Chunky Monkey

So here's the deal with bananas. I like having them on hand for breakfast, especially on work mornings (plain oatmeal + banana + honey is the formula for survival from 0600 to 1300, mark my words). In that case, though, I want them yellow. Bright yellow. Not spotty. So I only buy about 3 if I'm at the store in order to finish them before they get too brown, which means I have to break them off from the giant bunches. You know what that means? That means I end up breaking open the peels on the bananas I plan to put back.

...And then put them back on the shelf with their broken stems hoping no one saw me.

The point is that last week at HEB I went a little crazy craze and just threw the whole bunch in my cart and planned to deal with it later.

What do you do with brown, spotty, gross-looking bananas? And one single egg left in the fridge? And the chocolate chips leftover from these cookies? And half a little jar of peanut butter? And a long shift coming up on Friday?

Chunky Monkey. The Chunk Monk. The Monk of Chunks.

Baker friends are looking at this ^ picture and wondering how these bananas became so wonderfully perfect for baking. Non-baker friends think I'm trying to poison them. On Wednesday night while Lora and Dirk were over, they taught me the trick of putting the brown spotty bananas in the freezer til I wanted to use them the next day. So I did, took them out in the morning, and found them like this in the afternoon. Something about the ice crystals breaking down and making the bananas super mushy and sweet. THEY. WERE. READY!

An added bonus of the freezer trick is that it took literally no time to mash them up.

This step smells like my favorite smoothie. (Cut up a banana and freeze it in a baggie, then blend it with a cup of milk and a spoonful of peanut butter. You're welcome.)

The dry stuff was boring-looking, so here it is blended with the good stuff.

I forgot to take a "before" picture of the muffin tins.

The "after" picture is making me wish I'd had enough bananas to double the recipe to keep more for myself.

Baked goods (and chocolate in general) make nurses and hospital staff happy (sane). There's a reason my manager Mary keeps a giant jar of candy in her office. So I brought 20ish of these muffins to put in the break room for a little Friday pick-me-up hoping everyone would love them as much as I do. And, I decided (after someone asked if I was going to give them a heart attack with these), these muffins are good for you. In 20ish muffins there's only a few tbsp of oil and one egg, the peanut butter has good fats and protein, and bananas are bananas. I used 2% milk (can't rock the skim milk in baked goods, though that's what I usually drink, and what the crap would I do with the leftover whole milk?), the amount of sugar in these is comparable to what a lot of recipes have in just 12 muffins, and chocolate chips are good for the soul.

I watch crappy TV.

Look at those smiles. Could there be a better show to watch on your mornings off? It's comfort TV. The mashed potatoes of TV. Except mashed potatoes are delicious, and this show technically sucks. But now that I live alone, I'm not torturing others with crappy TV - only myself. Some walk around naked; I watch Full House.

For my own self-justification, I loved it as a kid, and true love lasts a lifetime. There's something about brainless, predictable, hug-filled TV that just feels so right. It doesn't matter that Bob Saget would later go on to make stuff like this. Wake Up San Francisco? Comet the dog? Life lessons queued to music? Gag me, but you just can't beat it.

Full House was also probably the start of Kori's and my Olsen twin cult following (what is the correct way to say that? It's not "Kori and I's" is it? Irrelevant). We wrote them a letter circa 1995 saying (lying) that we were twins also, so we should be pen-pals. We also owned and/or rented all of their videos (featuring the Olsen & Olsen Mystery Agency, I Am the Cute One, slumber parties involving coordinated song and dance and staying up til midnight, etc etc), bought all of their movies (plot summaries: exotic location, boys in love with them, wardrobe changes, and a plot-line for the last 15 to 20 minutes of each movie. After they kiss their respective boys), blindly defended them against all of the cocaine accusations (we're kidding ourselves), and made a last-minute Walmart run to buy accessories to dress like them for the Spirits/Iron Spikes Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous mixer.

...or maybe that last one was just me.

and Emily. The Ashley to my Mary-Kate.

I'd like to post a picture, but those pics would be from my pre-Mac days. I don't want to hunt through my giant folder of old disorganized documents. None of the pictures have thumbnails, etc. I digress.

Incase you were wondering, the episode I caught today was the one where Joey was Mr. Egghead and accidentally breaks Stephanie's nose. Classic.

On a similar note, if The Wonder Years ever comes back on TV, I might have to quit my job to make time for it.

Tho-mas Jef-fer-son! Tho-mas Jef-fer-son!

Horrible picture quality. I never said I was a photographer.

I forgot my camera (!!! fail!) when I went to Emily's in Rockport for the 4th, so this is the best my phone (plus brightening from iphoto) could do.

Incase you're wondering, the title of this blog was absolutely chanted during the fireworks. It didn't flow as well as Emily's original "U-S-A! U-S-A!," but it got the point across. We love America. You can tell by our glowing headbands. I had 24 hours of sun, fun, margs, bahama mamas, hot dogs, hamburgers, and dancing with Emily's conservative aunt. Magical.

Work update (because "how's work?" seems to be the question of the day every day): Each shift gets a little better, I've already learned a lot, I hate having to ask 900 questions (but appreciate the 900 answers!), and I still cannot ever figure out who I need to call (or if I even need to call them!) when the patient is being seen by all these different teams of docs/residents/interns.

Other life updates: I'm going to Colorado to see Andrew tomorrow! Exciting! A little bit of a bummer that weather.com says thunderstorms all weekend, but that's why I have my handy dandy men's water-resistant windbreaker. With a hood. Bring it.

Other other life updates: I need to learn Spanish. TEACH ME!! I can't survive off of "tiene dolor?" forever.