Banana Bread

Everyone I know has at least one strange habit when it comes to food.  It might be a specific way you peel a fruit, prepare a dish, or eat your favorite food.  For example, at a young age I picked up from my dad the habit of eating grilled cheese by cutting strips off each side and rotating the plate after each one.  This way you gradually cut away at the sandwich while maintaining the same shape.

One of my other strange habits is that I usually only eat bananas on Thursday or Friday.  This is born from the fact that I only eat bananas when they are very very very ripe, and I’ll buy them at the grocery store on a Saturday or Sunday.  My wife will eat a few throughout the week and then once they reach peak deliciousness (at least as determined by me) I’ll eat whichever ones are left over.

Harbaugh Breakfast Challenge Power Rankings

Nearly two weeks ago when Jay Harbaugh (son of Jim) was hired as a TE coach at Michigan he shared a story about when his dad had breakfast cereal with Gatorade when the family was out of milk.  This, of course, is a disgusting concept but one that must be investigated to the fullest.  Last week the Michigan Alumni Association wisely created what they called the Harbaugh Breakfast Challenge and put together a great video of students trying various combinations.  Naturally left curious, the only thing I could do was get together another sugared cereal loving friend and try, then rank, 36 combinations.  And let’s be clear upfront, almost all of these were truly awful.

This was particularly strange for me since I don’t really eat sugared cereals (Total and Crispix are my favorites) or drink Gatorade.  My friend Mike who also did the tasting is a sugared cereal connoisseur and was a valuable guide on this journey.  I think the last time I drank Gatorade was playing baseball in high school and let me say, what happened to Gatorade?  When did it get so complicated?  It was so confusing shopping for I texted a friend for help (thanks Lonnie).  There are several sub-brands and it was not readily clear to me what the ‘normal’ flavors were anymore.  In the end I settled on cool blue (received high marks in the Alumni Association video), lemon lime, and strawberry lemonade.  I got two sampler packs of cereal and after taking out duplicates was left with the 12 you see above.  So, let’s get to it shall we?

Sriracha, Sesame, and Kaffir Lime Roasted Cashews

You may remember a few weeks ago when I posted about a butternut squash and sage linguine with a cashew cream sauce.  For the cashew cream I had gone to Meijer in search of raw cashews and the smallest bag I found was about half a pound.  So after using just half a cup I was left with most of a bag of raw cashews, not knowing what to do with them.

I kept thinking I would come up with some super creative use for them and incorporate them into a dish, but it never happened.  So one Saturday I decided I would just roast them.  This was the obvious and simple solution but led to an unexpectedly complicated problem; what was I going to put on them?

This Apple Galette Runs A Better Offense Than Al Borges

Last week’s Michigan football news is just as sweet (if not more so) than this simple apple pastry.  Al Borges was let go as offensive coordinator and promptly replaced by Brad Nussmeier from Alabama.  Perhaps it is poor form to so excitedly celebrate someone losing their job, but anyone who has watched Michigan’s offense implode the past two seasons knows that this change was long overdue.  And equally exciting, it’s no longer -40 degrees here!  No need to designated Celsius or Fahrenheit, since apparently -40 is the same on both scales.

But don’t think that I’ve just been sitting around the past few weeks waiting for Al Borges to be fired and writing clip show style blog posts (I’m actually pretty excited about what I created for last week).  I’ve been experimenting with some of the recipes in Chad Robertson’s newest book and tried my hand at a new type of pastry.  A galette is somewhere between a pie and a tart and offers qualities that I like about each.

Caramel Apple Cookies

It’s that time of year.  The leaves are changing, sweaters are being taken out of storage containers, and conference play has started in the Big 10.  And after a long afternoon of sitting in front of the TV (or in my case computer) watching Michigan steamroll Purdue for all time win #898, what better thing to do than eat cookies while waiting for the 7 and 8 PM games to start.

I love apples, caramel, and cookies, so it only seems logical to combine them all together into something delicious.  I can’t remember too many occasions growing up of making cookies from scratch, although it’s really not too difficult.  The hardest part of this recipe was probably cutting up square caramels since Kroger didn’t have caramel chips.  I’d also say it was difficult to not eat all of these immediately after taking them out of the oven.

Chocolate Brioche

Several weeks ago I was searching for something sweet to make in lieu of a cake for my girlfriend’s birthday and came across a recipe for chocolate brioche.  Well, not so much brioche in the traditional shape, but more a brioche-like dough layered with chocolate and then baked in muffin tins.  You can see why I was excited to try it.

A few weeks later, I am finally getting around to posting about it.  Similar to the delays that kept me from making my english muffins, whenever I kept trying to write this post it seemed like something came up, although not necessarily a bad thing.