The Incredible Edible Flaxseed?

I have no problem with eggs, in fact I really like eggs, as long as they are scrambled or in an omelet.  However, I'm always looking to find ways to make recipes healthier.  Munchkie's Daddy says that the world would end if I ever followed a recipe exactly.  I've had a huge overabundance of bananas in our house the last few months.  Not only ones left over from Munchkie's bday, but also we continued to get a few pounds in our weekly produce box.  And what else do you make with bananas besides banana bread?

I had heard that you could use ground flax seed in place of eggs in recipes, but wasn't quite sure how to go about doing this.  Well, thank you Pinterest for yet another helpful tip.  It's actually really easy.

For every egg you need combine 1 tablespoon ground flax seed with 3 tablespoons of water.  Let sit.

How easy is that?  Pretty easy.  The water and ground flax forms a gel of sorts and that works as the egg in recipes.  Obviously you can't make an omelet out of it, but if you're baking banana bread it works great.  A friend had passed along this nutella banana bread that you make in a crock pot.  I kind of decided that the only point of the crock pot was to not heat your house up and because it was a crock pot blog.  So I just turned my oven on and baked it the normal way.  I also made quite a few substitutions.  If you are not interested in low fat or low sugar without chemical replacements, then try out the crockpot nutella banana bread because it looks really good!

Ingredients
2 cups gluten free flour mix (can use all purpose flour)
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup applesauce (I used this free babyfood we got at stories and snacks last week)
1/4 cup coconut palm sugar (or your natural sweetener of choice, honey, raw sugar, etc)
2 tablespoons ground flax in 6 tablespoons water, allowed to sit and gel together
1 1/4 cups healthy banana "ice cream"
1/3 cup almond milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 heaping cup no sugar no salt peanut butter
1 teaspoon cocoa powder

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a bread pan.
2. Mix together flour salt and baking soda in a bowl
3. Mix together apple sauce and sugar in another bowl
4. Add the flax seed mixture and mix some more
5. Mix in the banana, milk and vanilla and then the flour mixture
6. In a microwave safe bowl microwave the peanut butter until very soft/runny
7. Pull one cup of the batter out and mix together with the peanut butter and cocoa powder, it doesn't have to be completely mixed up.
8. Put the plain batter in the bottom of the bread pan.
9. Cover with the peanut butter mixture.
10. Bake for 45-60minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  It will not look completely done because it is so moist.
11. Allow to cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack in the pan.
12. Remove from pan and allow to completely cool.

Sunday Afternoon Baking

Since it's Father's Day and Munchkie's Daddy was taking a nap, when I heard "Daaaaaaaaddddddddyyyyyy I waaaaaaaaaake uuuuuuuup!" I decided that I would go ahead and wake up (I was sleeping all day after working that night) and get Munchkie.  Ever since our oven was fixed I have been itching to bake something besides bread or chicken.  I have been searching through our Food Network magazines and decided that we actually had the ingredients for this recipe.  However, I didn't pay attention to how long the cook time was, I was almost late for work waiting to pull it from the oven and had to completely forgo the "cooling time."

Mix-and-Match Quick Bread

How fun is that?  Each issue they have a mix and match recipe for all kinds of things from chocolate bark to ice tea to quick bread.  You choose your mix-ins and then follow the standard recipe, anything that I can alter is fun for me.  I made the banana chocolate bread with Munchkie's help.  That girl loves bananas, but she loves chocolate more, I had to keep her from digging the chocolate chips out of the batter.  While I think it will be a complete mess, she will love the bread.

 My version of the Chocolate Banana Bread

• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 3/4 cup honey
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 cups chocolate chips
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup plain greek yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest
• 1 cup mashed banana (2)

Changes I will make for next time - read through and pull ingredients out before I start, add 1/4 cup more flour, and skip the zest.  My bread looked absolutely nothing like the one in the magazine, so in addition to this I think that I need new baking soda and baking powder.  I'm definitely going to try it again.

Sometimes Kitchen Disaster Strikes

I have not had very good luck in the kitchen lately.  Everything I make turns out very poorly from yogurt to birthday cake and I am getting pretty discouraged.  When practicing for Munchkie's bday cake the initial trial run was horrible.  The outside was crispy and close to burnt while the inside was a formed uncooked dough.  Then when it came time to make the actual cakes for her party they all got burnt and I had to cut them all up to get the burnt pieces off.

Last night my inlaws were here and when everyone had gone to bed I realized that we had literally nothing for breakfast.  I had two overly ripe bananas and so decided to make banana bread for breakfast.  First I took it out once the toothpick came clean and when I went to get it out of the pan liquid batter came out.  Neat.  So I put it back in the pan and cooked it for another half an hour.  By this point in time everyone had been asleep for hours before me.  When we woke up, I put Munchkie in her high chair.  Got her all psyched up for bo-non-a bread.  Cut into the bread.  Solidified dough.  Literally dough.  

So then I cut off a couple pieces and put them in the toaster oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes in the hopes that it would cook.  Nope.  Basically just firmer dough with burnt edges.  Still not edible.  So then I had to go wake Chris up and send him to go get bagels for breakfast, which is what I was trying to avoid by staying up making banana bread.

So my lesson learned.  When baking, don't mess with the chemistry because I almost failed chemistry in both high school and college.  I was so tired that I made some mistakes and tried to mess with the chemistry of baking.  I only had two bananas and the recipe called for 3 1/2 so I added two chopped pears.  I then added an extra 1/3 cup flour because it was easier to put 2 cups in instead of 1 2/3 cups.  Then I dumped in baking powder when it was supposed to be baking soda.  Bad decisions.  It was supposed to be amazing banana bread.  If someone wants to make Flour's Famous Banana Bread and let me know how it goes when the recipe is followed I would appreciate it.

I finally was able to make something successfully tonight and it gave me hope that maybe I am not a kitchen failure.  We had bought a pound of ground buffalo a while back and defrosted it yesterday so I tried to think of something to make with it.  Much to Munchkie's Daddy's chagrin I decided to make meatloaf.  I don't know that I've ever had meatloaf and I've definitely not had buffalo so I did a quick search to find a recipe.  I looked at it, then decided to do my own thing.  I hate ketchup and that was definitely not going in or on anything I was going to be eating.  This is my recipe and it turned out delicious.  We both really liked it.

Hidden Veggie Buffalo Meatloaf

1 pound ground buffalo
1 bell pepper (not green, too strong of a flavor)
1 cup chopped carrots
1/4 onion
2 egg whites
1/3 cup bread crumbs (I crunched up 8 crackers)
1 teaspoon dried basil
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
3 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 cup shredded chedder cheese
1/3 cup marinara sauce

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Put bell pepper, carrots, and onion in a food processor.  Puree if you're like us and don't like chunks of veggies or just chop up if you don't care.
3. Once chopped add basil, garlic, onion powder and Worcestershire sauce and food process until mixed.
4. In a large bowl mix together puree mix, ground buffalo, egg whites, bread crumbs and cheese.
5. Spray a loaf pan with cooking spray/oil.
6. Press mixture into loaf pan and then pour marinara sauce over the top.
7. Cook for 1 hour or until center of meat is 160 degrees.
8. Let sit for 10 minutes before cutting.

And here comes my favorite part of recipes.  The nutrition information if there are 6 servings.
Calories- 178
Fat 4.9g
Cholesterol- 56mg
Sodium- 188mg
Carbohydrates 7.4g
Fiber 1.2g
Protein 24.9g