Home to an Empty House

Yesterday was full of travelling! We left Henley-on-Thames at 7 AM British time in order to get to the airport for our 11 AM flight. All went well with the flight and goodbyes were said to teammates in the Newark airport.

After a three hour layover, I caught a flight to Boston and then a connecting flight out to California. When we touched down at 11 PM California time, I had been travelling for 24 hours... and still had an hour to go.

Fortunately, there was a surprise waiting for me at the airport!!! Dan told me he was going to catch a flight down from Oregon on Wednesday, but he ended up booking a flight for yesterday and surprised me as I walked out of the plane. It was so nice to have him there after a really long, uncomfortable day of travelling.

It's always nice to have a man who still think you're beautiful even with bloodshot eyes and feet so swollen they look like stuffed sausages.

We arrived home to an essentially empty fridge as my parents have been off travelling Europe as well, so we had to make do with what we had. We were both too tired to do much more than munch on the two leftover apples last night, but breakfast this morning was a different story.

The only usable ingredients in the fridge were eggs, cheese and carrots (nearing their departure date). I considered omelets but the eggs were old enough that they were really better suited to baking, so I made carrot muffins.

I based the recipe off of my favorite muffin recipe, but with a lot of substitutions due to lack of ingredients. The fact that these turned out pretty well just speaks to the awesomeness of that recipe.

These are incredibly moist and very subtly sweet, with a tender crumb. The carrot flavor is very pronounced but not overwhelming. If you like raisins, a handful would definitely make these a lot sweeter. (I would recommend golden raisins.) Personally, I prefer savory breakfasts, so this was perfect.

After I'd already eaten two of them, I found almond butter in the fridge. A slather of almond butter would have rounded these out perfectly, making an incredibly nutritious breakfast.

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Not-Too-Sweet Carrot Muffins
makes 12 muffins

Low Fat Banana Bread

The other morning, I woke up at 10AM (ah, the life of a college student) with a pile of mushy bananas in my room. I looked at the clock and started some calculating in my head. I need to be at work at 1PM, which left me 3 hours to make banana bread, get dressed, go to brunch and get to work. Definitely enough time.

These bananas were perfect for banana bread.

Well, it turns out I'm not super efficient in the mornings, and 3 hours is really 2 hours when the banana bread takes an hour to bake (and you have to watch it the whole time). Fortunately, everything worked out.

This banana bread is moist, tender and full of banana flavor. Great for when you have a lot of mushy bananas (and who ever has just one brown banana?). Use whole wheat flour for extra nutrition, white flour for extra convenience; spread with Nutella for extra delicious.

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Low Fat High Banana Bread
makes 1 loaf

Chocolate Coffee Banana Bread

Winter fruit selection is often depressing at best, so imagine my dismay when our dining hall ran out of oranges and decided to make do with mushy bananas. I'm okay with yellow bananas, but mushy is just beyond me.

Except, of course, in banana bread. So I did all of the other eaters a favor, and grabbed as many mushy bananas as I could without seeming too ridiculous. (Honestly, I think the staff are used to me doing ridiculous things at this point, like asking for a veggie omelet without the eggs.)

I made both regular and chocolate coffee banana bread in one morning.

Then, I began the quest for a suitable banana bread recipe. I had my mom's recipe tucked away in my email, but with the amount of butter it called for, it was much closer to cake. I needed something that wouldn't use up D's single dessert quota for the day.

After opening about 30 tabs worth of lowfat banana bread recipes in Safari, almost all of which called for margarine or applesauce, I finally found one. Ok, the original calls for applesauce, but I just used milk. 

Now, this is an incredible banana bread recipe, perfect just on its own. But when you run out of chocolate chips, and chocolate, the only solution is to take perfectly good banana bread, and add cocoa powder... and then eat said chocolate banana bread for breakfast the next day. And what is better than chocolate? Chocolate and coffee.. so I did it.

Once reinforcements arrived in the form of a care package, I realized I had to make this again, but with chocolate chips and cappuccino chips. Yes, I still ate it for breakfast.

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Chocolate Coffee Banana Bread

makes 1 large loaf

Equipment

loaf pan

2 mixing bowls + mixing instrument(s)

kitchen scale (optional)

measuring cups

butter melting device

oven

Racing in California + Chocolate Mint Energy Bars

This weekend we travelled to California to race Stanford and Wisconsin's lightweight women and the St. Mary's openweight women in a series of dual races at the PAC-10 Invitational at Redwood Shores. We flew out Thursday afternoon and arrived in California late that evening.

Our hotel was right on the race course. You could almost see the finish line from our hotel room.

The finish line buoys were just out of view.

The next morning, we headed to the grocery store first thing. We still had to weigh-in for the day, but we all stocked up on a lot of fruit and other snacks for later in the day, and for the next few days.

In the afternoon, we practiced twice to get used to the course and our new boat (we borrowed it from Stanford so we didn't have to drive ours all the way out!) and weighed-in.

Absolutely DELICIOUS Muffins

I can't believe it's taken me so long to post about these muffins. I have made them at least 15 times, and they've been delicious almost every time. (I tried a strawberry/balsamic version.. not delicious.) The problem with these muffins is that they always disappear too quickly for me to get a picture of them! Usually they're gone about 2 hours after we make them--my dormmates often find themselves drawn to the kitchen by the scent of these baking and how can I possibly deny them delicious muffins??

Cranberry walnut version

I made a similar muffin with cranberries a while back, but I've updated and perfected the recipe a bit, so I'd like to share it with you in its new improved form. I had applesauce on hand the first time I made this, so it was convenient to use. Most people don't keep homemade applesauce stocked, though. I decided to substitute the applesauce with milk, and I adjusted the balance of baking soda and baking powder to compensate for the change in acidity. It turned out quite well.

Apple rosemary version

I also decided to sacrifice the one-bowl appeal and use a pot for these as well. Although back in the dorm I'll probably go for the one-bowl method, if you have access to a heavy-bottomed pan and a stovetop, the rich, complex flavors from the browned butter really fill out the muffin.

The 400°F I used originally seemed a bit too high for these muffins. They tended to get very crisp outsides, before the muffin was fully set. I've dropped the temperature and increased baking time. If you're in a hurry, they'll still turn out at 400°F.

Finally, in addition to generalizing the fillings, I've also included an alternative for the milk—thoroughly mashed bananas. Use this whenever you have banana as filling!

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Whole Wheat Muffin Base
makes 12 large muffins


Equipment
Mixing bowl
Saucepan + butter stirrer
Stovetop, oven
Muffin tin + liners


Ingredients
0.75c unsalted butter
1c packed brown sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
0.5c milk (***or well-mashed banana, see notes)
1.5c white whole wheat flour
1.75t baking powder
0.25t baking soda
1c chopped nuts
2c filling*** (really, you can add up to 4c)

(Almost Vegan) Banana Bread

I was so excited for this to be vegan.. but then I used honey. Oops. I have some ideas for future honey replacement, so expect to see an updated, actually vegan version of this in the future.

For now, if you're an ok-with-honey vegan, give it a shot. (Or replace the honey with either agave or malt syrup! Although honey works as an emulsifier, which you need if you're leaving out the eggs, so this may not work very well. If you do this, you may want to consider using egg replacer instead of flaxseed meal.)

Also, coconut in banana bread is a great idea. Do it.

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Almost Vegan Banana Bread
makes one loaf

Equipment
kitchen scale (although I've included approximate measurements!)
measuring cups
bowl
loaf pan (or muffin tins)
fork/spoon

Ingredients

2T flaxseed meal

3.8oz soy milk (7T + 2t)

3.2 oz vegetable oil (6T)
3.75 oz brown sugar (0.5c)
1t vanilla extract
0.75t baking soda
0.5t salt
3 super ripe bananas (about 15 ounces without peels)
3oz. honey (6T)
8oz whole wheat flour (about 1.75c)
2oz chopped nuts (about 0.5c)
handful of unsweetened, shredded coconut (optional)

Lots of Training and Whole Wheat Apple Pastries

We're starting to transition into shorter pieces in preparation for the spring season. We've spent the fall and winter working mostly on our aerobic base, doing 80+ minutes of low heart rate work on a regular basis, with a few shorter (~45 minutes total work) stints at faster paces.

Our training now is phasing into 20 minutes or less of total work at much faster paces. It's really fun to see all our hard work translate into the faster pieces, without ever training these speeds.

We've also been lifting a lot. If you've never lifted before, it's time to start! Look out for an upcoming post on lifting basics.

I've been an athlete for most of my life, but I remember for most of it feel very out of shape. I got tired walking to the tops of stairs, couldn't run very far (or very fast) and just generally wasn't very energetic. This year that totally changed. I'm sure losing weight has helped, but we're also doing some incredible training this year.

We bought a bunch of apples from the 'soup bin' at our local grocery store, and have been collecting apples from the dining halls as well. I had originally intended to make my one bowl muffins (I have a post waiting, it just needs some good pictures.. they always seem to disappear before I can take pictures).

I then quickly remembered that I was trying to branch out and try new, different things. Quick breads and muffins are fairly straightforward, as are cakes and cupcakes. Instead, I thought I'd try pastries. I tried to make mini pumpkin pies with homemade crust over winter break and was sorely disappointed. I figured I'd give it another go.

I'd been wanting to try poptarts for a while, so I found a recipe. I also have an excess of whole wheat flour right now, that needs to be used ASAP. (Did you know that whole wheat flour goes rancid quickly?) I decided to sub whole wheat for the all-purpose flour and see what happened.

They were crumbly, not flaky, and the whole wheat gave these a great nutty flavor that went well with the apples.

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Whole Wheat Apple Pastries
makes 6-8 small pastries

Ingredients
Filling:
1 tart apple, peeled, cored and chopped into small pieces
0.25c brown sugar
1T cinnamon
0.5t ground ginger (optional)

Crust:
1.25c whole wheat flour
1 stick (0.5c) butter, cold, cut into small cubes
2T really cold water
1T sugar
0.5t salt