ch.ch.ch.ch.ch.ch.ch.ch.cherry bomb

I just googled “random facts” because I was having trouble getting started on this blog post. Sometimes random facts are inspiring.

Like this one:
Every second Americans collectively eat one hundred pounds of chocolate.

What?! is that a thing? How is this stuff even measured? What about at night time? Who are all the lonely hearts eating 100 pounds of chocolate a second between midnight and 6am.

This is an interesting fact that I have a feeling may not have much truth to it. But I’m gunna roll with it, I may not be American, but this makes me feel better about the 3 oversized chocolate bars a consumed last week.

Aside from my chocolate cravings which are ongoing and unavoidable… I am craving muchos carbohydrates lately. Muffins are delightful. Scones are perfect. Cherry Banana bread is amaze-balls. I didn’t think of it prior… but chocolate would be a GREAT addition.

Just doin my part to contribute to the random facts of the world.

Let’s get into it.

Cherry Banana Bread
Adapted from this recipe

3 ripe bananas
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 c. unsweetened apple sauce
1/4 c. raw sugar or brown sugar
1 chia egg
2 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 c. oats
3/4 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 c. frozen cherries
1/2 c. walnuts

First, grease a bread pan and set aside. Preheat your oven to 350*F.

In a large bowl, mash the banana until very mushy. Combine with the sugar, lemon juice, chia egg & apple sauce. Add the cherries and fold through.

In a separate bowl combine all the dry ingredients, including the nuts. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until just combined. Pour the batter into the bread pan and spread evenly. You can top it with some more cherries and walnuts for good measure.

Bake for about 55 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Eat it and be merry.

I also just read that in 1879 Belgians tried to train cats to deliver mail. Not surprisingly… it did not work.

Mail cats. pft.

xxx

granola cruncher

Granola is a happening thing. Not just for tree huggers and hippies anymore. Not just for women who wear bucket hats with a ying yang patch on the front, using walking sticks and wearing hiking boots with their socks pulled up to the mid-calf.* Not just for those hooligans who don’t shave their  legs or wear deodorant. Those people are on to bigger and better things. Like hemp seeds and acai berries.

Me, I always liked granola. Especially from Rube. Rube is an older gentleman who works at the St. Lawrence market in Toronto. He has a little stand that sells rice and dried beans and quinoa, (he sold Quinoa before quinoa was cool, back when we were all pronouncing it Quinn-oh-ah), and also Granola. He sells lots of Granola. Out of huge tubs with metal scoops and into small brown bags wrapped up with a red elastic.

Ahhh Rube. He sold me granola every Saturday morning for most of my childhood. He let me weigh my own bag on his little scale… and then I would bust open the brown paper and eat all the raisins and apple pieces, those rolled oats were for suckers. I still do that, eat all the fruit that is. Just ask my dad the day after he buys a box of granola or muesli. Or ask my boyfriend. If you buy a breakfast cereal with fruit bits, you better believe that when you go to have a bowl in a couple days, there won’t be any fruit bits left. That’s just how I roll.

This granola is very unlike Rube’s Granola. But I would never even dream of trying to replicate his, cause I would never succeed. It’s the best granola ever.

This one is good too, it’s banana bread granola. It tastes like a big loaf of banana bread, but crunchy and in a bowl with some fruit and milk. yum.

Banana Bread Granola
adapted from here

Ingredients

3-4 c. old-fashioned oats

1 c. puffed millet (or puffed rice whatevs)

2 ripe bananas

1/2 cup coconut oil

1/3 cup maple syrup

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

pinch of sea salt

1/2 cup walnuts

1/2 cup banana chips
Granola is pretty basic. Smoosh the bananas up – Mix the wet, mix the dry (excluding the banana chips), mix together and spread on a baking sheet (or two). Bake for 25-30 minutes at 325*C. Stir in Banana chips

Eat warm. It will harden as it cools and become very crunchy!

It’s not Rubes, but it’ll do for now.

xxx

*that woman is not fictional. She is all too real- A woman from my neighbourhood who I met on many walks on the Scarborough bluffs. She once stopped me to ask if my puppy was a ‘bitch or a dog’.  I was 11 years old. I knew only of bitch being a bad word, not meaning female dog, so needless to say I  was taken aback. When I told my mom, my mom replied with… “Oh she’s a Granola cruncher” and so now when I think of Granola crunchers I think only of that woman and her stupid ying-yang bucket hat.

And FOR the RECORD. you do not need hiking boots to walk around the Scarborough bluffs. Ok? It’s just unnecessary. Not exactly mountainous terrain…

happy one year

Autumn is here! The cool, windy weather is making me giddy and has me itching to buy scarves and wooly sweaters. Although this autumn will never turn into a proper winter… not here in Sydney anyway. I’m still excited and sort of surprised to look at the ground and see fallen leaves in hues of burnt orange and red. I didn’t think that happened in this country. So ill informed, I am.

And here we are. It’s been a year. A year since I started writing this little blog and a year since I moved to Australia. (In fact I just checked and tomorrow marks exactly one year since I first posted here. It’s somewhat of an anniversary I suppose…)

It seems odd to me, that it’s been that long. Even as I write this, it seems wrong. Where has the year gone? Has it really been that long since I’ve been home? Since I’ve seen my puppy? Since I’ve slept in my own bed? I suppose it has. Sometimes It feels like eons ago and sometimes not so much. Either way, I have mixed emotions. I’m very happy at this moment in time, in this lifestyle. I get to live in a beautiful country with a beautiful man. I get to sip delicious coffee and eat delicious food, and I get to gallivant about Sydney. And there are Palm trees. PALM TREES everywhere! But I do miss my Canadian home, my friends and my family. Some days are harder than others…

I won’t be gone forever… but I think that somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought that I might be back for a visit around now. Well, life is life. And it would seem that I won’t be visiting home just yet. Still, the weather is making me nostalgic for Canada. I am half expecting some winter winds and frosty mornings.

Now before I start tearing up over my keyboard (ooops, too late) let’s move on to a sweeter subject. Banana Bread! Cause who doesn’t need a little comfort food when the cold weather hits (bringing with it just a dash of reality…)

so dense and delicious

Well, I sure needed it this week. And I might need a little more right now. In fact, as I sit here typing this, there is a second loaf of bread baking in the oven. Yes, cause the loaf I made last night is nearly gone. (this recipe is REALLY yummy)

raspberries look sooo sophisticated when cooked.

I think it’s kind of fitting that I post a Banana-bread on the one year anniversary of this blog. When I first arrived in Australia Bananas were a whopping $14 a kilo… all I wanted in the world was to bake with them. Haha… Well this week I stumbled upon a bounty of bananas for just 99cents! So as fate would have it:

Raspberry-Banana Bread
to soothe your soul

1.5 c. whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 c. raw sugar

2 tbsp. ground flax (+ 1/4 c. water)

2-3 bananas (mushed up)

1/2 c. rice milk

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 c. chopped walnuts

3/4 c. raspberries (fresh or frozen)

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. whisk the flax seed with the water and allow to sit and thicken for about five minutes. Mix the wet ingredients and add in the flax seeds, then add the wet mixture to the dry and mix until just combined. Now fold in the walnuts and raspberries. Pour into a loaf pan(greased or lined) and baked at 350* for about an hour.

Eat warm, eat cool, eat at the coffee shop with a delicious cold coffee. Eat after it has been smushed in your bag by your ginormous camera, because honestly… it’s still good.

I guess a lot has happened in a year. I mean just browse through this little ditty. This here marks my 45th post. Almost one a week. Not too shabby Hicks.

For now I will just have to keep baking, it calms any storms a’brewing in my mind and reminds me of home. And to ease the pain of being away from my puppy, I snuggle up with this little guy.

Odin

He’s no dog.dog.DOG… but he’s as close as I’m going to get for a couple more months. And he is pretty cute.

hello adorable.

xxx