Chocolate Banana Bread Pudding!!!

A bunch of my friends were at a Japanese restaurant tonight, when Steven mentioned rice pudding.  This led to bread pudding, and I remembered the delicious chocolate banana bread pudding I had a Klobys in DC this summer.  A quick trip to the grocery store later and we were ready!  We started with a typical bread pudding recipe (milk, cream, slightly old bread, cinnamon, nutmeg, eggs, vanillia) and let that soak.










While that soaked we decided that just sauteing the bananas was not good enough.  Bananas Foster would be so much better.  Not having rum, we used amaretto instead.  :)  It smelled delicious when it was sauteing.

We put the bananas and chocolate chips on top.  Will update when it comes out of the oven.

pancakes and philly

So I am a little behind in blogging, thus there will probably be two updates tonight.  If you can't tell what this one is about maybe you should refer again to the title.

The first part is just cause I didn't have any other awesome photos of what I was cooking last week, mainly cause I spend all of last week eating pancakes and sausage.  (don't believe me, ask david, he now thinks I am pancake obsessed)  But they were covered in blueberry sauce (my favorite) :).

The rest of this is somewhat interesting things - mainly cause instead of sitting around doing nothing this weekend I visited Margaret.  Which meant sitting around in a car for a 2 hour drive to Philly.  I even woke up early (as in I got gas and was still on my way at 8:30am).  After a free pancake breakfast (mmm more pancakes, these ones had chocolate chips) we wandered to the used book store across the street.  An hour later we wandered out.  Then we went to a giant market.  If you want to know what it was called ask Margaret, I forgot.  Unfortunately I forgot to get any pictures.  Getting there involved city traffic and scary parking garages.  I am really glad I drive a small car.  Really, really glad.  After we bought lots of fruit and vegetables and various baked goods we went to an early dinner.

Margaret took me to a place called Dim Sum that she had heard of.  It was fun trying to find.  She had been told it was kind of down a sketchy alley.  We thought it was down here.

It was not.  But we got photos of the sketchy alley anyways.

We did eventually find it.  The "alley" it was down wasn't actually all that bad.  I made Margaret order a bunch of food for me since it wasn't chinese food I was used to and I figured she would know what was good.  Since "cold cumumber" isn't very descriptive.  The red bean paste cakes came first, I made a mess.  Surprise surprise, Margaret did not.

This photo is to show people that I do not fail at using chopsticks.

Lots of food!  (And a cute Margaret)

I forget what these are called all I know is they were delicious.  They were pork stuffed dumplings with a broth in the middle. I filled up eating these.  Apparently I don't want to learn to make them though as Margaret ordered them cause they are such a pain to make.

The rest of the food was the cold cucumber, which was cucumber in a vinegar and something sauce that made them amazing.  As in I don't like cucumber but I want the recipe.  The other dumplings were just pork dumplings.  And the stuff in the top left corner was "scallion pancakes".  Not so much a pancake texture, they were more fried than that.

These are photos from the car- Margaret didn't tell me a turn so we wound up here.  Thankfully with 2 phones with GPS we didn't stay here long, even if a bridge was under construction so we had to drive around until the GPS took us a different route.

After that we collapsed in her dorm room.  Full of delicous food and way too tired to move.  Eventually we got up the energy to wander around the neighborhood.  Found a coffee shop, and then I left.  Was too tired to want to drive home too late.   So I left at 7 or so, and got back home at 9:30 and was starving.  So instead of being sensible and making real food I had the raspberry foldover pie thing I bought at the market.

ginger ale

So this post will be rather short, and will be updated later.  A friend reminded me of the awesome ginger ale they  make over at Thyme (the restaurant I used to work at).  And we decided it would be a good idea for me to learn to make it.  Due to me wanting KFC last night, and hanging out at my cousins today, I didn't cook at all this weekend.  But I did run to the grocery store today and pick up some ginger root and club soda to make a ginger infused simple syrup.  I figured that mixed with club soda would give me something approximating ginger ale.  And it did, sort of.

Unfortunately it didn't quite have the bite to it that I love about the stuff I get from Thyme.  So I checked the internet.  Apparently I need to add lemon juice.  But no lemons in the house, of course.  Thus, while I will enjoy my glass of gingerish soda water, I plan on going to the store tomorrow to purchase some lemons to squeeze. Thus, if you actually read this tonight, check back tomorrow.  Also, expect new delicious ideas soon, got the next issue of Bon Appetit.

Update:

Final result?  Homemade ginger ale is delicious.  Also, apparently ginger + acid turns things pink.  If I was Alton Brown there would be chemical equations written to show why lemon juice turned the mixture pink.  But I am not that amazing.  So you just get a photo of the pinkish syrup instead.

In other news, corn on the cob (fresh from the grocery store) goes wonderfully with leftover KFC.  Tomorrow is probably going to be pancakes and sausage.  :)

memorial day weekend

Yay, non creative name for this post.  probably cause I haven't done much.  Ordered pizza on Wednesday and ate the leftovers 'til today, so there were no awesome food pictures to post. Well, other than the delicious banana bread pudding I had Friday at lunch that was covered in chocolate.  Soooo delicious.  It came in giant portions, this is roughly one third of the original.  To go box?  Why yes, yes I would like to take the awesomeness with me.

So, now that I am done with the pizza, and am no longer hanging out at my cousins, eating whatever they cook for me (thank you Hugh and Laura), I figured I should go to the grocery store and cook to make you all jealous.  Dinner is a buffalo chicken dip (those of you at purdue know it as the awesome stuff sammy makes).  And dessert is raspberry truffles I am in the middle of making.  I really wanted truffles filled with a raspberry ganache, but didn't want to pay for them, since godiva is expensive.  Thus I am trying to make my own.

Plus I had to make something awesome to break in the apron my sister got me for my birthday.  (Baking is science for hungry people)!  Mmm, delicious filling.  I got to lick the pot while it froze so I could roll it into balls for the truffle centers.

I did play with the chicken dip recipe a little, didn't feel like combing the grocery store for pepper sauce (I am assuming the recipe means hot sauce) and then staring at all the choices... So instead I am putting in red pepper flakes.  I never did like spicy things anyways.  Still looks delicious.  :)

Finally finished.  My hands got completely coated in chocolate from having to roll them into balls, but it was worth it, as they are fairly delicious.  Nice and dark.  Next time I may get a hold of some raspberry liquor and try adding that to the recipe.  Or maybe making a syrup to drizzle over the top...

Oh, and the large slab of chocolate is the leftovers from the chocolate coating mixed with more raspberry preserves (what I used for part of the ganache for the center).  I figured I might as well use the extras for a raspberry chocolate bar.

Anyways, it appears my next project is making a ginger infused simple syrup so I can make my own ginger ale.  Blame Ganna, she suggested it to me.  Which brings me to my new idea.  If you have suggestions, let me know. I am happy to experiment.  Plus for my college friends if I experiment this summer when I have time it can be perfected for when I see you next.

downtown

So I actually did lots today, as it was the first non rainy day since I showed up here.  I woke up late (almost 11) but was in downtown DC by 1 o'clock.  Took the metro in and decided to start with the botanical gardens, but stopped for pictures of a fountain on the way.

 I started with the botanical gardens.  :)  The fish were pretty.

There were lots of pictures, so I will only post a select few here.

Apparently I liked pictures of birds today.  This one got really close to me.

Ok, so more flower pictures, this time from inside the greenhouse.  They had lots of orchids.  I was jealous.

This plant wins for being the one with the weirdest flowers I saw all day.

Here is the best part though, I was looking up, and thinking how awesome it would be to be at the top of the greenhouse...

And then I found the stairs up, and proceeded to take these pictures.  I like seeing the top of a 30 ft palm tree at eye level.

There were more gardens, but I will just post that on fb.  You guys probably don't want 8 million pictures of flowers.  I know Eric is only reading for the food.  So after spending a good two hours in gardens, I found a shady spot on the mall and had lunch.  Then went to my favorite museum, The Freer Gallery.  It has a bunch of Asian antiques.  My second favorite part of this museum is the scrolls and the screens in the Japanese area.  I couldn't get a good picture of the screens, but there were some good ones of the scrolls.

So I tried to find my favorite part and came across this sign.

So I only got one room with ceramics, and there was very little celadon.  :(  I guess I will just have to go back several times this summer to see if they are done renovating where they keep all the celadon.  

So, since my favorite part was closed, I only spent an hour in the museum.  That's ok, the last stop for the day was the place I never got to last summer.  Eastern Market, a fairly large market, that on weekends has an outdoor area, as well as the indoor part.

They close off the street and everything.  Inside first.  The bakery was one of the first things I saw.  And although I think the one at West Side Market in Cleveland is better, this one looked delicious.  

And then I found the fresh fish.  lots of them.  Note the eels down at the end.  I thought about buying one, and then realized I have no idea what to do with an eel. And have no idea if I like them.

The outside part led me to finding a donut seller.  Three dollars for 6 mini-donuts on a stick. I almost had to.  It seemed like a requirement for Eric.

 Here is the rest of what I bought.  There was a purveyor of pasta inside, so I bought the lobster and crawfish pasta, as well as the spinach, Gorgonzola and pine nut pasta.  I made the lobster ones for dinner.  They were delicious.  The clear bag of things are cranberry scones from the bakery, and the thing on the white bag is a russian tea cake.  I was hoping it was something delicious and new, and it turned out to be a mexican wedding cake.  Why are they the same?!  Oh well, still delicious.

wanderings

Yay it's friday! cue music.  you may all kill me if you have "Friday" stuck in your head now.  :)  After work today I discovered that water exists somewhere besides in the air here in Maryland.  Course its not too bad out yet, I think the highest humidity I have seen is 62%.

Raspberries!  If I am lucky I can pick some later.

So the awesome part is this is all between neighborhoods of houses. You would never know by seeing the stream run through everything.

I took lots of pictures of the stream, its kind of awesome.

 
 Oh, and a tree I wanted to climb.  It was above the stream.

Oh, and there is a pond.  But there were no ducks.  :(

Oh, planes, nevermind I am in civilization.  Also, had to think whether that should be plains or planes... clearly I need to get my brain reset or something.

Oh, and the mandatory food post:

This is betty crocker's version of beef teriyaki, margaret, just ignore this, I am sure that it is in no way authentic.  I just like the way it tastes.  Also, there should theoretically be another new post tomorrow, I am going into DC, I want to visit the museums, and there is an outdoor market I want to check out.