I ♥ Pancakes.

If there is one thing you should know about me, its that I LOVE pancakes. To me, breakfast food is good anytime of the day, or night. Do you agree?

Well, the other morning I had the urge to make some pancakes, homemade style. I looked up a recipe and tweaked it a little bit to come up with....

Yep. Peanut butter and banana go quite well together. They are a delicious pair in this yummy made-from-scratch pancake! (Oh, and don't worry- I didn't eat 4 of them!)

Here's the recipe. Adapted from this one.

Ingredients: 

1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2-1/2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk, any kind will work
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup peanut butter
1 ripe banana   
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Then:

In one bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

In another bowl, combine milk, water, peanut butter, 1/2 a ripe banana (smashed), and vanilla extract. Beat until smooth.

Pour wet ingredients into dry. Mix until just combined. Do not overmix.

Chop up remaining half of banana and put bits into the batter.

Grease hot griddle, or pan. Pour desired amt of batter into pan, flip when golden brown.

Enjoy! :)

I wanted to mention a couple other tidbits too.

*I've been using agave nectar as my "syrup" lately, and its so good! Try it. Its cheaper than maple syrup, and WAY better for your than cheapo pancake stuff (which is filled with high fructose corn syrup).

*These pancakes freeze and reheat very well. Perfect to make on a Saturday morning and save for the upcoming week! Just pop in the toaster on the frozen setting for a couple minutes.

Have a great day!
xo, Jenna

Yum.

Since becoming a vegetarian again, I wanted to be able to have a burger alternative when my family is cooking out. I love black bean burgers, and Gardenburger makes a pretty yummy one, but they are quite expensive. I saw this post over at Food Coma, and thought, NOW is the time to finally learn how to make these! (p.s. I LOVE Emma's blog, she has pretty pictures and yummy recipes, plus I think she is HILARIOUS.)

So I went to allrecipes.com, thats usually where I head when I need a recipe, and found this one. The only thing is I didn't really want to use eggs in it, and I didn't have a few of the spices. So I kind of went with what I DID have and came up a tweaked recipe, all my own. :)

I didn't measure anything so I can't give you exact amounts of everything. I followed the basic structure of the recipe, but changed these things:

A squirt of ketchup instead of an egg, yellow and orange peppers instead of green, garlic salt and pepper instead of chili powder. I also made my own breadcrumbs with leftover hot dog buns by toasting them and then throwing them in my food processor with some thyme, pepper, and salt. A BIG thing is to really dry the beans after you rinse them. That made it much easier to mush everything together and for the patties to hold their shape. I just used my bare hands to form them, and it made 5 good-sized patties. :)

This was super easy to make, and REALLY cheap. The can of black beans was maybe 75 cents, at most. Score.

Being a vegetarian is cheap. I think that its a common misconception that the lifestyle is expensive. If you search around on the internet, you can find TONS of recipes, there is even the site http://vegweb.com/. Check it out if you are interested, they have over 15,000 recipes!

Happy Eating!
xo, Jenna

Hello Hello, its a Cupcake post!

I can't believe its almost been a month since I blogged! Wow. Time is flying by like craziness!

My daughter turned 1 at the beginning of the month. This past year has gone by way too insanely fast for me. Now that little gal is attempting to pull up and cruise on every piece of furniture in the house. My gosh. She needs to SLOW DOWN. Right now! :) I wanted to share the recipe I made for her birthday cupcakes. I decided to make them from scratch, and wanted them to be a little more fun than just vanilla or chocolate. No offense to vanilla or chocolate (I still love you!), just sometimes I like to mix it up a little bit.. So I made....

Lemon Blueberry Cupcakes!

My brother came up to me after eating his and declared "This is the BEST cupcake I have ever eaten!". Hooray! That made me feel so good. :) I found the recipe for the cupcakes here. The only thing was I wanted to make a sweeter frosting for the top, because cream cheese didn't sound so great to me to top them with. So I used this recipe for its "lemonade" frosting. (It's just like buttercream but you add fresh squeezed lemon juice.) Um, can I just say YUM! We had a lot leftover and the hubby and I just kept sneaking licks of it out of the fridge the next week. I used it to ice some sugar cookies as well and that was really delicious too! :)

My daughters party was fun, we had family over and Barry set up a tent in our backyard. He also grilled hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken. I became a vegetarian (again) the week before and totally forgot to get something for me to eat, so I ate a lot of chips, veggies and fruit. Haha, oh well :)

What did it for me this time (going back to being a vegetarian) was I was eating some venison and kept thinking about it being an actual deer, and it grossed me out so much that I threw it away and vowed to never eat meat AGAIN. This time its for good. :) I did it for quite awhile before (approx. 5 years) and I know I will be able to easily continue for the rest of my life. I will feel so much better health-wise and conscious-wise. I don't bash anyone who eats meat, I promise. I was telling my son about my decision and I said "I like animals, I don't want to eat them", to which he replied "I don't like animals, I want to eat them"... And I started laughing so much. I knew my husband would LOVE that he said that. :) hehehe.

But enough about all that. :) I just wanted to share another cupcake recipe because its been awhile.

Hope your weekend was great!

xo, Jenna

BLACT'S!

Last night I made Year-Round Corn Chowder for the first time, from the recipe in Hands-Off Cooking. It's the third recipe I've made from this cookbook. It was really easy to make and yummy, but it was really thyme-y, is that a word? Haha. Next time I will use half of the thyme that it calls for. I should also add that I scored this book for $5 at Big Lots! So cool.

Anyway, I bought already-cooked bacon for the recipe.. And had some leftover today, so I knew I wanted to make a BLT. But I wanted it to be fancier. I read on allrecipes.com that some people make BLT's with avacado and I wanted to try that.. But with a variation.

So I made a BLACT. What is a BLACT, you ask? A Bacon, Lettuce, Avacado, Cheese, and Tomato sandwich! Phew, that's a mouthful. (A delicious one!)
:)

Here's how I made it. I fried a couple slices of bacon for just a couple minutes in a pan, then took it out and let a paper towel soak up the extra fat. I put some butter on one slice of Italian bread, then stacked up provolone cheese, the bacon and sliced tomatoes on the other side of it. I then slathered it up with mayo, then put the other piece of bread on top. I added butter to the top slice. I grilled on both sides until golden-brown. Then I removed it from the pan, opened the sandwich, and added lettuce and avacado pieces.

And this is what it looked like:

I also had Kettle Brand barbeque chips- SO good. And a Roy Rogers to drink. :)

YUM YUM YUM!

I'll probably have another one for lunch tomorrow. I don't mind eating the same things over and over. Do you?

Adventures in Baking

So I've been snowed in for the past few days, with the hubby out of town. There was almost a foot of snow/ice in our driveway, and when I saw our neighbors all getting stuck trying to get in and out of their driveways.. I decided to stay put. Unfortunately I wanted something sweet (I have a major sweet tooth). And we had nada. I had things on hand to make cupcakes short of one thing: eggs. I am ALWAYS out of eggs when I want to bake. (A few weeks back I used Pepsi to replace them in a recipe! It worked, but still. Note to self: buy more eggs)

So, thinking back to my vegan days.. I know vegan cupcake recipes are out there. Even though I never baked any while I was a vegan, oddly enough. I did a search and found one without any weird extras (like vinegar or cream of tartar- yuck! ) Then I remembered that Natalie, from Bake and Destroy is always talking about Billy's Vanilla Vanilla cupcakes. I found the Billy's Vanilla Buttercream recipe via Martha, and it seemed simple enough.

So vanilla cupcakes it was! Or at least I thought....

Ladies and Gentlemen I present to you... Drum roll please...

Yes you read that right. Sugar Cookie Cupcakes. Um, yum!

These are hubby approved. He said they taste just like his favorite- Lofthouse. And I agree. :)


For the cupcakes you need:

1 1/3 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine
3 cups all purpose flour
1 T. baking powder
3/4 t. salt
2 cups milk (any)
1 T. and 1 t. vanilla extract

Heat oven to 350. In one bowl, mix butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. In another bowl sift dry ingredients. Measure milk. Add milk, then dry ingredients, in alternating batches to the butter/sugar mixture being sure to beat well with each addition. Then add the vanilla, and beat for 2 minutes on medium speed. Batter will be thick. Line cupcake pan with liners, fill 3/4 full. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. Makes 24. (Adapted from The Vegan Chef)


For the Billy's Vanilla Buttercream :

1 cup unsalted butter, room temp.
6-8 cups confectioners sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream butter until smooth and creamy in a bowl with an electric mixer, about 2 to 3 minutes. With mixer on low speed, add 6 cups sugar, milk, and vanilla; mix until light and fluffy. If necessary, gradually add remaining 2 cups sugar to reach desired consistency.


Enjoy! These are really yummy. I LOVE LOVE LOVE cupcakes. You can see my obsession in how many pouches I make with cupcake fabric! Check out the shop. :)


P.S. Isn't it nice when something you set out to make turns into something you didn't expect AND is amazing?