. It was a gorgeous day starting out. We got there early and went one of the Yankee shops at the stadium and we both got jerseys. We went in and got our seats which were awesome by the way, right at the end of the tarp on the first base side and very close to the right fielder, at the time it was Bobby Abreu, who is no longer a Yankee. The only down fall to the game was that there was like a 45 min. to an hour raind delay, but we came back out after the rain stopped and the Yankees beat the Mets!! I forget what the score was, but it was an experience that I won't ever forget and I hope that I get to live again. I would love to see the new stadium.

Here are some pictures from the game!