It's Bananas

I have recently been eating a lot of bananas. They seem to be the perfect thing for a pre-workout snack, post workout snack, per-work snack or dessert. Easy to eat, filling and often cheap. Through my recent increase of on-the-go banana consumption, I have analyzed part of the fruit economy in NY. New York City has a wonderful array of street vendors; hotdogs, coffee trucks, Halal meat trucks and fruit stands. The fruit stands is where I have been grabbing most of my bananas from. It is amazing the price difference; 30 cents is what the guy outside of my gym sells them for, the fruit stand on the corner near my house on Broadway and Houston sells them for 40 cents, but the vendor near my work charges 50 cents a banana! When I told him most other fruit guys sell them for less, he pointed at the Starbucks and said "they sell them for a dollar!" Trader Joes, as is the case for most things they sell, is where to get your cheapest banana, 19 cents.

What I really wonder about when I buy fruit from the street stands is not so much about how they price their fruit, but where do they get their fruit from!?!

My favorite way to eat a banana is in a smoothie. I created this drink back in college and still make it. When the last few bananas from the bunch are going bad, peel the skin, and freeze them in a zip-lock bag. Trying to peel frozen banana skin is not an easy task. It is best to use frozen fruit when making smoothies, adding ice only dilutes the drink.
Banana Smoothie: 1 frozen banana, 1 cup milk, 1 Tbs. peanut butter, few dashes cinnamon, 1 cap full vanilla extract. Blend and enjoy!

Banana Dessert
I was at a party over the weekend where someone brought chocolate covered frozen bananas. I was very impressed with this creative addition to the usual hummus, chips, and brownies. These bananas were halved, put on wooden sticks, frozen, then dipped in almond butter, then chocolate. When I make them, I'm going to cut the bananas into marshmallow sized pieces, easier to manage at a party. But I love the idea of dipping the banana bites into peanut or almond butter, then melted chocolate, refreezing, and topping with chopped almonds or peanuts.

Un-Stuffed Zucchini

I had an abundance of fresh vegetables from Mia's garden and the farmers market, but wasn't exactly sure how to use all of them. I went to a few of my favorite food blogs for some inspiration (101 Cookbooks & Smittenkitchen) and found a stuffed zucchini recipe that caught my interest. It was full of vegetables, but also cooked in a way that made it more comforting with cheese and bread crumbs. I didn't have all of the ingredients, and when I finally got around to making dinner, I wanted to do something fast. So I altered the recipe and did a "stuffed zucchini" in a sautee pan.
I sauteed some garlic, chopped red onion, and a handful of sliced almonds. Then added the chopped zucchini. Meanwhile I cooked some quinoa in a separate pot. When the quinoa was finished I added about 2 cups to the zucchini mixture, 1/2 c of pesto, drizzle of olive oil and some feta cheese. Mixed it together and served it in bowls. It was delicious and just as comforting as a traditional stuffed zucchini, but cooked in half the time.

Mia's Garden

I finally got out to Mia's community garden in Queens, and it was all that I expected! The whole garden is beautiful, tall sunflowers, tomato plants heavy with fruit, colorful patches of red beets, and fragrant mint and lemon verbena. Mia's plot was full of cucumbers, zucchini, basil, and a few melons. Her tomato plants, while they have grown tall are not bearing fruit yet.


Upon returning from the garden, we turned our huge pile of basil into pesto. Turns out you don't need a cuisinart, but some patience and a sharp knife.
We chopped everything by hand: garlic, we choose walnuts instead of pinenuts and the basil.
Also, pesto freezes well so instead of adding the oil or cheese to this chopped mixture wait to add it before eating, and freeze as is. Just add enough oil to moisten the basil to keep it paste like.

Claire's Cakes

The idea for this blog also came about when I launched Claire's Cakes. This "business" was born without much planning, I was given the opportunity to make a few cakes and some cash so I took it.

The First order: Two birthday cakes: Snow- Capped Red Velvet & Tropical Carrot Cake for an office's group birthday celebration.
This order came in pretty quickly / unexpectedly. Mind you I am in the middle of getting my masters in Food Studies, and was interning at Food &Wine Magazine, so starting my own cake business was a test in time management, among other things.

I’ve made 12” double layer cakes before, but that was in an industrial kitchen for a catering company using a 50 pound floor mixer. I hadn’t taken on something this size in my home kitchen before. Early in the week that this order was due, I had trouble falling asleep, wondering if I was in over my head. Could I really pull this off?
First things first, get equipment. I had heard about NY Baking & Supply Company since moving to NY, but hadn’t had the chance to go. This was my opportunity. They had just what I needed, 12” cake pans, 12” cardboard rounds, cake boxes, piping bags and tips. Believe it or not I actually didn’t own a mixer. Having lived with roommates for several years I had always used theirs, so I had to buy one of my own. Since Kmart is only a few blocks from my apartment, this seemed like a logical place to find a hand mixer. I settled on the Black & Decker.

Step 2: Recipes & Ingredients. One order was for Red Velvet cake, and although I’ve made red velvet cupcakes before, I didn’t remember what recipe I used, so I began scouring cooking blogs, recipe websites, trusty Joy and other cookbooks to compile a good RV cake recipe. I did have my Mom’s tried and trusted carrot cake recipe so wasn’t too worried about that one, but I was a bit nervous that these recipes wouldn’t fill and produced 12” cakes!

For those of you not living in NY, you must know that grocery shopping here is a challenge in itself. Find a good store, find all the ingredients you need, and transport it home are a few of the big hurdles. I have a decent sized grocery store near my apartment, but buying a 5 pound bag of flour, plus a few boxes of confectioners sugar, 5 pound bag of sugar, cocoa, cream cheese, and getting it all home, is a enough of a workout to skip the gym that day.

This first week of baking not only was I working full time but I also had Tuesday and Thrusday night classes. So the week went like this: Monday made up my menu. Tuesday night after work and after class grocery shopped, Wednesday, find snow-caps, baked the both cakes that night. Thursday night after class make frosting and decorate the cakes. Things were going fine. The cakes were baked and wrapped in plastic wrap waiting for their frosting. Thursday night in the middle of making the frosting, I under estimated how much frosting these cakes would need. Thankfully Keller & Dave were here to watch the circus, so I sent them out to get more cream cheese and powdered sugar. But that was only the 1st problem of the night. The second was when my hand mixer died. Half way through mixing the second batch of frosting, 3 pounds of butter and 3 pounds of cream cheese, the mixer just dies. The engine burned out! It was almost comical. Thankfully my hand emulsion blender came with a whisk attachment, that did the trick and fluffed the frosting right up.

I also under estimated how long it would take to make and frost these bad boys. It was about 8hrs in total!

Friday – delivery day. Another challenge of running a business out of your 1 bedroom apartment is figuring out how I was I going to get these 2 cakes out the door! I thought I might have to call a friend over to help carry one of them down to a cab. But thankfully the boxes both fit on a baking sheet and I was able to juggle them down to the street on my own.

It’s a strange thing to bake a cake and not be able to try it. Who knew if they were edible?! Did I go over board on the spices in the tropical carrot cake? Was the step at the end of the RV cake where you add vinegar to the baking soda going to leave a bad acidic after-taste? The raw batter sort of tasted acidic. Could you taste the coco or was it just red food coloring you were eating? I knew the frostings tasteded good, which makes everything better but there’s always that sense of the unknown and wonder. Turns out they were a huge hit! Everyone liked them, so much so that on Monday, the office manager emailed saying they’d like to book me for March.