Blended Frozen Bananas, the Ultimate Dessert

What’s like ice cream but cheaper, healthier, vegan, and easy to make yourself? It’s not a trick question. It’s bananas! No, actually. Try this, and die a thousand deaths of delight, only to be reborn a phoenix of culinary ingenuity.

OK, enough purple prose. Peel at least two bananas, preferably ripe, but the older they are the sweeter the end product. Break them into smaller pieces, maybe two or three each, and freeze. Once frozen, cut into thin slices and put into blender or food processor. If you’re making a lot, it’s probably best to not start with the blender more than three quarters of the way full. You can add the rest once you get going.

Now comes the only tricky part. The first time I tried this I wasn’t careful and nearly broke my mini food processor. So go slow, on the lowest setting, and add a little water if you need to. Remember frozen bananas are pretty hard, so this is not easy for that little motor.

When you get the bottom mixed a little, use a spoon to mash it up a little. Then mix a little more.

Repeat until the consistency is starting to change, and when it’s about half gelato-looking stuff and half baby-food-looking stuff, push the bigger chunks toward the bottom.

If you’re like me, when you get here, and it’s mostly mixed up, you add two large dollops of Nutella. Oh yes.

Check out the video. Mesmerizing, no? When it’s nice and creamy, get it out of there and back in the freezer if you really want it to taste like ice-cream. At this point I was literally licking the rest off the blender blade, which I do NOT recommend.

Here’s what it looks like after about a half-hour in the freezer, which made it nice and frosty. This is two bananas, so keep that in mind. When I’m eating this stuff, and this is the third time in the last week, I’m thinking… THIS IS ONLY BANANAS. Well, in my case there’s also Nutella, but you get it.

Will it ever go bad? Maybe, but I doubt it. Is this the perfect dessert? You tell me. My new goal is to always have frozen bananas in the freezer.

I Still Love Food!

To new readers of this blog, it might appear like I am only interested in comics. But lo ho ho dear reader! This summer I return to one of my passions — selling cheese! I can hear you snickering from here, but it’s true! I’ll be working for at least two months in the Cowgirl Creamery shop located in San Fransisco’s Ferry Building. I’ve only been to California once, so I’m really excited to live there for a little while and “soak up the sun” as pop poet laureate Crow has said. Anyway, I found out yesterday and it was snowing for real again here, so I celebrated with this hearty meal:

Nothing fancy, but extremely delicious nonetheless. Harpoon beer, good tomato soup, good olives, and a fantastic grilled cheese. (Also note my mental meal: Adrian Tomine cover of The NYer and Bone in one volume on the left-hand side.) For grilled cheese, bread is important, and so is butter (Vermont Butter and Cheese Co. butter is the obvious choice), but it’s all about the cheese. When you’re melting cheeses, it’s important to take texture and melting temperature into account as well as flavor when choosing. For instance, I love Parmesan, but it takes forever to melt and it usually doesn’t melt completely.

My ideal cheeses for grilled cheese are “semi-soft” cheeses: good up to the rind, they have some give when you press them, and well, they melt beautifully. In my mind, the first cheese I think of in this category is Appalachian, made down in VA. Anyway, this sandwhich had two of these cheeses, but the one I can remember the name of is Dorset, a local washed-rind cheese that’s new to me but that I like very much. Also, see that green spot in the soup? I have to thank Pat and Caitlin for their tip about making ice cubes of cilantro — super useful.

New Comic: Fool’s Rice

This assignment was about using outside inspiration, and the plot points were dictated by random flips in a reference book. In my case, Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating. It’s a little nothing of a comic, but I hope you enjoyed the whimsy. The physical size is a piece of copy paper folded “hotdog style” as my roommate Kevin would say. The second “page” of comics here is actually a two page spread, and I struggled with how to present it, so click to see it bigger. For your additional edification, dear readers, a photo of the pot rendered in such loving detail above:

Two Quick, Easy (and Healthy?) Meals

I’ve never really been crazy enough to cook meals because they are HEALTHY, but recently I’ve been noticing myself cooking and eating meals that are indeed what some would call “healthy.” These meals are usually healthy by virtue of being fresh, unprocessed, vegetarian and sometimes mostly-raw. But let’s be serious: meat is expensive, and raw meals can be delicious and usually don’t require that much work. And while I’m not trying to lose weight, it seems that I’m not the only one find him or herself eating this way. Did you see that article in last week’s food section about less people dieting and more people just enjoying good food? I think that’s really super, but the article stops short of talking about people who aren’t dieting, i.e.: the not-so-middle class. I’d like to think that this national trend extends to people who aren’t able to spend more money at farmer’s markets and Whole Foods, but really, it doesn’t. Obviously there are big changes needed here (many in legislation like the Farm Bill), but in the mean time I’ll still be enjoying pita pizzas, zucchini and carrot pasta, and shrimp in cous cous.

Soup’s On: Late Summer Minestrone

Just a quick note: I’m a bit late on this, but last in last week’s NYT food section, I cut out the recipe for Mark Bittman’s “Late Summer Minestrone.” It’s easy enough to saute veggies and then add a lot of water, but I’m not sure I’ve ever had a minestrone so light and so sweet. The flavor reminded me how delicious zucchini flavored water is (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it). It also occurs to me that is nothing like the soup I had in Florence, but then again I think this is another thing entirely. Now that fall’s approaching—and it made a bit of gesture today—we all have to step up our soup game, and that’s REAL.

The Last Day of Summer

Well, senior year starts tomorrow. I’ve had a pretty good summer. Good times all around. I’ve been back in DC for about a month now, working at my beloved Cowgirl Creamery and dispensing cheese to the rich and hungry. I always love summer for what it promises (swimming, walks, BBQ, etc.) but not what it costs (poison ivy, working in the heat, etc.). Above is the nice end of summer meal I made tonight for some guests. The chicken was fried in crushed corn flakes (crispy!); the pasta salad is tossed with carrot, bell pepper, shallot, parsley, basil; the artichoke was just boiled soft. I intended to do more with that ‘choke, but you can only do so much some times, you know?

Towards the end of this past week, a friend and I descended into Shenandoah National Park for a hike and overnight camping. We saw two black bear cubs and fantastic summer stars. The above picture is a view almost identical to what we enjoyed the first day. I used to go camping a lot more. I missed it — but frankly wondered if I would still enjoy it. But there are wonderful things that you can forget, like the raw feeling on your hands at the end of the trip.

And still, it’s even easier to forget that I was traveling around Europe at the beginning of summer. Today in CVS, a French girl asked me if all American notebooks were line ruled, and not squared like she was used to. “Sorry,” I said, “that’s not how they do it here.”

Photo of Shenandoah courtesy of flickr user PatrickMMoore.