Monday, February 8, 2010

A Blue [Banana] Monday

"What's the story, Morning Glory?"

Well, if I could tell you that, I think we'd all be a bit better off! I've been in a rather depressed funk the past week or so, probably a combination of the ever-present overwhelmed-by-schoolwork feeling and the fact that, at the end of April, I will truly be cast out into the wind as far as a structured life goes (unless I decide to go to the holistic college I'm looking at for another year). It's kind of lonely around here, too... between me being at school all hours of the day and night and my mom jetting off to Fairfax twice last month for work, too often it's just been me and the stepfamily at home - and we all know how that can be. Since my schoolfriends are located so far away from me, I don't really get much other social interaction either - not to mention that although we're all in a Food and Nutrition program, the only "foodie" is me!

Oddly enough, instead of just being exhausted by it all, I've also got some kind of weird electric hyperactivity pulsing through my veins. I guess you could say I'm suffering from a major case of "strenergy" - energy fostered by stress! Until today, I was forced to try and downplay it in order to slog through a section of Labour Cost homework (word to the wise: if you ever find this on your time table, run!), but I finally couldn't take it anymore. Darn it, it was Monday after all, I was stressed and moody, and I needed to break for a bake!

Throwing any sort of nutritional-minded caution to the wind, I stopped into the grocery on the way home and stocked up on some of the "big guns" of baking that I almost never use - including good, unsalted butter and some more dark chocolate. I'm expecting the chocolate/butter/egg/sugar combination to become a rather popular one with me if I'm left to my own devices... God knows I have enough ideas flitting around this skull of mine (too bad I don't get any credit hours for them!). Coming home with my bounty, and unearthing my frozen cache of baking supplies with it's gigantic Ziploc of bananas, I started the comforting task of embracing simplicity - you can't go wrong with a super-fluffy, sweet banana cake! In homage to the song that's been running through my head nonstop for the past two days, New Order's "Blue Monday", as well as my all-time favourite store in Kensington Market downtown named the Blue Banana Market, I added a hefty dose of food colouring too. It's not every day you get a Blue Monday that's this good!

Blue [Monday] Banana Muffins
Makes 21
3 large, ripe bananas, mashed
1/4 cup non-fat plain yogurt
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp banana extract
2 tsp blue food colouring (optional)
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup softened butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
6 oz silken tofu, pureed
  1. Preheat oven to 350F, grease or line muffin cups with paper liners.
  2. In a medium bowl, combine bananas, yogurt, lemon juice, extracts and food colouring. Set aside.
  3. In another medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
  4. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until fluffy.
  5. Add tofu, beating well to combine.
  6. Beginning and ending with the dry mixture, alternate additions of flour and banana mixtures, beating ell after each addition.
  7. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until they test done.
  8. Turn out immediately and cool completely on a wire rack.
Amount Per Serving
Calories: 160.0
Total Fat: 4.7 g
Cholesterol: 11.7 mg
Sodium: 40.7 mg
Total Carbs: 28.3 g
Dietary Fiber: 0.8 g
Protein: 2.1 g

4 comments :

  1. i want to try this but my homemade muffins always come out rock hard :(

    ReplyDelete
  2. How funny to dye them to suit your mood

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hope you feel better: I'd hate for you to have blue food indefinitely! :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's funny. Not the depression part, though, just the "blue" part. For the funk, get outside as much as you can - for sunshine and exercise - and make sure that you get enough vitamin D. New Order always makes me smile!

    Your mention of frozen bananas reminded me of a humourous incident in my life. I call it "The frozen banana incident":

    Four, maybe five years ago I walked the Weekend to End Breast Cancer for the first time. During the walk, fellow walkers complained about blisters, black toenails and other painful foot problems [yeah, the story isn't funny yet, but be patient]. My feet were fine. Maybe a little discomfort, but blister-free and no injuries [maybe you see where this is going, considering the name of the story].

    I gloated to too loudly, methinks. The fates heard. The day after, the Monday, I reached into the stuffed freezer to grab something. Out flew a banana (it flew!) and hit me ON THE FOOT. Between yelps of pain and holding back tears of pain I was laughing and acknowledging to my roommate that that while it hurt like hell (I believe the phrase "hurts like a motherf****r was used), it was hilarious and that I'd be laughing later. My toes were bruised for weeks. Sprained, I think.

    Moral of the story: Keep those frozen bananas in the back of the freezer because if they fall out and smack you, they hurt. They're pretty solid. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the story. Much later a friend told me that every time she took a banana from the freezer she thought of me.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for the feedback!