whole wheat -

by Miss K

Can this Banana Bread be Saved?

I have a confession to make. Despite my mostly-vegetarian, quinoa-loving, local-eating lifestyle, I just don’t like whole wheat flour. I think whole wheat pasta tastes just like the box it comes in, and every time I try to bake with whole wheat flour, I regret it. However, we came into several bags of the stuff the other week, and after making some extra nutritious play-dough, I was still left with far too much of the finely ground fiber-fest. I also had several black bananas, so the next step seemed obvious.

In retrospect, I should have used a combo of white and wheat flour, but in my zealous pursuit of using all of the WW flour, I went a little overboard. The result was nothing short of brick-like. It was so dense and dry that even putting a generous dollop of Nutella on every bite just made me wish I was eating the Nutella off a spoon.

Did I mention that I made two loaves of this nasty stuff? I contemplated just chucking the whole thing in the trash, but I have had a few too many Friday-you-know-what’s lately, so I decided to persevere.

The Joy of Cooking told me that for bread pudding, you should only use yeast breads, not ones leavened with baking soda, so I went online in search of a different recipe for bread pudding to redeem my sad banana bread. Just a heads up, it is pretty much exactly the same as the recipe in the Joy of Cooking. Oh, J of C, why you gotta lie like that?

Anyway, I cut the offending ‘nana bread into chunks, added a few other ingredients, and Voila! The sweet smell of redemption.

Banana Bread Bread Pudding

It Ain’t Just Southern

Editor’s Note: Westcoast and I (gansie!) have been making the rounds to all of the hott spots in DC this season. Of course I’m talking about the farmers’ markets. We’ve visited three locations (Silver Spring, H Street–with sightings of Belmontmedina and Mr. and Mrs. Joe Hoya–and Bloomingdale) and we have many left to scope out. Here’s Westcoast‘s most current inspiration from a market find. And please let us know where we should get our next seasonal fix.

You finally get something out of me…probably two years after gansie and I first discussed…so you know it must be tasty.

I chose okra (and wasn’t the first to do so here on ES). I almost couldn’t help it. Gansie and I were at the Bloomingdale Farmers Market, there was a lone section of okra staring at me. I hadn’t really done much work with it, and it seemed like a challenge. When I picked it up I think gansie lost the ability to speak for a few seconds.

Okra is perhaps one of the most misunderstood vegetables (well, it’s a fruit, technically) around. It is noted for its extremely slimy, gummy or mushy texture in food that is poorly prepared (read: if you are from the North, you probably think it is just one of those silly Southern things like deep fried pickles; if you are from the South, you ate fried okra at some point in your life with varying extreme reactions.) It is native to Africa and if you check out its cross-section, it’s in the shape of a pentagon.

There’s only one dish I have ever had with okra that really made me see its potential: bhindi (okra) masala. I scoured the internet for recipes, took a field trip to an Indian grocery (and nearly lost the liquid from my empty stomach as I saw a whole lamb, legs and all, being hacked up at the butcher) and ended up with something that was pretty phenomenal.

Intense recipe post jump –