Avocado Banana Bread

I found this recipe while browsing Pinterest for a Banana Bread recipe.  I knew that I had a couple of more-than-ripe bananas at home, so I figured I might as well use them!  During my perusal, I came across a recipe that was titled “Avocado Banana Bread.”  At first I thought to myself, “That sounds really weird.  I like banana bread, but…avocado?”  And then another thought flashed across my head, “Wait…I have a bag of avocados that need to be used up sooner rather than later…maybe this isn’t such a bad idea after all!”

Besides, it had quite a few repins on Pinterest, so I figured that if enough other people thought that the recipe looked like a good idea, I might as well give it a whirl.  I couldn’t find my bread pan, so I made the batter and poured it into muffin tins, and then proceeded to top the batter with more than enough chocolate chips.  Voila!

The avocados make the bread extremely moist, and once you get over the fact that the inside of the bread has a green-ish tint to it, the bread really just tastes like a deliciously moist, toned-down banana bread topped with chocolate.  Last time I checked there was nothin’ wrong with that combination!

I suggest you try the recipe for yourself!  You can find it over on Crazy for Crust’s blog.  (Avocado Banana Bread)

Beefy Recipe: Grilled Beef Kabobs

If anyone were to ask me, “Bri, what’s your favorite meal?”  I would tell them, “steak and potatoes.”  Now, that’s the specific answer.  If I were to give them a general answer in regards to my favorite food, it’d probably be “beef.”  So I’m happy that this month is beef month.  Why wouldn’t I be?  It’s a party month for my favorite food!  So throughout the month I’ll be focusing on some beefy recipes to share with you and today is the first Beefy Recipe!

I found this recipe on Tasty Kitchen and it was tasty!  The recipe calls them “beef AND chicken” kabobs, but I just bought extra beef and no chicken.  Trust me, I have nothing against chicken, but for the sake of properly celebrating beef month, I felt it was necessary to only use beef for our kabobs this time around.

I marinated the beef the night before.  The only thing I changed up for the marinade is that I used A-1 Steak Sauce instead of Worcestershire sauce because I realized I left my W-Sauce at my fiance’s house.  Since I had never made this recipe before, I didn’t feel like there was a missing piece to the marinade by swapping Worcestershire for A-1.  So, all was right in the world.

Tasty steak bites soaking in marinade

Try saying “Worcestershire” three times fast…  Was anybody else disappointed by the fact that “Worcestershire” isn’t as difficult to say three times fast as you thought it would be?

So, the marinade was made the night before.  Fast forward to the day of.  I chopped up the veggies for the kabobs.

Vegetables are just so photogenic, don’t you think?

Once the veggies are chopped, place them in the marinade with the steak for about 10 minutes.

Meat & vegetables joining together in unity.  It’s a beautiful thing.

Once 10 minutes…or 15 have passed, it’s time for some kabobin’.

And then these beef kabobs are ready for the grill!

I’m extremely thankful that Phil (my fiance, for any newcomers here) is a talented griller.  ‘Cause I don’t got much grillin’ skillz!  So basically, our kabobs would not be grilled to perfection if I didn’t have Phil in my life!

Please excuse the paper plate.  I cooked this meal at a house of 3 men.  We can’t expect them to always have clean dishes, now can we?  I think not.  Don’t worry though.  I ran the dishwasher, so we should have regular plates to eat off of next time!  🙂

Throw the kabobs on some rice, pour on some soy sauce, stir-fry sauce, A-1 steak sauce, BBQ sauce…whatever sauce your heart desires!  We had pineapple for fruit and we realized once we sat down to eat, grilled pineapple would have been a good addition to the kabob itself.  But we just kept it fresh this time around…maybe next time we’ll grill up some fruit!

And that was that!  Easy peasy.

Beef Kabob Recipe Card

This Calls for a Celebration

I have some exciting news….the next 2 months are great months!  What’s so great about them?  Well, let me tell you!

• May Is Beef Month
• June is Dairy Month

Now, if both of those months aren’t reasons to celebrate, then I don’t know what is!  So, during the month of May I’ll be blogging about some fun beef facts and sharing some tasty beef recipes.  And in the month of June, I’ll focus on dairy facts and recipes.  I can’t wait!  Two of my favorite things:  dairy and beef.  This definitely calls for a celebration!

Celebrate Beef Month in May!

 

Steakhouse Pizza

Well, it’s been a while now, hasn’t it?  In just a moment, I’ll introduce you to my new friend, Steakhouse Pizza, created by the one, and only Pioneer Woman.

Now, I really struggle with finding new recipes.  Or maybe it isn’t necessarily an issue of finding new recipes, but more a concern of trusting new recipes.  Granted, there are a few recipes that I can look at and feel confident that they will taste good.  However, for the majority of recipes that I come across, I need to make the recipe and taste it myself in order to decide if it’s a good recipe, or a terrible one.  To be honest, I want to know that it’s a good recipe before I make it…which is exactly why I practically live on http://thepioneerwoman.com/.  I’ve made quite a few recipes from her cookbook & online blog and have yet to experience a meal that doesn’t appeal to my taste buds.  Last night, her Steakhouse Pizza recipe was no exception to that rule.

I chose this recipe for two reasons:  1)  It was a Monday.  I like alliteration.  Therefore, I believe in something called “Meat-filled Monday.”  In my humble opinion, beef is the alpha-meat, so if it’s gonna be a meat-filled day, there better be beef in there somewhere.  The shortened version of what I just said can be worded like this, If it is Monday, then I eat beef.  Remember those “If-Then” statements back from your days of school?  Oh yeah, you remember.  Fun times.  There can also be exceptions to “If-Then” statements which means that I don’t eat beef every.single.Monday.  It’s a happy notion though.  Anyway, moving along to reason numero dos.  2)  I wanted a recipe that didn’t involve pasta.  You see, I love pasta.  I could eat pasta like I could eat Mexican food…that’s everyday.  Although my sweet fiancé has Italian blood running through his veins and would probably not complain against pasta everyday, I like to try to a little variation in my meals.  (I would eat Mexican food or pasta every day of my life if I could though.)

There you have it: 1. Meat-filled Monday. 2. No pasta.  So when I stumbled across this Steakhouse Pizza recipe, I honestly didn’t think it sounded super delicious, but it involved beef, wasn’t pasta & came from the kitchen of The Pioneer Woman.  How could I go wrong with this recipe?!

So, with some greatly appreciated help from Phil, my master grillin’, smokin’ hot fiancé, Steakhouse Pizza was made.  I mixed up the sauce & caramelized the onions while he grilled up the steaks.  I cheated by purchasing pre-made pizza dough, but sometimes you just gotta cheat a little, you know?

Onions caramelizing...keep your eye on these little guys! I took my eye off of them & suddenly the kitchen (magically) became really smoky. Funny how that happens...

I need to apologize because I didn’t photo document this cooking sesh very well, but be sure to check out the real recipe here: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2011/09/steakhouse-pizza/ for more pictures and full details regarding ingredients and cooking instructions.

Steakhouse Pizza...a perfect meal for "Meat-filled Monday!"

Both Phil & I were a bit skeptical of steak on a pizza, but our first bites into our slices of pizza hushed all voices of doubt in our minds.  We happily ate our pizza, drank our wine & wreaked of caramelized onions once we finished our dinner.  No complaints.  Keep calm & cook on, ladies and gents.

30 Days on Cheese: Day Four

Yesterday was Day 4 of “30 Days on Cheese” and this week has not disappointed me when it comes to the amount of busyness that it has presented me with.  Dinner with a friend on Tuesday, needed to take my cousin shopping for shoes for the Winter Formal last night, Bible study tonight…you name it, it’s shown up on my calendar.  That’s life though and I love all of the activities that keep me busy on a daily basis!  So, we learn to roll with it, right?

I worked out when I got home from work last night and then cooked dinner before I had to run to town with my cousin.  Last night I made a recipe that I found on picky-palate.com.  I made cod fish, asparagus and rice.   Check one of my earlier blog posts for the exact recipe.  You’ll find it at the bottom of this page:  https://fromheelstoboots.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/30-days-on-cheese-prep/.  It was pretty darn tasty, if I do say so myself!  One thing to make note of: make sure you crush the walnuts very, very well.  I didn’t & wished I would have while I was trying to press the cod fish into it!

Yum...asparagus drizzled in olive oil, sprinkled in salt, pepper & garlic salt. Delish!

 

And, the final product! My walnuts didn't stay on the fish very well, as you can see. I'll work on that next time!

Does anybody have a favorite fish recipe of some sort?  I’m looking for more!

 

“Go Back to Your Double-Wide & Fry Something!”

What movie is the title of this post from?!  I’ll be sad if no one knows the answer.

Anyway, Mama and I fried somethin’ last night, we did.  Courtesy of one of  The Pioneer Woman‘s recipes.  We made homemade corn dogs and cheese sticks-kinda like Hot Dog On A Stick.  So we copied the recipe from http://thepioneerwoman.com and a’fryin’ we went.

If you don’t know The Pioneer Woman then my gosh, you are MISSING OUT.  Pause what you’re doing and go there PRONTO.  I love her.  I want to be her.  The end.  Sorry, I got carried away.  She has fabulous recipes that are guaranteed to make your mouth feel like it’s in heaven, clog up your arteries (in a good way) and cancel out any workouts that you’re currently doing (also in a good way).  AND she provides step-by-step pictures to go along with her recipes.  Which makes it really easy to monitor if you’re on the right track with your cooking project.  Back to the corn dogs….

We followed the directions.  (Go us.)  Everything was hunky dory and pretty simple, but we did run into one slight issue.  Wait, two.  Two slight issues.  The first one was finding the right consistency of the breading batter.  I don’t know if that’s the right term, but you’re following, right?  At first, we’d dip the hot dog in and the batter would immediately just fall off.  So we added a bit more corn meal and pancake mix and we were good to go.  Second problem was that the sticks we put the hot dogs on were too long.  Easy fix, just cut ’em shorter and then we were REALLY cookin’.

I thought they were delicious.  One minor detail, in case you’re like us an get carried away with frying things: we did home made french fries in addition to the fried corn dogs and cheese sticks.  Delicious, but not the healthiest.  And my stomach knew it.  Don’t worry-nothing bad happened.  I just didn’t feel good.  It could’ve been the cheese stick I ate though (I’m self-diagnosed-lactose-intolerant).  Moral of the story: maybe just stick to one fried item on your dinner menu.  Or don’t eat/drink too many dairy products when your stomach can’t handle dairy products (Dairy is just soooo goood though!)

A couple pictures below documenting our frying experience.  Have you ever tried one of The Pioneer Woman’s recipes?  Which one?  How’d you like it?

Breading Batter

Before the Batter Got a Hold of 'Em (Excuse the spoon in the background. He's lost)

In all their fried glory! Corn dog is on the right, cheese stick is on the left