Good Eats

Lately, I've been trying to do better about grocery shopping and meal planning and I'm really enjoying it! All my life, I've longed to do exactly what I'm doing right now and I absolutely love every single second of it.I really like reading what other people make and enjoy for dinner and have found some of our favorite meals through Leah's blog (thanks Leah!). She put me onto Our Best Bites and YUM! Delicious!

I had some banana's that were getting old and thought I would try making the Caramelized Banana Ice Cream since it peaked Joel's interest. You begin by slicing 3-4 bananas and tossing with brown sugar, melted butter and cinnamon and baking. Then it does this
This is where I modified Our Best Bites recipe. I blended the banana's with 2 cups of skim milk. I forgot to get a picture of that, so here's a picture of my #1 Helper. In a separate dish, I whisked together 1 cup half and half, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 tsp. salt and 1 tsp. of vanilla. Then I added the blended banana's to the milk mixture.
I added that to our Cuisinart ice cream maker. Side note-this is my go to engagement/wedding present. We LOVE ours and everyone we know who has one feels the same way. No salt, ice, nothing. Its GREAT!

20 Minutes of churning


And then we had this

The Verdict: Joel LOVES it, he says it may be his favorite thusfar. I'm so/so with it. I loaded it with Chocolate syrup and eh, I'll take it or leave it. Since he loves it, I've already made a second batch. The good news for me and my waistline is that I can turn it down, although for ice cream its really not all that bad for you.

Our latest Favorite side dish is smashed potatoes. We both agree we could eat this every night, no joke.

To make this, Iprefer using the small, red potatoes. The smaller the better. Boil these for about 10 minutes, or until fork tender.

Place potatoes on a greased cookie sheet, I use pam and prefer to line it with tin foil for easy clean up. Then take a wooden spoon and mash the potatoes down. The flatter the better (if you like more crispy parts). Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.
Bake at 400' for 15 minutes. Then take them out and flip them over and repeat the olive oil and sea salt on the flip side. Bake another 15 minutes. I then took them out, flipped them again and baked another 5 minutes for good measure and crispness.
When they're done the skins will be nice and crispy, the potatoes will have golden spots and you will eat every bite of it! They are a cross between french fries and thick cut, fresh potato chips!

Verdict-MORE PLEASE. I think we'll probably have these for dinner....again. :-). Enjoy!