Outside the Snow is Falling!

I'm a sucker for a good snow.  It's just my favorite natural happening.  Though I'm rather partial to a nice sunset too.  We've not had a decent snowfall, or a snowfall at all actually, in a good long while.  A couple of years.  So when we had an ice storm, followed by about an inch of snow, I made the most of it by rushing outside for pictures, and of course, baking.  

I'm telling you in advance, the following recipe is one for you Californians, for you extreme southerners who have access to the forbidden fruit.  I desperately wanted to make these muffins during our snowdays, but bananas aren't local to my neck of the woods.  

So we settled for a good stew.  Not as lovely smelling, but then again, it's the little things that go a long way people!  If all the northerners in the world chose not to eat bananas, we would cut down on so much pollution, the plants might not have enough Carbon Dioxide!  That was a joke.  Don't go outside and start blowing on your plants!

A little restraint, like I said, goes a long way.  While banana muffins are, forgive the pun, ripe, for you Floridians, ye in winter wonderland need to exchange the banana muffins for some apples you saved from fall!

Winter is the time for preserves up north.  When the trees look like this, and the grass is encased by a layer of ice, and the garden looks like Grandmother nature made it a quilt, it's time to pull out those frozen fruits and those canned tomatoes.

Don't be fooled by the green showing through in our garden, the plants are desperately sleeping.  Even our wheelbarrow knows when it's time to call it quits.  This is the time of year when the farmer gets to rest on his laurels.  When his thoughts turn to the food he has stored away in his freezer and his pantry. When the beautifully prepared dinners make him tear because he knows that all the work was worth it.

I seem to write a lot for the folks above the Mason Dixon Line.  So these muffins go out as an ode to my friends below that line, where the bananas are plentiful even during december.

Banana Muffins

Adapted From the Gluten Free Goddess

Preheat your oven to 375ºF. Lightly grease the muffin pan.

Combine in a large bowl:

1 cup mashed ripe bananas

1/4 cup light olive or coconut oil

1 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 organic free-range eggs

1/4 teaspoon mild rice vinegar

Whisk together in a separate bowl:

1 1/2 cup flour*

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

a smidgeon of salt and nutmeg

a dash of cinnamon

Add the dry ingredients into the banana mixture and beat or stir until smooth. If the batter looks too thick and dry, add some non-dairy milk such as vanilla hemp or rice milk, a tablespoon at a time, until the batter is smooth- but thicker than cake batter.

Mix in your choice of add-in.  I enjoyed chocolate chips with some combination of nuts!  Walnuts are excellent! 

Instructions: Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups and bake in the center of a preheated oven for about 20 to 25 minutes or so (a wooden pick inserted into the center should emerge clean). (If you cheat and use a smaller pan with 12 cups, check sooner- after 15 to 18 minutes.) Cool the muffins briefly in the pan, on a wire rack; then turn them out of the pan to keep them from getting soggy; continue to cool on a wire rack or serve warm. 

* If you would like gluten free muffins, use the following measurements in place of flour!

1 cup sorghum flour

1/2 cup potato starch (not potato flour!)

1 1/2 teaspoons xanthan gum

Thanksgiving Reflection

First of all, I apologize for the delay.  All these college applications and various homeworks and all other sorts of things that clog our falls and make us wish for the summer.  At least us school kids.

But there is something very special we often forget when we're relaxing on fall break.  And that is Thanksgiving.  I don't mean we forget in the sense that we neglect the holiday, oh no, we feast and delight with our family on that thursday.

But we feast on CAFO turkey, genetically modified gluten chocked stuffing, cranberries flown in from Wisconsin, mashed potatoes that are borderline carcinogenic, and green beans that miraculously braved the three months from their harvest season to sit on the table in front of a bunch of hungry guests.

We've lost the Thanksgiving Spirit people!  I'm not even talking about the Black Friday rush, which is an entirely different discussion.  I'm talking solely about the food that dresses our table in it's supposedly organic couture.  Our food has become "organic" only in that it harbors Carbon in its genetic makeup.  It is purely artificial otherwise.

The turkey that is native to North America, so unique that Benjamin Franklin wanted to make it our national bird, now cannot reproduce without human aid.  We literally put the sperm and egg together for the turkey.  Quite sad really.  We have changed the turkey's body so completely that "wild turkeys" are now endangered.  There are even heritage preservation groups that work for the disbursement of wild turkeys onto farms.  The more that heritage turkeys are raised, the more that the CAFO turkey is no longer the dominant species.  SAVE THE WILD TURKEY!

Ok.  That's my plug for the turkey.

Now onto the cranberries, the sparkle on the table.  They are LOVELY!  Really, I am not bad mouthing these spherical beauties at all.  Book them a show at the Moulin Rouge, and they'd bring people from miles around.  Especially since they too are native to North America, so it would be a traveling show from abroad.  We down here in the south, do not have the climate for growing cranberries locally.  A shame, I am in full agreement.  The first meal served by the pilgrims was in the north people, a cooler climate than many possess.

So here's a thought.  Don't eat cranberries.  Eat what the native americans and the settlers would have eaten years ago, had they lived where you do.  Support your local farmers and by giving them your business.  Give thanks that there are local farmers, a dying breed, as they grow the healthiest food for the human body!

And speaking of healthy, or should I say healthful (my grandmother likes to correct me), the mashed potatoes you probably obtained from an industrial source, those are so soaked with pesticides that make their way into the earth because of gravity that it's a wonder we're not growing a third eye as you read this!  Root vegetables are very important to purchase "organically" without pesticides and ideally from a source you trust because they are very easily contaminated.  Or grow your own and save them!  Potatoes require very little work.

Lastly, but not least in any way, those delicious green beans.  I have a few recipes that I will share eventually about green beans, but probably in June.  Or maybe August.  When they're in season.  Green beans were not eaten at that first Thanksgiving people.  They just couldn't have been.  Unless they were pickled.  If your served green beans were pickled, then by all means skip this paragraph.  Otherwise, watch your seasons people.

Now I don't mean to be all debbi-downer with you all!  Really, I adore Thanksgiving and what it stands for.  I just think we could do better with our food.  Next year give thanks to your body by feeding it with healthful, non-pesticidic, free-range, in season food!  It's really not that hard people!  And the more you do it, the cheaper it becomes and the better you feel!