Chocolate Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Nick and I don't go through bananas quickly enough before they get overripe, so I have a freezer bag stuffed full of bananas. I use them for smoothies and other recipes, and decided to try out a new one that looked quite yummy. It was -- it turned out quite nicely. Here is the recipe and a picture:

Ingredients

• 1 cup margarine, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 6 bananas, mashed
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 cup lite sour cream
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease two 9x5 inch loaf pans.
2. In a large bowl, cream together margarine, sugar and eggs. Stir in bananas and vanilla. Sift in flour, baking soda and cocoa; mix well. Blend in sour cream and chocolate chips. Pour batter into prepared pans.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into center of a loaf comes out clean.

500th post!!

It's a red letter post, and one I can't pass up without at least mentioning! My 500th post since starting this blog.

It's taken awhile to get here...yay!!!

While they live

My porch looks downright pretty at the moment with the flowers in bloom (gifts from students). Before I inevitably kill them, here is a picture of them in all their glory. Also notice the evidence that I do TRY...they did get watered today.

Not wasting a moment

This is the crate that I haul to and from school each week that sits in the corner of my living room as its home in between school days. I consider it part of the decor.


And this is the same cart not three hours after school let out for the summer. All the books are back on the shelf to be untouched for at least a month. The crate heads to the closet until late August!!

SCHOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER!!!

WAHOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Book review

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

The title of this book is GREAT!! I just finished this book last night, and had to review it. I loved it! Such a fun and light story, but with depth and great characters. I just wanted to be friends with every character in the book. The main character, Juliet, is a struggling author in London right after WWII. By chance, a book of hers ends up in the hands of a man living in Guernsey, England and they begin a correspondence about books they love. Their correspondence widens to include members of his community, who banded together during WWII to create the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society in an attempt to keep a semblance of normal life during the German occupation of their small town. Each member of the society shares a different story with Juliet, who falls in love with the whole town through their letters. The book, told in letter form, takes a bit of getting used to - the whole plot is propelled through the letter-writing. But it is an excellent book and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

CVS, my old friend

I decided to do the CVS deals once again, at least for the summer. My reasons are threefold:

1) I have more time now that school is almost out to devote to couponing and driving all over to find the deals at CVS;

2) My stockpile of beauty products and the like are becoming depleted since I have not darkened the door of a CVS in more than 6 months;

and, most importantly,

3) Emily told me to.

I went today, spent $11.75 out of pocket (had to start somewhere) and got $10.99 back in ECBs.....so, next week let's start the rolling!!!

Menu Plan

I don't normally post my meal plan these days because a) my meals are boring and very similar from week to week and b) I never have what I say I'm going to have. But this week I told Nick I was on strike and that he had to come up with meals for a week. Of course, he came up with them in 10 seconds. But at least it took the pressure of me (planning is by far the worst part of meal preparation). So here is what we are having this week:

Monday - grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup

Tuesday - grilled chicken, rice, salad

Wednesday - pesto pizza on naan bread

Thursday - salad fun night (salads w/cheese, grilled chicken, carrots, broccoli, egg, and tomato)

Friday - grilled chicken sandwiches, oven fries, fruit

Saturday - out; no cooking!

Sunday - roast, potatoes or rice, broccoli

Garage sale-ing

Nick and I went to some community garage sales this morning. We enjoyed the outing and going through people's junk. One man's trash is another man's treasure, as they say. We didn't find much treasure, and indeed, it seemed at several places that people had literally dumped their trash cans on their front lawn for people to buy. But we did come away with a few new treasures (computer keyboard, two computer mouses - mice?-, some small tables, and speakers). Ok, NICK came away with a few new treasures. Our house is now nearly overflowing with speakers.

But we got our exercise walking around the neighborhoods in the unbelievable heat, ate out for lunch, and just enjoyed each other's company.

In other news, I have a new mailbox! Ours has been looking worse and worse and our delivery person finally put a notice in our box telling us she would stop delivering mail unless we fixed it. Ouch! So we installed a new one. Mail service uninterrupted!

An Evening with Austen

I've finally done it. After 10 years of knowing Nick, I've convinced him to watch A&E's "Pride and Prejudice" with me. All 300 minutes of it.

Stay tuned....I'll let you know how it went!! Hopefully I won't have to splash water on him all evening to keep him awake!

Typical

Nick's aunt found this picture from awhile ago - five years ago, in fact. But it is such a typical pose I had to laugh. Makes me wonder what Nick said to get this reaction!

A customer service success story

Recently, I had a customer service success story and had to share - it is not often that those occur.

I've owned my Keurig coffee brewer since Christmas; I received it as a gift and have loved using it. It makes a delicious coffee every time (something I'm not good at doing when I have to measure grounds) and it is simple to use. It also doesn't waste coffee by only brewing one cup at a time, especially important since I'm the only one who drinks coffee at my house.

However, the last few weeks, instead of brewing a 10 oz. cup when I chose that setting, would only brew 6-8 oz. While that doesn't seem like a huge problem, every little ounce helps some days!! :) I followed the directions in the user's manual and did a few troubleshooting tips, but nothing helped. So I called their customer service department.

Immediately upon telling the woman what was going on, she took my name, email, phone number, address, serial number of the machine and barely asked any questions about the machine or what I had done to try to fix it. Just as I was getting irritated by giving this woman all my information, she said, "Ok, we'll be sending a new machine out to you immediately and we'll include two boxes of coffee pods as an apology." She asked me for my favorite flavor of their coffee and 4 business days later, my new machine showed up at my door.

Score for Keurig and their fabulous customer service! I'm really impressed and pleased with their response.

Book review

Her Mother's Hope by Francine Rivers, is a book about Marta, young Swiss girl at the turn of the 20th century who struggles to find her place in the world after a tough childhood and family tragedy strikes. Rivers is one of my favorite authors and doesn't disappoint this time. I couldn't put it down and was immediately drawn in from page 1. Now I have to wait until part 2 comes out (this is book 1 of a series)!

Chillin' out

Here is Jordanna just chillin' out on my couch on Sunday. So cute! :)

Movie Review

We saw this movie the other night and both really enjoyed it. It was laugh-out-loud funny without being overly crass or crude like many comedies are these days. Steve Carell and Tina Fey were a really good team and it was entertaining. Two thumbs up!

Trip to Chattanooga

Here are some pictures from our trip to Chattanooga this weekend. We had a good time visiting some of our favorites in the area, some of which we haven't been to since college.

We enjoyed calzones at Lupi's, a local pizza place. Nick had pepperoni and I had spicy chicken and mushroom. It was delicious, though Nick turned his nose up at mine.


Lupin' it up at Lupi's:
Then we walked for awhile down by the riverfront. It was a beautiful evening downtown.

We then saw a movie (review post to come), and the next morning, went to McKay, a HUGE used bookstore. We sold back $55 worth of books and purchased $54, so we spent no money out of pocket! Not a bad deal!

It was a fun getaway!