Daily Dose

There’s an art to choosing the right bunch of bananas. They can’t be too green (because I won’t eat them if they are AT ALL green) and they can’t be too NON-green because then nobody else will eat them and I can’t eat an entire bunch of bananas all by myself before they get so ripe that the skin is falling off of them — unless of course I choose a bunch that only has like three bananas on it. Which is silly. Who can buy just three bananas?

So yea. Lately I’ve not been doing a very good job of the banana choosing or the banana eating. I threw three bananas into the trash right before BlogHer ’13 and I swore I wouldn’t do that again when I bought this last batch. But, apparently I bought too ripe bananas because nobody ate them except me and by the time there were three very ripe bananas left, I was all banana’d out.

Which means I moved on to saying, “I’m going to make banana bread with those, before they turn into liquid banana goo all over the counter.” But errr, days passed and the banana bread didn’t get baked.

So I said, “I’m going to make banana muffins in the Ninja Cooking System! (And a loaf of banana bread the regular way!)” I was sure this would inspire me to get off my ass and just use the bananas.

Except it didn’t. Yesterday was go ninja or go to the trash bin with the bananas.

Since Skye says I am ninja, I had to make it happen even though I had no damn time to make banana muffins or banana bread. Mondays are usually slow work days for me (when I’ve worked four-six hours over the weekend) but they aren’t usually slow enough for baking. I bit the bullet and made the time.

Which was hard since I had absolutely no freaking clue as to how to make these banana muffins in the Ninja Cooking System.

The little cookbook says something about adding X amount of water for every 10 minutes. Which umm didn’t help because how long do you cook mini one bite (not two bite) banana muffins for, anyway? It also said something about using less fat. But how much less? I shrugged and guessed. I also turned to the back of the cookbook and found some recipe that looked like mini chocolate cupcakes and used those instructions.

Errr except I over-filled the little tiny one bite (note two bite) silicone muffin pan. And also, I have no idea if I picked the right amount of time to cook these things.

They turned out … fine. Not exactly like a normally baked banana muffin might turn out, but close enough. They certainly tasted just fine. They just didn’t really brown like a normally baked muffin might brown, (which is really a good thing for me, since I don’t really like muffins that are too “brown” on the outside.)

The biggest issue is that good grief, do you know how long it would take to turn the entire batch of banana bread batter into little tiny one bite (not two bite) banana muffins? HOURS and HOURS. Who has the time or patience for that?

I do, however, think this is going to come in handy for those times when you’re making muffins or cupcakes or brownies and you have just a wee bit of batter leftover that is too much to fill another full muffin tin or will only fill a couple of tins in your muffin pan so you either eat the batter with a spoon or throw it out rather than make another muffin tin dirty for no really good reason. (What? Am I the only one who has that issue?)

I’ve been thinking about trying Peapod for quite awhile and just never make the time to do it. The thing that really pushed me to want to try it is that not only do they take coupons, they double coupons (in my area) up to .99. Cool, right?

I told myself I’d set up a delivery for right after BlogHer ’13 — a time when it would be super convenient to have groceries delivered since I’d be too tired and too busy to grocery shop.

But, I didn’t do it.

And who was in the expo hall at BlogHer ’13? Peapod. Gah. Made me want to try it all over again.

So here I am thinking about it again and it hit me — Jenn and JMP and a whole lot of other people are going to be visiting me in August/September and I’m not going to have nearly as much time to grocery shop as I usual do.

So — Peapod to the darn rescue!

I’m totally gonna do it and let you know how it goes.

PS. I did spin their prize wheel thing at the conference and they did say I won a $100 gift card but I really have no idea how that’s going to work. The possibility of receiving a gift card has absolutely nothing to do with my decision to place an order this month. And, if I do end up with a giftncard from them, I’ll let you know.

The folks from @ninjakitchen sent TW a Ninja Cooking System, for free, after BlogHer Food ’13. They did not ask her to write about their product. They did not ask me to write about their product. I work for BlogHer but was not asked to write about this product by my employer. I’m writing this because I feel like it. That’s all.

Y’all know I’m not the one who cooks around here. I cook so rarely that the little kids act like we should stop the presses and get the story on the front page of the Tribune or something when I do cook. This causes me to roll my eyes and bite my tongue lest I tell them how idiotic they are being because I USED TO COOK FOR THEM ALL OF THE TIME. Apparently they do not remember all of the days/nights their mother was in bed, ill? Whatevs.

I don’t cook very often and I certainly don’t use the slow cooker when I do cook. OK Maybe a couple times over the last ten years. Once for greens (which I did not know how to make) and once for something else TW forgot to put in the crock-pot, so I had to do it. And, that’s probably pretty much it.

I thought the Ninja Cooking System looked cool and sounded pretty nifty when I talked to the @ninjakitchen folks at BlogHer Food ’13 but I was more taken with their deep fryer… because for me, it’s all about the clean up.

I’ve never had a real problem cleaning the crockpot – particularly since we have the kind with the removable crock part. I hated TW’s crockpot that was all one piece. But my old one — and the one we have now, I had very few clean up issues with them. Until I broke the crock a couple of weeks ago and had to order a new one. Sigh. That was annoying.

That’s the worst thing about that crock-pot. The insert is heavy as a …. yea, I curse too much, whatever. And I’ve chipped them and broken them too many times to count.

Now here’s the part about Ninja. Holy heck this sucker is easy to clean. It’s light. It pretty much just wipes right off. No scrubbing. It’s just wonderful. I’d be happy if TW cooked in this thing every night because clean up is so damn easy.

(The food she’s cooked in it has been good, too. Also um, fewer pots/pans to clean.)

Which brings me back to the Ninja Deep Fryer. I think we’re gonna have to buy that.

Now that I’ve experienced clean up with the Ninja Cooking System, there’s no way I’m going to want to try and deal with the clean up of our blechy deep fryer. No way in heck (look, I didn’t curse!) TW wouldn’t be unhappy if I got her a deep fryer for her birthday, right?