Lazy Sunday Instagram Roundup

                        Tea to start the day                          \\        Butternut squash and bacon mac and cheese

             Miyu is a water connoisseur                           \\               I just love these fancy shoes!

             My kitchen is veggie themed!                        \\    My jack o' lantern looked pretty scary at the end!

             Cherry chocolate fudge! <3                 \\    I have a few skeleton buddies that hang out by my desk!

My username on instagram is 1finefeline or you can check my profile out on the web here.

Can't wait to get some pictures today so I can show off my sweater from Le Bomb Shop!

See you soon! <3

Banana Bread!

Hello hello! I'm here with my first "official" recipe post, and I'm pretty excited. I hope this will be the first of many original recipes as well as old favorites I've found around the web and tweaked. I'd like to balance it equally between recipes and outfits here, as I really do cook quite a lot.

This is the banana bread recipe I mentioned a bit ago in my 7 things post. The recipe is incredibly versatile...there are so many options for spicing, flavors, topping, ratios, etc. The recipe I started with is here, but you'll see if you compare that I differ quite a bit. Mostly what I'm trying for is a healthier (but still delicious) treat!

You'll have to forgive me too for the quality of some of the pics. There are no windows in the front of our apartment and the only lighting is gosh-awful fluorescents, so I'm fiddling with lighting scheme all the time with different lamps and bulbs to see what works best. This didn't turn out to be ideal!

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 bananas
• 3/4 cup sugar*
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1/3 cup butter, melted

*Sugar is one of the things in this recipe that is extremely versatile. I have used 1/4 cup white, 1/4 cup brown, and 1/4 cup honey and it was delicious. This time I used 1/4 cup brown, 1/4 cup honey, and 1/4 cup that was half and half brown sugar and honey. We are attempting to cut out white sugar wherever we can here, plus the flavors of banana and honey are divine together!

1. Preheat oven to 375. You can bake muffin-style, loaf style, or in a round cake pan like I did. Make sure to grease whatever pan you choose.

2. Mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Flour, baking soda, salt. I usually just eyeball the salt because I like to live dangerously. Set aside.

It's banana time.

3. In a separate bowl, add cut bananas.

You can mash your bananas in a food processor if you like, or you can chop into slices and mash with a spoon. We have a food processor, but in the spirit of fewer dishes I usually opt to mash by hand. I add big banana chunks, then I stab 'em a bit until they look like this:

Then you keep working at them. I alternate between stabbing, chopping, and smushing. Eventually it will look like this:

It's still very lumpy, but don't worry.

4. Add the sugar/honey, egg, and melted butter to the bananas. If you want to add spices, now's a great time. Cinnamon is an awesome standard. Nutmeg is delicious. Vanilla extract? Sure! Whatever crazy combo you can come up with will probably be delicious. Beat with hand mixer until well combined. The mixer will do a great job of finishing the banana mashing process and you should get a great smoothish mix.

5. Add your liquid ingredients to your dry ingredients. Stir them together and get everything incorporated. This is a fairly moist batter and will be slightly lumpy.

6. Pour your batter into your pan.

7. Now you have this beautiful blank canvas in front of you! What will you do with it?

Last time I made this, I warmed up a little Nutella and swirled that on top. You could do any number of things, chocolate chips, fruit/jelly/jam, dried fruit, granola, the list is endless really. I decided this time to please Michael (the man)'s voracious peanut butter sweet tooth and give that a try.

I warmed some peanut butter in a bowl until it was more of a liquid consistency. I also added some cinnamon to the peanut butter for flavor.

Then I did a little swirly drizzle on top. I left a portion blank to try the plain flavor of the bread.

Then I take a spoon and do a fancy swirl so I can imagine myself a pastry chef. :)

This is the very same technique I used for the Nutella version.

8. Almost there! Now just bake this baby for 18-25 minutes. What sugar variant you use with affect the final baking time. With 1/2 cup of actual sugar and only 1/4 cup of honey my baking time was about 4 minutes less. With more liquid, it took about 25 minutes. I usually set it for 18 minutes and just watch over it the last few to get the perfect balance of doneness.

Voila!

Delish. It's so simple and I think it can be a very impressive looking dessert with the fancy swirls. I also don't feel quite as guilty snacking on it, what with the bananas and all! :D If you give the recipe a spin, be sure to let me know what you try and how it turns out!

Enjoy ladies! See you soon!

Catching Up

The black pair of my lovely corduroy 50s pants, from last week. They were great to wear! People seem pretty confused by high-waisted pants. It's kind of funny. :)



The last few days it's been a rainy, chilly mess here. In heavy rain our backyard turns into a swamp. Oh well, it is Louisiana after all!



Today we spent some of our Mardi Gras break with my dad. I really like this vintage sweater. It has great heart details.











The rain has made all the mosquito hawks come out. When you walk through the grass, 15 will fly up in all directions! I know they're harmless but they freak me out with their long bodies and floppy legs. Yuck!



A while ago for dinner, we had steaks along with this delicious mango salad. The recipe came from over at My New Roots, an amazing food and nutrition blog. It was simple and refreshing. Tomorrow I'll be making some of that Nutella-Banana bread I mentioned last post, so I will have that delicious recipe for you soon!



The kitty was so relaxed he didn't even realize it a little later when he stuck his tail in that candle and set it on fire! Haha!

Zesty

Well, the weekend's almost over. It was a beautiful sunny Saturday yesterday, however, and I was feeling adventurous. With this awkward grown out asymmetrical hairdo I have, doing any sort of authentic 30s/40s/50s curl set is really a difficult task. Lots of layers that don't really lay evenly make it hard to get curls smooth and then of course, one side hangs lower than the other. But, like I said, I felt adventurous, so I decided to do a rag curl set for work!

(Funny face! ;) )

I love dandelions! I actually have a really lovely dandelion tattoo which I'm sure you'll see sometime.

In food news, I was feeling a premature case of the Monday blues this morning, so I decided to make us a special breakfast. I have a few foods that are definite comfort foods (spaghetti being number one!) but this is my favorite breakfast dish.

Orange zest pancakes! The zest takes plain ol pancakes to a whole new level. I just grate some fresh orange zest in my batter and cook them up. Top em with a little maple syrup and a little honey and you'll be in breakfast heaven. Also good with cinnamon.

I have to admit...I was so excited to eat the pancakes, I forgot to get any pictures of them done! Sorry guys! :D I promise they were delicious though. A little spoiler alert for next time, I actually cut my awkward hair and now have a great even bob. I love it. You'll definitely see that soon.

See ya!

Sweet Nothings

Valentine's Day around our house isn't usually much of an event. We try to stay pretty budget friendly, which means we don't eat out much. We also don't really buy each other gifts, as we prefer to buy little somethings here and there that make us happy, such as hubby's new homebrewing kit. However, this year we did have an extra special early Valentine's Day all to ourselves.

We spent the morning at the farmer's market and grocery shopping. We're embarking on a new organic, veggie heavy meal plan that I hope works out for us! I love the farmer's market here. I meant to take the camera for some pictures, but since we had so many other places to go I didn't want to leave it sitting around in the car. Next time, I promise! :D

After our grocery bonanza we decided to use up a Christmas gift card and treat ourselves to Olive Garden. Not very unique, I know, but I am a sucker for the food there. It's just so deliciously bad for you! It was a great excuse to wear my most favorite ever piece of clothing...This gorgeous blue floral 50s dress I got on ebay a year or so ago for about five dollars. I treasure it! I really only wear it out with friends or to eat as I would be really sad if anything ever happened to it.

The lovely veggies we got at the farmer's market: kale, turnips, and carrots!

One of the sellers there has a goat farm and his goat cheese is absolutely to die for! It comes at something of a premium, but I secretly think it's worth it!

All in all we had a wonderful day together. We've been together so long we can enjoy even the most hectic school days and slow, stayin-at-home days together, but everyone once and a while it's awesome to have a special day all to yourselves.

Coming up soon, some vintage treasures I found today when we stopped by the local vintage store on a whim. :)

Chicken Piccata and an Outfit Post

Here it is, the first outfit post! Nothing spectacular though, I'm afraid. I wore this to work last weekend, and I was all about layering as a chill was in the air. This is the very first skirt I've ever made, it's a lovely flannel that keeps me pretty warm.

Less vintage, more vintage-inspired, but I felt good in it which is what really matters.

For dinner tonight my fiance and I had a little something special. Working on a cooking themed project for digital photography class was a great excuse to whip up a little chicken piccata. If you're like me and you love lemons and/or capers, then you will love this dish!

This is the recipe I used, but I served the chicken over pasta because I'm mad for the stuff. I also added some sage to the breading which gave the chicken an amazing earthy flavor. It was easy and fairly inexpensive, save the capers. We had it with a little homemade grape juice wine and it was a great night.

See you soon!