Bonnie's Banana Bread

Seriously guys, I'm sooo sorry I've been so absent. I have the day off today so I'll hopefully be experimenting some in the kitchen. In the meantime, I wanted to share an amazing family recipe. My mama's banana bread! Besides her famous Scalloped Potatoes, she is also known for her banana bread. It is just super delish!

I was going to call her later tonight to steal the recipe from her. Then, I was going through my archive of recipes in my email and I was surprised to find my dad had emailed me the recipe when they were in Hawaii and I was still in Massachusetts missing them and the banana bread! Hope you guys love it. <3

Bonnie's Banana Bread

1(8oz) pkg. cream cheese

1 c.  sugar

½ c. brown sugar

¼ c. butter

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 c. mashed bananas

2 eggs

1 c. flour

1 ¼ c. oatmeal

1 ½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

1 c. chopped nuts

½ c. peanut butter chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Combine cream cheese, sugars, butter (best at room temp.) and vanilla mixing well. Blend in bananas and eggs. Add remaining ingredients, mix well until moistened.  Pour in greased and floured 9x5 loaf pan.  Bake approximately 1hr. and 10 minutes or until knife comes out clean.

Cait's Cocktails...

I'm so sorry to everyone for being so absent. Work has been crazy. I also had some friends over the other night for my good friend Nalani's birthday. We made my spinach and artichoke dip, marinated grilled steak and some portuguese sausage. It was pretty delicious. We also made some cocktails :D I decided now would be a good time to share some recipes for cocktails since I haven't had much time for cooking recently.

Most of these pictures are captured by the beautiful and talented Nalani. One is with my cell phone and a couple are with my good old Canon Powershot lol.

Kachow!

(I titled this drink after having a few)

2 oz. Pineapple juice

2 oz. Peach schnapps

4 oz. Malibu Rum

Shake everything together and then strain into a martini glass.

Scally Wag
(Look up the definition on Urban Dictionary)
2 oz. Cola

2 oz. Amaretto

4 oz. Malibu Rum

Shake everything together and then strain into a martini glass.

 

Nuts n Berries

*This one was shared by my good friend Allie that works at 21 Degrees North at Turtle Bay. Go visit her, she makes a mean martini!*

1 part Hangar One Raspberry vodka

1 part Chambord

1 part Frangelico

1 part cream or milk.

Shake everything together and then strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a white chocolate stick.

Here's some pictures from Nalani's birthday and our trip to Mililani to see the beautiful Christmas Lights! Mele Kalikimaka everyone!!

Christmas Wish List

Jon, I hope you're reading this ;)

http://pancharmbracelets.com/content/findwishlist.cfm?sessionid=162934110012225317&site_id=4

Search email: caitlinhowland@comcast.net

Our Ala Moana Victoria's Secret doesn't carry the Patriots Pink line :( If anyone in MA is reading this, I'm size L. :D

Ala Moana does carry the sleep tees though. Size L, kthxbai!

I just discovered Sephora the other day. Here are two of the things that I really wanted. The green primer thingamawhatsit reduces redness on your face. Have you guys met me? Perfect gift for me. The frangrace sampler gives you a coupon inside for an upgrade to a free full size perfume after! Amazing!

Also, Celtics or Pats gear of any form would be awesome since I can't find much out here and shipping is so damn expensive. :)

Gift cards?

iTunes

Costco

Executive Chef

Sephora

Charlotte Russe

Forever 21

Wet Seal

Victoria's Secret

Bath & Body Works (they're opening one here in March finally!!!)

Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes

Every holiday, my parents usually serve up Twice Baked Potatoes. They are so delicious. I decided to try and make it a little different with some sweet potatoes.

Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes

6 sweet potatoes, scrubbed and patted dry
1 stick butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place sweet potatoes on baking sheet and cook in oven for about an hour. Take out of oven and allow to cool until able to handle. Cut potatoes in half lengthwise. Using a spoon, scoop out middle of all potatoes. Reserve skins. Combine potatoes, butter, cream cheese, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in mixing bowl. Fill potato skins with potato mixture. Place back on baking sheet and bake in oven for about 20 minutes, until golden brown.

Three Cheese Chicken Pasta

So last night I didn't feel like doing back flips to get dinner on the table. As I've mentioned, I'm in retail so this month is incredibly tiring for me. I found a recipe on the inside of a cream cheese package for spaghetti mixed with cream cheese. I made a few changes and whipped it together real quick.

I was so excited at how delicious it was. I really think its a new household favorite now. Hope you guys like it too!

Three Cheese Chicken Pasta

2 lbs pasta
1/2 stick butter
1 8 oz. container cream cheese, softened
2 1/2 cups pasta sauce
2 cups shredded chicken
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup grated romano cheese

Cook pasta as directed on package. Drain pasta and set to side. In pasta pot, melt 1/2 stick butter on medium heat. Add cream cheese and pasta sauce to pot and stir to combine. Add in chicken, parmesan and romano. Pour pasta back into pot and toss with sauce.

Leftover Turkey Pot Pie

Sorry I don't have a picture for this post. Hopefully it's yumminess makes up for the lack of picture. This was only my second attempt at a Turkey Pot Pie. The first attempt was meh. It was good, but nothing to write home about. This second one was incredibly easy to throw together. I used some leftovers from Thanksgiving and some canned veggies that I had in my pantry.

I am definitely usually the type to use fresh vegetables. However, I made this the day after Thanksgiving and I was not in the mood to do over the top cooking the next day. I wanted to throw something together that was delicious and quick and get on my way to my closing shift on Black Friday at work. You guys can feel free to swap in the fresh veggies if you'd like. A 15 oz can is a little shy of two cups of fresh, chopped vegetables.

I also used the Bisquick biscuit mix for the topping to cut some more corners. You could also use a ready made pastry sheet, usually in the freezer section of the grocery store. Funny story about Bisquick. As you guys already know, I watch Paula Deen religiously. She is always using a dry biscuit mix for her recipes. I searched my grocery store high and low looking for a biscuit mix and couldn't find it. I finally voiced my frustration to my mom. She then informed me that I can just use Bisquick. I've always known Bisquick as a pancake mix, had no clue you could use it to make biscuits. It is dangerous that I now have a fast and easy way to make delicious biscuits. :O

Leftover Turkey Pot Pie

1 cup gravy
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 tsp poultry seasoning
1/2 tsp salt
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 15 oz can of diced potatoes
1 15 oz can of corn kernels
1 15 oz can of peas & carrots
2 1/2 - 3 cups shredded turkey (or rotisserie chicken)
1/2 stick salted butter, diced

Biscuit topping:
1 cup bisquick mix
1 cup milk
1 stick of butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease baking dish with butter. In mixing bowl, combine gravy, cream, chicken stock, poultry seasoning, salt, cream of chicken soup, potatoes, corn, peas & carrots and shredded turkey. Pour into prepared baking dish. Place pieces of butter throughout the filling. Combine biscuit mix, milk and butter together and pour over top of filling. Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until topping is golden brown.

Enjoy!

The Cookie Story

So I'm about to bring you guys in on a family story of mine. This story to this day, when told, gets all family members in fits of laughter with tears in our eyes. It may not be that funny to outsiders, but we told Jon the story and he was laughing just as hard as we were.



Little Cait!



I was your typical child, took dance lessons, got good grades in schools, built tree forts on the weekends in the woods behind my house. I also would have my occasional meltdowns. One night, my mom gave me and my sister 2 cookies. I wanted 4 cookies. I was even a member of the fat kid club back then. I started having a typical meltdown and screaming on the top of my lungs "I WANT FOUR COOKIES!! I WANT FOUR COOKIES!! I'M GOING TO TELL THE WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD WHAT AWFUL PARENTS YOU ARE! I'M GOING TO RUN AWAY!". This meltdown lasted forever with my parents and younger sister in the other room just laughing at me as I tore through the house freaking out. I'm sure at this point I could've just walked into the kitchen, gotten the other two cookies and be done with it. I kept going until bedtime, shut up, and went to bed with only the two cookies.

That's pretty much the cookie story. So, why am I sharing? Well, Jon now has his own cookie story. No tantrums or anything, just a disastrous cookie situation.

First off, every time I type cookie I feel like it should be cooky because the plural is cookies. Not sure what that's about. Anyways, Jon had been craving chocolate chip cookies. I was exhausted so I told him he could handle it, he just needed to follow the recipe on the back of the bag. In all truth, I've been trying to use him as my guinea pig to see if I can teach people how to act right in the kitchen. Not so much on mission #1.

He comes into the bedroom where I'm watching my DVR which is filled with old CSI episodes. [In case you're wondering, I watch the original mostly and occasionally NY. I NEVER watch Miami.] So, Jon comes in and with a very concerned voice states "Um, the recipe calls for two TSP (he actually says T-S-P, not teaspoon, by the way) of milk and we don't have ANY." So I'm like "Okay, we have egg nog, just use that." He looks relieved and walks away. Then I think back to all the times I made those cookies and realize its probably supposed to be tbsp of milk, not tsp. I pause Gil Grissom and walk to the kitchen.

I come in and first off, its a hot mess. He looks slightly overwhelmed. So I calmly ask him to check if he was supposed to do tbsp not tsp of milk. He like "awww, yeah I was!", picks up the tbsp measuring spoon and goes so "If this is the T-S-P spoon which is the T-B-S-P spoon?" I'm like "no, Jon that's the tablespoon.. Have you been using it as teaspoon?" He looks at it, then at the recipe and then back to me and goes "Uhhhh, yeah. Was that wrong?". What does this mean? Well, the baking powder and baking soda which was already incorporated with the flour had about 4x the amount it should. So, we had to quadruple the rest of the ingredients. I can't remember exactly but I think we had to use like 8 sticks of butter and 8 eggs to get the recipe exact. Thankfully, I had gone to Costco for Thanksgiving and bought what I thought was enough butter and eggs to last us until Easter. After quadrupling the ingredients, it tasted really good (the batter that is). We now had enough batter to open our own bakery with a batch of approximately 6,738 cookies.

So Jon was up for about 3 hours that night baking multiple cookies. We ended up just saving some of the cookie dough in the fridge to give our oven a break. I have been going to the gym religiously again, and now we have a bajillion cookies in our fridge taunting me every day I come home. Thank you, universe.

I hope you guys enjoyed our cookie stories. I've been really busy at work and actually had to type this post on my phone and email it to myself in the car to get this post even started. I have a couple days off soon, so I will hopefully be doing some experimenting to share with you guys. I do have a turkey pot pie recipe that is simple and tasty, so I will be posting that soon, I promise. Thanks for reading. I've been loving getting your emails with questions! Keep them coming- cookingwithcait@gmail.com.

xoxo Cait