Category: breakfast Dishes

Cranberry Banana Bowl

I did it again. Another bag of bananas on sale at a local convenience store, another impulse buy. This time I asked the clerk to weigh the bag to support my argument for the purchase when I got home. “Five point seven pounds,” I explained as I walked in the door before Jerri could roll her eyes in disbelief. “We can share some bananas with the neighbors and still enjoy a bargain dessert or two.”

Problem solved. Our neighbors got a few bananas, Jerri was more understanding of my enthusiasm than I expected, and she invented a new dessert that is also a wonderful breakfast side dish: Sliced bananas in cranberry sauce. She made it with cranberry sauce left over from Thanksgiving. For some reason, the sauce did not jell as much as usual. The cranberries in what was basically a heavy syrup went beautifully with the bananas.

My guess is that she used a little too much water when she made the cranberry sauce. If you follow her recipe but use an extra quarter cup of water, you should have about the right consistency.

I decided to see if commercial canned cranberry sauce would work. I started by spooning some cranberries from the can over the sliced banana. The sauce was too thick, so I added a tablespoon of water to a half cup of sauce and heated the mixture enough so I could stir it together. It was very sweet, so I added a teaspoon of lemon juice.

The result was pretty good but not as tasty as the combination made with the homemade sauce. A little more lemon juice might help.

Now, the recipe for two servings:

1 large banana
1/2 cup juicy cranberry sauce

PROCEDURE:

Cut the banana into one-eighth-inch slices. Gently mix the cranberry sauce with the banana slices. Enjoy.

NOTE: One of the most important things I learned from this experiment was that Jerri’s cranberry sauce has more flavor and is not as sweet as the commercial version. Maybe this is because commercial cranberry sauce is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar or possibly it’s just sweeter than I prefer.

Sometime you might want to arrange a taste test. Make a batch of cranberry sauce using Jerri’s recipe, cool it and then compare the flavor with the commercial sauce. The one you prefer really doesn’t matter, but you should be able to distinguish the difference.

Easy Oatmeal Pancakes

As I have written elsewhere, we had a lot of pancakes for breakfast when I was growing. up. Most were Mom’s ordinary thin pancakes, but she made other kinds from time to time.

Though I don’t remember them, chances are good that she made oatmeal pancakes once in a while, since she loved trying new recipes and always had a big box of old-fashioned oatmeal in the kitchen. She made oatmeal bread, oatmeal cookies and even oatmeal cakes along with oatmeal toppings for apple and berry crisps.

We had hot oatmeal for breakfast at least a couple times a month. When it was really cold outside (thirty degrees or more below zero) even my dog, Nugget, and Mama Kitty would have oatmeal for breakfast. Mom would make an extra large batch of oatmeal and spoon the steaming leftovers into the two bowls on the back stoop. Dog and cat would dine peacefully side by side on mornings like that.

Considering the nutritional benefits of oatmeal, you might want to add these pancakes to your list of breakfast dishes. They are a bit chewy but delicious. If you serve them with butter and plenty of maple syrup, even the most finicky person at your breakfast table will almost certainly find them more than merely edible.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup old-fashioned oatmeal
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 T brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 to 2 cups buttermilk
2 T vegetable oil

PROCEDURE:

Preheat a griddle over medium-low heat to about 350º while you make the batter. If the griddle is not non-stick, grease before heating, or use a non-stick vegetable oil spray.

Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly in a large mixing bowl. Beat the eggs in a small bowl until they are lemon colored. Beat one and one-half cups of buttermilk and two tablespoons of oil into the eggs, and gently stir the milk mixture into the dry ingredients.

Mix the batter only enough to make sure that all the dry ingredients have been moistened. If the batter seems too thick, add more buttermilk.

Cook the first side for two to four minutes, until brown, then flip each pancake and cook the other side until brown.

Serve with butter and maple syrup.

NOTES: This recipe makes about twenty four-inch cakes.