Banana Bran Muffin

You know when it's around 3:30 in the afternoon and you're kind of tired and kind of hungry and you just need a little somethin'-somethin'?  I get that way just about everyday.  For a long time I would drive to my good-ol Starbucks and order my usual.  Grande-nonfat-no foam latte.   Mmmmm....love 'em -- a lot!  However, those little suckers add up over time.  I am embarrassed to tell you how much I have spent over the years ordering up that little beauty.  Eeek -- so I won't.  But, I will tell you I'm trying to turn over a new leaf and not spend that much money on lattes.  Now, where was I going with this?   Oh yeah, muffins.

After trying a few different banana bread recipes I thought it was only fair to give the muffins a try.  I have to admit, it's a pretty good muffin -- not to sweet, moist and best of all it has some fiber to boot -- so I'm not feeling quite sooo guilty when I'm eating one while sipping on TEA!

Banana Bran Muffins
  Eating Well Winter 2004

Ingredients

• 2 large eggs
• 2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas, (2 medium)
• 1 cup buttermilk, (see Ingredient notes)
• 1 cup unprocessed wheat bran, (see Ingredient notes)
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips, (optional)
• 1/3 cup chopped walnuts, (optional)

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Coat 12 muffin cups with cooking spray.
2. Whisk eggs and brown sugar in a medium bowl until smooth. Whisk in bananas, buttermilk, wheat bran, oil and vanilla.
3. Whisk whole-wheat flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the dry ingredients; add the wet ingredients and stir with a rubber spatula until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips, if using. Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin cups (they’ll be quite full). Sprinkle with walnuts, if using.
4. Bake the muffins until the tops are golden brown and spring back when touched lightly, 15 to 25 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Loosen edges and turn muffins out onto a wire rack to cool slightly before serving.

Nutrition

Per serving : 196 Calories; 6 g Fat; 1 g Sat; 3 g Mono; 36 mg Cholesterol; 32 g Carbohydrates; 5 g Protein; 4 g Fiber; 182 mg Sodium; 167 mg Potassium

I didn't add chocolate chips to mine but I might give that a try the next time I make these. Which will probably be pretty soon since I'm plowing through these pretty fast.

Pantry Clean-up

Beware....these are not attractive pictures -- on many levels.  I'll explain.  I'm sure I'm not the only woman on the face of the planet that has let her pantry go.  One gets busy.  One goes grocery shopping, throws items into pantry, pantry gets messy, woman goes grocery shopping again, throws more items into pantry and on and on it goes.  Then before you know it, you don't know what is in the pantry at all.  It looks like there is a lot of food but there's never anything to cook.  UGGHH!  It had become unbearable for me.  Not to mention if someone in my family asked where something was. Imagine the following:

 "Mom, where's the peanut butter?" 

 "In the tall pantry dear"

  Hearing sounds of cans and such falling and the subsequent "I can't find it")  Well, enough was enough.

I just want to ask, do you think cornstarch is still okay when it says "best used by September 2007?"  Yeah, that's what I found in my pantry.  Alright, let's just get it out in the open.  That's embarrassing.  I am ashamed to say that I threw A LOT of expired things away.  How does that happen?  Well, after a couple of hours.  I have a completely new pantry.

That feels MUCH better.  After I cleaned and organized, I made a list of pantry items that I need to get.  Like, maybe, CORNSTARCH?  My goal is to have a  well stocked pantry with items that I USE!  I don't want to run out of peanut butter, flour, sugar. You know what I'm talking about.  My ultimate goal is to run an organized kitchen -- to be able to cook from the pantry and hey, be able to find things.

Lastly,  I'm not proud of these photos.  Not only because they show what a mess things were but because I have some work to do on taking the silly photos.  They look a tad out of focus. well, more than a tad.  However, because I'm simply doing it, I decided to post them anyways.  There would have been a time that I would have let that keep me from posting.  I'll improve on my photo taking , but for now, I'm simply doing it!

Supply Closet

We have two closets in the foyer of our home.  Mind you, we've lived here for over 13 years - and we've never done anything with these closets - except paint them and stuff them with coats and junk.  Some people have junk drawers - we had junk closets.  Well, that's not entirely true.  We had office supplies, cameras, binoculars, and a safe inside the closet.  We used  it but it was just becoming an increasing nightmare to get into the closet and get something out.

Solution:  Organization! 

We emptied both closets and sorted through the junk.  Then we decided that in one of them we would put in shelves and turn it into a supply cabinet.  The other will hold coats. What a huge difference.  All of our supplies are clearly seen and readily available. 

It felt great to get a project like this done.  I do need to give credit though to my husband who installed all of the shelves.  I just helped empty and sort through the contents of the junk that was housed inside the old closet.  

Ahh, don't you just love when something so simple makes you feel so good?  Well, off to the next project.

Beginnings

Hi, my name is Laura and I'm a (gulp) procrastinator.  There, I've said it. It's out in the open and now I can try and do something about it.  That's why I've created this blog - Simply do it.  I'm tired of being behind - I'm tired of having all of these projects in my head and never finishing them.  So- what I propose to do is "Simply to it".  I'm going to blog about whatever project I have and do it.  It's just that simple -- well, you know what I mean.  I hope that next year at this time, I'll look back and see a whole lot of progress  - lots of projects completed and a real sense of accomplishment.  Well, at least, that's the plan. So, for now its off to the drawing board to come up with my first project that I'm simply going to do.