Banana pancakes.

So it’s been a while since I’ve written anything. Exams and all that jazz got in the way.

As I have mentioned before I have become quite the fan of bananas lately so I decided to try my hand at banana pankcakes.

The first attempt didn’t go so smoothly. I put too much batter on the pan. Couldn’t flip the cakes over and ended up with a pancakey mess… But it was tasty all the same.

My second attempt (which is pictured above) was entirely more successful. I discovered making four small pancakes was the way to go rather than one or two large ones.

To finish them off I added strawberries and raspberries afterwards for some extra flavour. And the final result was a tasty success.

Recipe: to serve one
1 medium banana
1 medium egg
1 level tablespoon of plain flour
Berries of your choice

How to make them:
Break up banana and blend until smooth
Beat in one egg (use a hand whisk or fork)
Beat in flour until there are no clumps

Heat pan, but at a low heat, with some olive oil
Add batter in small amounts to make pancakes roughly the size of a saucer
Arrange fruit on plate and heat slightly under a grill to warm and soften them

Dig in and enjoy 😀

As a final note I have started a Vlog for when I am in Chicago. This weeks is not food related but some will be. So here is the link if you wish to check it out: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4UeoJ8xLWq0&feature=m-ch-fea

You’ve been hit by a Smoothie Criminal.

So yesterday morning I was gonna have a banana for breakfast which is my new fave fruit. But I noticed it was gone kinda soft so I had what I thought was a great idea…..make a smoothie.
I had a look around to see if we had any other fruit and yoghurt to add to it. We had a mixed melon selection and some vanilla yoghurt. So I thought “yup this’ll work”.
Unfortunately we don’t have a real blender so I had to improvise by adding the contents to my lovely cocktail shaker and use a lil hand held blender thing.

It all began quite well. The banana blended up very nicely. But then I hit the melon. The hand held blender was just having no effect. I poured off the banana into a glass and tried chopping up the melon smaller and trying again. But to no avail. I just had a somewhat sloppy melon mess.
I had to get inventive, because this approach was getting me no where.
I transferred the melon mess to a breakfast bowl, chopped it up really small and had one last attempt at blending it.
SUCCESS. I was delighted.

It was time to combine the contents and taste my master piece. I poured the melon mix into the banana mix and stirred it with one of the cocktail stirrers. It didnt look half bad. Looked fairly homogenous, correct thickness and an inviting shade of pinch. I popped in a couple of straws – one pink one orange because I thought they went well with the smoothie colour – and had my first taste.
It wasn’t half bad. A little over sweet perhaps. It tasted just like those “Drumstick” lollipops. And sure it still had a lump or two. But all in all I was pretty durn pleased with my healthy breakfast concoction.

Tea.

I’m fairly certain it is a sin not to like tea if you are Irish. Or at least if some one is asked “would you like some tea?” and the answer is “no I don’t like it” that will get a response similar to that if someone had just said they killed a puppy.

WHAT??? You…you DON’T…..?? But… But… WHAT?

IT’S TEAAAAAAAA!!!<

You HAVE to like tea. I mean, what do you do for a break?? What do you do if you have people over??? Do you NOT offer tea??

All of this will be the standard response. And as a tea drinker myself I am one of these shocked and somewhat appalled people.

There are so many varieties of “tea”. The tea is in inverted commas because as my mother would say….

I can’t think of those fruity things as real tea.

Irish people are very traditional in their tea drinking. I think one of the most stresses of a foreign holiday for the Irish is the lack or Barry’s or Lyons or Beweleys (everyone has their preference).

And the test of a true friend can be based on… Do they know how you like your tea??
For me my preference is a bit strong, some milk and LOTS OF SUGAR. The strength and milk are not deal breakers for me. But the sugar, oh the sugar, now that is the clincher.

The one problem with tea is if you make it you must offer it to EVERYONE. At home me and my mam have found a loophole to this rule…. Wait until Emma (my older sister) is making it. She is what I would call a teaholic. Clocked her at 15 cups in one day once, all I can think is Mrs. Doyle must be proud. If you don’t get the reference look up Father Ted.

I don’t know what it is about tea that makes Ireland so passionate about it. But I think that the reputation of Ireland being mad for drink should perhaps be revised because if we really looked at it I’m fairly sure the tea consumption would be far above that of the alcohol consumption, probably mainly due to my sister.

You’re such a Tease…..r

I could not have been happier to learn that this has been invented…….

……but then I tasted it.

I was expecting the luscious smush centre that fills the delicious Malteaster Bunnies.

However, I was just met with a hard crunchy middle, filled with broken up normal Malteaser centre.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still nice.

But if they thought this could be a year round replacement for the bunnies…. They are MISTAKEN!!!

Where is the smush?? WHERE IS IT???

College work gives me a serious case of the Fat Flanos.

I cannot stop eating this weekend.

I chose to stay home and do college work rather than go to the library because on weekends it does not stay open as late as usual.

I set up camp at the kitchen table because it has the most room (my bedroom desk looks like a disaster zone).

However, being so close to all the food has been detrimental. I’ve done more eating and snacking and nibbling than I have done work. And in the breaks of eating I have just been drinking tea. Lots and lots of sugary tea.

If it was healthy snacking that’d be ok, but it was Easter a week ago. There is chocolate everywhere. Half eaten eggs, packs of creme eggs, bunnies, chicks…. It’s all here. Ready to be devoured.

Even the weather has been decent (typical for when work needs to be done). So I thought I’d go running to counteract all the eating. But here I sit, still in my onesie, laptop open, chocolate within reach.

If I ever get diabetes college will be to blame.

Pringles – the test of true strength

If there is a person in the world who has ever taken one Pringle, JUST ONE, and was able to say “that’s enough for me“, well then I think we can all agree they are probably the strongest willed person in the world.
In fact I feel if some one took just one helping, yano four or five and didn’t go back for more thats fairly damn strong too.
Forget tests of men pulling trucks with their beards or lifting giant boulders, hand em a pack of Pringles and see how long they can resist.

Myself and the mother just powered through the majority of a pack of sour cream and onion all because I saw a Pringles ad and thought “I MUST HAVE SOME. NOW!!!“.
And then dip got involved…. Guacamole, it was the only one open. Nomnomnom. I’m a sucker for crisps (chips if you’re American) and dips. What can I say…. I’m weak.

Fridge >:(

So this may not follow the food theme per say but it is definitely still somewhere in the same category.

Very empty looking fridge you have there. Why isn’t the light on??

I hear you ponder.
Oh yea no big deal. It’s just……….

Our fridge is broken…..AGAIN!!! Oh and it’s not just the fridge part. It’s the freezer too. Cue rapid defrosting.

It’s the second time it’s happened recently. The funny thing is the light being off and the hummmmm being gone isn’t the first thing you notice. Nope, it’s the smell. Food starts to smell preeeeety fast once a fridge dies. But even at that you kinda think;

Ugh someone left something stinky in the fridge.

But then you pour the milk on your breakfast cereal and realise, it’s really not as cold as it should be. Then it all just clicks.

I’ve heard a joke from the stand-up comedian Michael McIntyre about how when we go on holidays we stress making sure everything is switched off. Everything that is except the fridge, because we trust the fridge. Well I no longer trust ours.

We are lucky enough to have a small fridge in our garage allowing us to save the items that can’t go without the fridge. This has led to us trying to use up as much frozen food as possible at each meal, like potato waffles with our fry rather than toast and meat at every meal just because.

My mam can still recall living without a fridge in her early childhood, but how people managed it I can’t even fathom. I’m sitting here hoping ours gets fixed ASAP. I don’t like luke warm ham and cheese on my sandwiches.

Food with a face.

This is NOT a vegetarian blog entry.

I am not a vegetarian and this is not a blog about eating animals… Well not the real life type.
Rather this is about my feeling on a topic that is specific to holiday times, mostly Easter and sometimes Christmas……
The eating of chocolate animals!!!

Every Easter an array of chocolate bunnies, chicks, sheep, ducks – pretty much any type of barnyard animal you like – appear on our supermarket shelves. I have already expressed how I have always found Easter eggs to pretty to eat, well you can only imagine how I feel about chocolate animals.

Even though I’m in my 20s I still have quite a childlike outlook on this. It stems from the thought that toys have thoughts and feelings like real people (blame Toy Story if you must). Well I feel the same about the chocolate bunnies etc. They’re too cute. I’ll eat meat because by the time that gets to me it isn’t cute anymore so I don’t have to think of that like a real animal. But I can’t help myself if I see a smily chocolate bunny. I can’t eat it.

However, my cousin has come up with an interesting solution to the issue… If you can call it a solution. You must decapitate them. A swift removal of the head. A fast quick “painless” death so to speak. And I must agree its a method I somewhat agree with. So now if I am faced with food with a face such as a gingerbread man (I still can’t manage to kill the Easter bunnies) it’s straight away OFF WITH HIS HEAD. It just seems to cruel to start with the arms and legs. Butchering the poor little guy while he feels each and every bite.

So if you’re like me and struggle at Easter time, try the decapitation method. It just might make your holidays a little bit easier.

Fishy Friday.

So it’s Good Friday. I dunno how the rest of the world works but in Ireland it’s no work, no alcohol, no meat, but fish is allowed if you have it.
This generally leads to a lot of house parties and barbecues. What else is one supposed to do on the Friday of a long weekend???…. Nothing???

Now I don’t have much alcohol but I know there is some spaghetti bolognaise downstairs. So I may just take it upon myself to eat that.

….. Sorry Jesus

Creme Eggcellent.

I have never been a huge Easter egg fan. My sister’s eggs would always be gone within a week and mine would be left sitting there until they went off. Mostly because I thought they were too pretty to ruin and eat.
Because of this a few Cadbury’s Creme Eggs usually kept me happy. In recent years Heroes have added them into their mix.

Best thing EVER!

was my initial thought.

However, call me crazy but I think the sweets taste slightly different to the eggs. Maybe it’s all in my head. But in my opinion it’s the eggs or nothing at all.