Eating New Things

I don't know why I bought the box of polenta. My grocery store was having a "Taste of Italy" promotion, and I had recently seen a recipe for a sausage and polenta breakfast casserole. This was months ago. I finally decided to brown up some Italian sausage with mushrooms and a red pepper and eat on top of the polenta. I knew it was corn mush, but it sounded more interesting in the Italian. I won't be seeking it out again. The instructions on the box were for the whole package; I have leftovers. I read of people who make a block of the polenta and fry up slices. I guess I will try that to finish off what I cooked. 

The little green zebra tomato was quite tasty. Beside it is the second of the orange tomatoes from the farmers' market.

I had better success with the cinnamon swirl banana bread I baked Monday morning.

This is actually a good recipe for really ripe bananas because most of the other ingredients are in your pantry. No nuts in this recipe. It is quite delicious. The only negative I saw was that the top layer of cinnamon sugar doesn't soak into the batter very well. There was lots of loose sugar around the sides of the pan when I removed it from the oven, and when I sliced the bread, lots of the "crust" of cinnamon sugar that did adhere crumbled off. Next time I would put more of the cinnamon sugar in the middle layer, less on top.

Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread

3 over-ripe bananas, smashed

1/3 cup melted butter

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp. vanilla 

dash of salt

1  1/2 cups flour  

Swirl Sugar:

1/3 cup sugar

1 tbsp. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a loaf pan. The recipe writer used a 9x5; mine was somewhat larger as I used my silicone pan (no size known but definitely bigger than 9x5).

Mix bananas, butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla; sprinkle baking soda and salt on top. Gently stir in flour. Do not overmix.

In a small dish mix the swirl sugar ingredients.

Put half of the batter in the loaf pan and then sprinkle a little more than half of the cinnamon sugar over the batter in the pan. Add the rest of the batter, then sprinkle the remaining cinnamon sugar on top.

Bake for 50-60 minutes, adjusting for pan size if not using a 9x5.

It only took 35 minutes for mine to have a toothpick come out clean.