Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

For my wedding shower last year my bridesmaids requested everyone fill out a recipe card and give me one of their favorite recipes. Appropriate, right? I loved it, it fed my recipe addiction. My maid of honor, Amanda, gave me this recipe for chocolate chip banana bread and it's so tasty and moist, I've made it several times since my shower.

I always seem to have really ripe bananas laying around that usually end up going towards smoothies, banana pancakes, or banana bread. This weekend I had some realllllllly ripe bananas that were way beyond any use in smoothies, which makes them perfect for banana bread. Keep reading for the recipe.

Hurricane Irene

As you probably know, by the end of last week there was a lot of hype about Hurricane Irene coming up the East Coast and gearing up to hit the NYC area hard. I don't live in NYC, but across the river from downtown Manhattan on the Jersey side. The main concern for the area was flooding and power outages. We live on the 25th floor so clearly flooding wasn't a concern, but a power outage definitely was. So while my husband was making sure we did all of the hurricane 'preparedness' needed, I had some concerns of my own.

Not related to food, I wanted to make sure we had plenty of entertainment for us and our friends in the building if the power went out. I made sure our board games were easy access and downloaded a hurricane playlist for our battery operated ipod speakers. You cannot imagine how many songs are out there relating to hurricanes, storms, wind, rain, etc. They ended up in a pretty good mix in my opinion. Then I of course wanted to make sure we had plenty of cold beer in the cooler. Below was our selection.

It included Anchor Steam, Ithaca Beer Co. Cascazilla, Dogfish Head IPA, Keegan Ales Hurricane Kitty, Stone IPA, and the light choice was Miller Light. Most of these are favorites around our apartment, but the Hurricane Kitty was one we hadn't tried and obviously had to get for the occasion. It was an IPA and surprisingly good considering we only got it because it had Hurricane in the name. We also had plenty of red wine on hand, and we didn't even need to worry about keeping it cold.

Now onto the food, I wanted to bake some snacks up to go along with the other non-perishable food we loaded up on. So I made these peanut butter granola balls from Martha Stewart.

Chicken, Black Bean & Corn Burritos

We had a lot of leftover chicken from our Peruvian Roast Chicken and I had a handful of ideas of what to make with the leftovers; pizza, burritos, over polenta, tortilla soup, lasagna rolls, tostadas, the list could go on. As you already know by the name of this post and the photo I went with the burrito option and made some chicken, black bean, and corn burritos and they were oh so good! According to my husband, they were even better leftover in his lunch today.

I made some guacamole with the heirloom tomatoes I picked up at the farmers market to go with the burritos. Have I mentioned before how awful I am at making guacamole look appetizing? I'm not ashamed, I'll still show you the picture, because  no matter how it looks it always tastes good!

Peruvian Roasted Chicken

My husband has been wanting to roast a whole chicken for awhile, he's mentioned multiple times he wants to be the master of roasting chickens in our house.  After a couple of okay previous attempts, he ended up with a success story on Tuesday night.  He used a Peruvian Roast Chicken recipe from A Bird in the Oven and Then Some. We had the chicken with a salad that I added some Peruvian aji sauce (recipe below) and chipotle creamed corn.

Parmesan & Sage Roasted Potatoes

Well tonight I was planning on roasting a chicken, so I stopped at the store on my way home from work to pick up all the ingredients, got home and re-read through the recipe and noticed I skipped the marinate in the refrigerator for 5-8 hours section. Oops, the chicken will have to wait for tomorrow night. Instead we made visit to the crepe truck that sits outside of our building, which is always a good option. I'm a sucker for savory crepes.

Since the chicken has been delayed I figured I could share this easy and tasty side dish with you that I made last week (or the week before).  Below is the recipe, you can reduce the cooking time if you don't like yours as crispy as I do.