I have a week at home alone before I join my family for cottage time. This means my personal chef has left the building, gasp!! The horror. Fortunately, I preemptively filled the freezer with leftovers of his mealtime masterpieces over the course of the week before they left. Phew.
I am also embracing the opportunity to have a week of ‘bachelor’ style eating. Somehow when the kids are around it seems inappropriate to just blend up a green shake and have that and leftover banana bread for dinner. It now occurs to me that this is ridiculous for several reasons: 1) it doesn’t escape me that this is hardly what most people think of when they think of ‘bachelor’ style eating unless we are talking cosmic, vegan, powerhouse bachelors (and, really, aren’t those the best kind?), 2) the kids never really eat dinner anyway so why do we really care, and 3) given number 2, maybe we should be rolling out the shakes and banana bread for dinner more often!!
Anyway, last night I rocked it. A homemade Moonjuice green shake + Yoso coconut yogurt with strawberries from the garden, a flax/chia/hemp seed blend and bee pollen to top it + a warmed up slice of this banana bread while watching the craziest documentary ever, MERU. Perfection.
Banana Bread – adapted from Best of Vegan
https://www.instagram.com/bestofvegan/?hl=en
Ingredients:
2tbsp ground flax in a bowl with 6tbsp of water – let sit for at least 10mins
2 cups of flour – I use 1 cup almond and 1 cup of chickpea. The almond flour makes things uber moist so you can adjust accordingly to your liking. The first time I made the recipe I used all almond and it required 2 hours of cooking and still was more like banana pudding in the end, which, I have to say was delicious and very much kid approved. I digress …
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup coconut oil – to be clear, I don’t care whether this week it is good or bad for you. It’s delicious and I can moisturize while cooking. So whatever.
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/3 cups of mashed bananas – I’m curious if some of this could be substituted for avocado but haven’t tried … yet.
And if you want to get funky and feel like a free spirited kitchen alchemist, add any or all of the following:
1-2 tbsp of maca
2 ish tbsp of any combo of chia/flax/hemp seeds
3/4 cup ish of cocoa nibs and/or vegan chips
3/4 cup ish of chopped walnuts
Directions:
Preheat oven to about 350-365 F depending on how hot your oven runs. Grease a standard loaf pan with some of the coconut oil (about 9×5′).
Mix wet ingredients, mix dry ingredients, then mix wet and dry together. Add whatever potions you decide to use. Pour into pan. Top with cocoa nibs and whole walnuts if you like and pop ‘er in the oven. It will likely take between 60-75mins to cook. Use a toothpick to check starting at 60mins, I would aim to take it out when you think it is just slightly underdone. I also cover mine with aluminum foil for the first 45mins.
This is not your typical banana bread, not very sweet, but loaded with goodness for you in all sorts of areas 😉
Recipe sounds wonderful except the maca. Yuck. I have tried to make myself like it but the flavor is just to awful for me. Only way I can consume is capsule form drinking it very fast with my nose plugged. I have some mushy avocado so will try and let you know. Your an inspiration. I do all the cooking and normally love it but when my boys are away all I want is wine and chips. Julia 😘
If you don’t like it then don’t do it! That’s just no fun. However, I throw it in everything and don’t seem to notice the flavour at all, at least in a bad way. And it does wonderful things for ones, ahem, libido 😉