Peanut Butter Banana Bread

Last night I made this for the first time in years, and the guys loved it. Again.

This recipe is slightly altered from one in "Breadtime Stories" by Susan Jane Cheney. I mark my cookbooks with stars next to the recipes... 4 and 5 stars for the best recipes and fewer stars for less stellar recipes, with notes as to why, and what I could do differently IF I decided to give it a try again.

I don't mark books other than cookbooks; I just had to begin doing this so I wouldn't repeat a recipe that was a total disaster.

Anyway, here's my version of Peanut Butter Banana Bread, yummy enough to eat for dessert (we did!) and healthy enough for breakfast!

Makes 2 loaves, no machinery needed other than the oven. Preheat to 325 degrees.

1 cup peanut butter
3/4 cup honey
4 eggs
2 cups mashed ripe bananas
2 cups whole wheat bread flour
2 cups unbleached white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon coriander
2 teaspoons ground ginger

Mash enough ripe/over-ripe bananas to make 2 cups. In large batter bowl, use potato masher (a whisk is too flimsy for this) to whisk the eggs, peanut butter and honey.

In a large bowl add whole wheat bread flour, unbleached flour, baking powder, baking soda, coriander and ground ginger. Whisk together. Add half of this to the batter bowl mixture and mix with the potato masher. Add remainder of flour mixture to batter and mix just until you can't see flour; don't overmix.

Butter both pans. Divide batter between them. Bake 50 minutes at 325 degrees. Let cool in pans for 10 minutes, then remove to cool on rack.

Enjoy!

Musings about Mother's Day

2010 lambing season is nearly over, with lots of color and variety. What fun! Have I mentioned that I LOVE lambing season???

Here is a handsome guy, named Greener Pastures Kilimanjaro. He was only a week old in this photo, and look at those sturdy legs! Wow. We ear tagged him yesterday, along with the other lambs, and he spent the afternoon trying to catch that thing that was ever-so-slightly out of his range of vision. Jon was amused. Kilimanjaro was not.



Here are a couple of gorgeous girls; Greener Pastures Kittiwake and Katydid. Kittiwake is staying here on our farm, and Katydid will live in the Midwest after she’s weaned. Their dam is what we call a “banana peel” shedder; her fleece peels right off. Most let their fleeces come off in chunks that wind up on the fences or the pasture unless we want it and manage to get to it first.



This is Greener Pastures Jeepers with her young daughter, shown yesterday morning. Greener Pastures Jitterbug is right behind her.



And here’s a photo taken a short time later that same day; Jeepers’ fleece rooed right off. We were able to take handfuls easily and finished her off within 5 minutes. Her belly wool wasn’t ready to shed yet, and I can see now that we forgot to tidy her tail. It will fall off on it’s own, but I might just pluck it off the next time we catch and roo the ewes. You can see that Jitterbug was willing to let go of half of her fleece; the rest just wasn’t ready yet. And Honeysuckle, who typically gives us 4 to 6 grocery bags full of fleece, wasn’t ready to part with hers just yet.



And here is our youngest lamb to date; Greener Pastures Kia is also going to live in the midwest after weaning!




Rooing and eartagging were one of the things we did on Mother's Day. Have I mentioned that I love lambing season?

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Life As We Know It

We have 14 lambs on the ground thus far, with about half of our ewes left to go. Very exciting!!! None of them have needed assistance, which is as it should be with this breed, and we've been sleeping through the night. That's my kind of farming!

I just came in from checking on my bees. As mentioned previously, I'm beginning again with bees after a 6 year hiatus. They appear to be doing well, despite the fact that we've had so much rain. Some hardy little worker bees have been getting out there between rain showers to forage and pollinate all the fruit trees and other blossoms. I added another super to each hive, and moved the small entrance hole up one level in the process, giving them more room, but confusing some of the worker bees returning with their loads. I stayed to watch for a while, and noticed that while most of them were returning with yellow pollen, I saw two with white, and one actually had some bright orange pollen. I wonder what flowers that came from?

Did I mention that I find this all fascinating?

And the lambs... so very cute, and some very interesting colors as usual. I just LOVE this breed of sheep! I need to take photos once we get some dry weather. Wet sheep aren't at their prettiest.

First Lambs of 2010

It doesn't matter how many years have gone by and how many new lambs we've seen (hundreds), the wonder and thrill never diminish. Our first lamb of the 2010 season was born before we woke up this morning, arriving without assistance from anybody. Lamb and dam are both Cascade Farmstead sheep; the mother is a week shy of being a year old. Both are wet... it's raining here. They will be even prettier when we get a bit of dry weather!



I'm still tinkering with my camera; I know I can get crisper photos than this.

And so it begins... I'm smiling as I look forward to many more lambs in a variety of colors. To learn more about Cascade Farmstead sheep, visit our website, which has loads of information and photos: www.greenerpasturesfarm.com

Moving My Quilt Stuff to Another Blog

Which seems appropriate... I've moved my quilting supplies from one room to another in our house before getting settled into it's very own room!

Because this farm blog is for farm stuff, and because quilting is one of a few subjects I'm enamoured with, but that may not interest most farmers that visit my blog, I'm moving such topics over to Momma Made This.

If you are a quilter, I look forward to seeing you there!