Brown Bananas Make...

I had some leftover bananas from the Fishing Snacks. They were nice and ripe on the verge of too ripe. So, in honor of the bananas and not wanting to be wasteful these muffins have been created. I'm not a fan of the banana. But, I can't let these go to waste. Check out LifeasMom.com's new blog, Good Cheap Eats. She has great ideas for just about everything. I went to the new blog the other day to see her post about bananas. http://www.goodcheapeats.com/2009/04/yes-we-have-brown-bananas.html

Chocolate Cinnamon Oat Banana Muffins
Makes 18 muffins

4 Ripe medium bananas
1/3 cup melted buttah (butter)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 packet Maple and Brown Sugar Oats
1 tsp baking soda
a shake or two salt
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup Hershey's cinnamon chips
1/8 cup chopped pecans

Turn the oven to 350 degrees F. In your mixing bowl combine bananas and butter and mix. Add sugar and mix. Add the egg and mix. Add the vanilla and cinnamon. Mix. Add Oat packet and mix. Add b. soda and salt. Add 1/2 cup of the whole wheat flour at a time and mix after each addition. Fold in the chips and pecans.

Line with muffin papers or spray your muffin tin. Spoon mixture until each cup is half full. Pop in the oven and bake 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven. Allow to cool a bit and serve with a little buttah!

When the Garden Gives You Zucchini, Make Muffins

My Mom lovingly tends to the garden each summer when my Dad's leaves for the Midwest. Tending to the garden is a time consuming and sometimes difficult job, especially when the temperature has been over 100 degrees many a day, and humid too!

Tomatoes, 3 colors of bell pepper, strawberries, lemons, onions and zucchini grow in this garden. The zucchini grow fast and big. I picked some zucchini yesterday. Gave a couple to a friend and brought a couple home.

I have decided to make MUFFINS! I am not a fan of zucchini bread. It weird, really. Put a zucchini in something sweet? I am used to eating grilled zucchini, not sweet zucchini. I found a basic recipe for Zucchini Muffins on the Internet. This site has just about every muffin you could imagine on it. http://www.muffinrecipes.net/. I modeled my recipe after one I read, but spiced mine up a bit.

Garden Fresh Zucchini Muffins

1 cup sugar
2 eggs (white thingies removed)
1/2 cup canola oil
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 cup shredded garden fresh zucchini
2 cups unbleached flour
1/8 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Mix the first four ingredients together. Add the zucchini, and dry ingredients and mix well. If you would like some of your muffins to be pecan free, stop here and fill muffins cups 2/3 full. Add the chopped pecans to the remainder of the batter and mix. Fill the remaining cups. You should have enough batter for 12 muffins and one mini loaf or 4 more muffins.

Bake for 20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Serve warm with butter, or cooled with nothing.