Banana Taffy/Chips

This recipe really depends on whether you want soft chewy banana-y goodness or crisp banana chips. :O The banana taffy idea was from here!

Banana Taffy/Chips

This is when they were still in taffy form, before they morphed into chips. :O

Ingredients:
-2 bananas, thinly sliced

Instructions:
1) Thinly slice the bananas and place evenly on dehydrator tray.
2) For banana taffy, it took ~3.5 hours in my dehydrator (I made them simultaneously with the apple chips). For banana chips, go with ~6-7 hours.

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Apple Chips

Apparently, I never wrote about this even though it happened well before International Festival or Follies this year. D: Oops.

Each year, the Emergency Medicine club hosts a male pageant where 4 1st-year and 4 2nd-year contests compete to win the coveted title of Mr. WVSOM. There’s a group dance, an interview segment, as well as a talent portion. I get roped into everything the EM club does because all the officers are my closest friends, and I also volunteer to help with pretty much everything, so in this case, I was recruited (along with Monika, Elise and Lynnlee) to choreograph their group dance. Let’s be real though–aside from hula/Tahitian/salsa, I really cannot dance, so my role was mostly as the measure of whether or not they’d be able to learn it (aka if I couldn’t learn it, they probably couldn’t either), keeping their attention from wandering and teaching them steps.

We set the music to Kesha’s Timber and Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball just to make it extra-ridiculous.

We held practices with them and with a lot of effort from the four of us, managed to corral them into learning the entire dance, complete with personal touches from each of them. They were a hilarious and rowdy bunch, super fun to work with and all of us miss their crazy antics, so once the video comes out, we’re planning to all watch it together (while pigging out on food). :D

Lynnlee unfortunately got struck down by a stomach bug the day before and couldn’t make it to the actual event. :[

But here she is now! (…this is pretty much why no one else wants to be friends with us. It’s cool though, because we have each other.)

So what does this all have to do with banana chips, you ask? Everything!

A couple weeks ago, I got a card signed from all of them as well as a Macy’s gift certificate that enabled me to purchase a dehydrator (at long last!). <3 It was super sweet of them! So say hello to the newest addition to my kitchen contraption collection (it’s at the bottom)!

Apple Chips

Ingredients:
-1 golden delicious apple, sliced into thin pieces

Instructions:
1) Slice apples into thin pieces and assemble them evenly onto the dehydrator tray.
2) Plug in the dehydrator and let it do its thing for ~3.5 hours!

Peanut Butter Honey Pita

I got a bunch of pita pockets for super cheap the other day. :D (I wanted to make pita pizzas and they were on sale!) Peanut butter honey banana sandwiches are probably one of my favorite “sweet” [and simple] sandwiches out there. I decided to spice it up a bit for this one, and it turned out really well! :D

Peanut Butter Honey Pita

Ingredients:
-1/2 banana, sliced
-natural peanut butter
-honey
-toasted coconut flakes
-cinnamon
-pita pocket

Instructions:
1) Spread peanut butter on one side of the pita pocket, honey on the other. Slice in bananas and sprinkle with coconut flakes + cinnamon. :]

Blueberry Rhubarb Crisp

One of the recipes from my birthday picnic! :D

Blueberry Rhubarb Crisp

Ingredients:
-6 stalks rhubarb stalks, cubed (NOT the leaf! it’s toxic :[ )
-blueberries (or peaches/something to make it sweeter)
-half a lemon, juiced
-a few tbsp sugar
-granola
-almonds

Instructions:
1) Preheat oven to 375.
2) Toss fruit with lemon juice + sugar.
3) Bake until soft and bubble. Sprinkle with granola + nuts and let cool to gain thickness.

Ginger Chia Granola Yogurt

I’ve revamped the Recipes page! There’s a drop-down menu of all the different categories now because I felt that having one fat, long list was getting a little out of hand. Hope it helps!

This recipe kinda happened by accident. As you may well know, I don’t really like the taste of Greek yogurt, but since it’s packed with such awesomeness (and by that, I mainly mean protein/nutritional goodness), I like to always have it on hand. To remedy my belief that it basically tastes like sour cream, I dress it up with all sorts of things. My standard go-to is granola and honey.

However, it’s so cold here, my giant thing of honey has, in essence, solidified. I guess it didn’t help that I kinda keep my apartment as an icebox because I’m rarely in it. I had a total west coast moment (something that would likely only ever happen to people who’ve been spoiled by a lack of actual seasons) and turned off all my heaters before I left in an effort to save electricity. What I did not know was that this is a terrible idea, because it actually gets cold enough for the pipes to freeze over here. ._.

This explains why my electricity bill is half the amount of everyone else’s. :[ In case you care though, a potential crisis was averted because my landlord looks out for me and turned them up to the minimum while I was gone. (Thank you! :o ) I mentioned this to a friend at church and he said he needed to find someone I should marry so that he could take care of me, because clearly, this whole cold weather business is very new to me. (I blame it on my lack of an experience with a real winter in NJ last year). Pray tell, why is everyone trying to marry me off?

Anyway, this is what I came up with. I’m aware that it doesn’t actually look all that appetizing (the slightly more giant crumbles = ginger cookie bits), but I swear it was good. :O

Ginger Chia Granola Yogurt

Ingredients:
-Nature’s Path Acai Apple Granola
-Nature’s Path Whole O’s
-Fage 0% Greek yogurt
-chia seeds
-1 ginger cookie, crumbled
-cinnamon, to taste

Instructions:
1) Scoop out some Greek yogurt. Top with chia seeds, granola and cereal. Sprinkle cinnamon over the top and crumble a ginger cookie over everything.