Banana Bread

Once again following Bittman, I was able to make a decent Banana Bread. In the process, I bought a hand mixer, whisk, vanilla and all-purpose flour, thus beefing up my kitchen tools.

Things I learned this time:

• Mashing up butter is nearly impossible, so I don't know if you're supposed to do this, but I melted it in the microwave before mixing it with the eggs and bananas.
• Mashing up bananas works well with a fork in a small bowl before adding them to the eggs and butter.
  
• I'd wonder if I could do this without so much butter. I used a whole stick in the batter and some to grease up the pan and the TJ's Beer Bread trick of drizzling some on the top before baking.
• Hand mixers are quite strong even at the lowest setting and therefore probably require the use of a big bowl in order to not make a mess. Also, need a place to set it down when not using it without making too much of a mess.
  
• When baking and you decide you need another five minutes in the oven, do not just add five minutes to the timer and start it. Thus I ended up setting the timer for 50 minutes instead of 5 and burnt it a bit. Not the worst thing in the world.
  
• Using 50% whole wheat flour and 50% all-purpose flour worked fine.
  

Beer Bread. Mmmm.

I didn't really cook anything this week, but I did make beer bread from a mix which is almost cooking. And Bob K brought me a bit of a stew he made for me to take home, so at least I ate home cooking one night, which is still a positive. It was good, by the by.

The bread is from a Trader Joe's mix and I used the Anchor Winter Ale. Beer bread is great. It tastes great fresh with chili, later with PB & J and toasted with butter and honey too. It's just nice to have the baked bread smell in my place for a few days also.

I know it's easy to make from scratch, so maybe I'll try that next time. Baby steps.