the rise of the fro-ban

*Please note. I meant to post this, oh, a long, long time ago. But a phone call last week from a neighbor that opened with, "Hey Amber. We have a fro-ban question," reminded me to actually set it live.

**Also. We are huge fans of fro-bans as they were meant to be. This is just another option.

Once upon a time, I was struck by the simplicity of a blog post over at The Kitchn. "Make delicious, creamy ice cream with just one ingredient and no ice cream maker," it claimed.

Ha-HA! Yeah right.

Nay-sayers, step aside. Marvel at the Fro-Ban: the frozen banana, like you've never seen it before. I worried that banana ice cream would taste too, well, banana-y. While the flavor is undoubtedly there, it's nothing like the faux-banana flavor employed by candies and processed foods. And the process of blending the fro-bans incorporates a little air, lending it a light and satisfying creaminess.

And then you get really insistent on making popsicles one night, and before you know it you're adding coconut milk to the frozen bananas, whirring it all together, and layering it in a pan with chocolate syrup.

That's when you invite your neighbors over for Fro-Bans.

Fro-Ban Popsicles

4-6 slightly over-ripe bananas, peeled and cut into 1-inch slices, then frozen for at least 3 hours

1/4 cup coconut milk (dairy, soy, or almond milk can be used here too)

organic chocolate syrup (here's a recipe for homemade)

Toss the frozen banana chunks into the food processor and whir until they resemble ice cream. Feel free to eat it at that point. For popsicles, slowly add the coconut milk while the machine is running, until the mixture reaches a slightly smoother texture.

Line a 9x5 baking tray with waxed paper and pour a layer of banana mixture into the pan. Drizzle with a good layer of chocolate syrup, and top with the remaining banana mixture. Place popsicle sticks in at 3/4-inch intervals. Freeze for at least 4 hours, then gently cut pops apart and serve.

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homemade fig newtons

Figs are such delicate, delectable things. They seem so incredibly indulgent—so when my mom gave me the better part of 10 pounds this year, I longed to use them wisely.

Their delicate nature means they're only good fresh for a week (at best), so I had to use them up quickly and didn't have any time to make preserves.

Enter the hunt for a fig bar recipe. A good friend is a big fan of fig bars, and I thought a homemade version would be easy to find. Turns out, most recipes I turned to called for dried figs (since for most of the cooking public, those are so easy to come by). If you're in the market, this recipe for Grown Up Fig Bars over at 101 Cookbooks was a contender for the two-hour slot I had set aside for figs in the kitchen.

But what ended up winning was this recipe for homemade fig Newtons over at Our Italian Kitchen. I changed the recipe quite a lot, to include whole wheat and less sugar. Here's my take on it, which was so well received that I processed about 6 pounds of figs this same way, threw 'em in the freezer, and started taking orders for more.

Fresh Fig Bars

Adapted from Our Italian Kitchen

Dough
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup raw or turbinado sugar
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 large egg white
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1/4 cup spelt flour
(alternately, you can use 1 1/2 cups AP flour, or 3/4 cup AP and 3/4 cup whole wheat)

Filling
2 lbs fresh figs
1/4 cup honey
Juice of half a lemon

1. Cream the butter, sugar and zest in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, for 2-3 minutes on medium speed until light and fluffy. Scrape the sides of the bowl.

2. Beat in the egg white and vanilla.

3. Next, add the flour in three portions and beat on low speed after each addition until the dough comes together.

4. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight.

5. While the dough is chilling, de-stem the figs. Toss the whole figs into the bowl of a food processor and process until pureed.

6. In a large saucepan, cook the fig puree, honey, and lemon juice over medium-low heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 30 minutes. The mixture should be fairly thick and begin to gel as you cook it down. Set mixture aside until completely cool. If making these the next day, refrigerate the mixture overnight.

7. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

8. Working with about 1/2 of the dough at a time, roll the chilled dough out on a floured surface. Cut into strips, each about 12 x 4 inches. Spoon a line of filling down the center of each strip. With the help of a dough scraper, carefully fold the dough over the filling and pinch the edges together. Using a serrated knife, slice each log into appropriately-sized cookies. Place each cookie on the parchment-lined baking sheets, seam side down.

9. Bake, rotating the baking sheets from top to bottom and front to back halfway through, for 12-15 minutes, until golden. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a rack. Share with friends to make them love you.

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summer meals, part 2: fig, gorgonzola & arugula pizza

I couldn't leave you hanging on just part 1, now, could I?

My mom gave us a bucketload of fresh figs from her tree. During the last two summers, I out-jammed myself and we still have jars sitting in the garage that I'm afraid to eat. With the heat this summer, I can't bear to do any canning in the kitchen anyway. So this year, I decided to take a different approach.

This approach: Enjoy fresh figs in all of their fresh figgy glory. So we made pizza. With fresh figs. How fun!

I've gotten in the habit of making double batches of pizza dough and freezing half. It's once the prep and twice the food—brilliant, if you ask me. Provided, of course, you remember to take the dough out of the freezer. (Call from the grocery store: "Hey, Ryan. Are you home? Yeah? Can you do me a favor? Thanks...") This means whipping up a gourmet pizza on a weeknight becomes, oh, no big deal. Seriously, you should try it.

I was inspired by the umpteen recipes I found for fig, arugula, and prosciutto pizza (like this one from Pioneer Woman), but there were a couple of small problems. Like, we don't eat prosciutto any more. And, to be honest, I'm not a fan of arugula.

This pizza changed half of that. I'll give you a clue: I still don't eat prosciutto.

The only tricky thing about this pizza is that you kind of have to watch it carefully. I didn't want to bake the arugula too long, so I put that on at the end. You can see in the photo that the greens are a little wilted; if you want them to look snappier, just add the arugula after you've totally baked the pizza.

Fig, Gorgonzola, and Arugula Pizza

1 recipe pizza dough of your choice (but I recommend this one, jazzed up with spelt flour)

approximately 15 fresh figs (more if you'd like), de-stemmed and sliced

1/2 cup gorgonzola crumbles

3 cups fresh arugula (you can use an arugula-spinach mix here)

2 tablespoons olive oil

cornmeal for dusting the baking sheet

Preheat the oven to 450. Roll your pizza dough thin; this is one pizza that's best on a thin, crisp crust. Dust a baking sheet or pizza stone with cornmeal and transfer the dough to the sheet.

Slide the crust into the oven for about 4-5 minutes to partially bake it. Remove from oven, and drizzle the half-baked crust with 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Top haphazardly with gorgonzola and fig slices, and return the pizza to the oven for about 5 more minutes.

Just before the crust turns golden-brown, bring the pizza back out and top with 3 cups of arugula and the remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Slide back into the oven to finish baking, until crust is golden and crispy. Enjoy it while it's still nice and hot.

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summer meals, part 1

Believe it or not, we've been having some amazing stuff from the garden and kitchen lately. I hope to share a few recipes soon, like homemade fig bars and fig-gorgonzola-arugula pizza. Oh, and mayo-free pimento cheese. And the plans for the fall garden (see the squash starts above? Let's hope they make it!).

Sure, our garden is suffering mightily in the heat. . . And there's next to nothing to harvest most of the time. But we have managed to pluck delicious ripe tomatoes from the vines and have peppers, too. And with the frozen herbs I keep in my freezer, a quick summer meal is never too far away.

Lately one of our quick dinner favorites has become the "anything goes quesadilla." No two are alike! I have less of a recipe for you and more of. . . An approach.

• Keep chopped onion in the fridge at all times. This has proved supremely helpful; also, when kept in a glass airtight container, it keeps for at least two weeks. And the glass never holds on to the smell, either. Win-win. Win.

• Gather miscellany vegetables from the garden (chard, peppers, eggplant, squash, and corn have all made an appearance).

• Open a can of pinto or black beans; drain it and get it ready to throw in the pan.

• We like using multi-grain tortillas. They're flavorful and healthy. Cha-ching!

• Use a pan that can saute your veggies and also cook the quesadillas. I use a flat non-stick pan for everything. Sure, a couple of beans leap onto the stovetop, but overall it's nice to use only one dish for this.

• Saute the veggies, add seasonings, and toss in the beans to heat them up. Take your fixin's and pour them onto one of your dinner plates. Keep them in waiting while you throw a tortilla on the pan and add just about a tablespoon of shredded cheese. Let it melt a little, and then add about a half-cup of the filling. Top with another tablespoon of cheese and the next tortilla, and proceed with your quesadilla-making.

• We make three quesadillas to feed two of us (split the third one). It's perfectly filling and always delicious.

That's it! Back with more in less than a month, I promise.

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garden squash & eggplant pizzas

Friday night, we had friends over for dinner. They swing vegetarian too, so cooking up a meatless meal was not an issue. And we had quite the harvest from the garden last week, making for a nice selection of veggies to choose from. They're kind, open-minded friends who would politely eat even my worst culinary creation . . . But they didn't have to feign interest because (spoiler alert) this dinner was awesome.

After the pizza success earlier this month, I decided to go with something foolproof and serve garden-fresh pizzas to our guests. Let me tell you what made this a good game plan:

• I planned ahead (I know, I know—brilliant! Every meal should start this way!)

• I didn't put too much pressure on myself ("No big deal" = mantra)

• I practiced the recipe before serving it to guests (Shocking development!)*

• I gave myself plenty of time, prepping the dough before going to work and chopping veggies a couple of hours before guests arrived (Time? Who knew?)

• I chose recipes that, even if something went a little awry, they'd be good (Um, hello, PIZZA)**

• I kept it fairly simple and asked the guests to bring dessert—one less thing to worry over. (And boy did they deliver.)

I highly recommend such a game plan if you're at all like me: Nervous. Scatterbrained. Forgetful. Buckling under the pressure to perform. Wishing you could be drinking wine with your guests instead of stressing away in the kitchen.

That's right! With a little forethought, I actually put on a successful dinner party. It was, dare I say, so much fun that I'm doing it again in two weeks. We'll be having garden pizza and salad (I'm a quick learner).

* This isn't entirely true. I tried the recipe once, exactly as the recipe was written. But who am I to make the same recipe twice? Due to the garden yield, I decided to change it up. Riffing on that same theme, I scrapped the zukes for yellow squash and the orange bell for two baby purple bells from our garden. Those made for two great substitutions and I highly recommend being brave.

** Yeah, so I did actually bust out a new recipe, found day-of-dinner-party, and it was amazing. I had two small, perfectly-hued eggplant from the garden and wanted to use them. Smitten Kitchen came through as usual with a grilled eggplant and provolone pizza recipe (thank you, Google). This one was a white pie (without marinara sauce) and was my hubby's favorite of the evening—the first time he's ever referred to an eggplant dish as his favorite. So, that was, like, totally awesome.

The full menu, so you can plan ahead for your next dinner soiree:

• Salad (store-bought greens) with garden tomatoes, snap peas, green beans, and Mother's Cashew-Tamari Dressing

• Garden Squash, Bell Pepper, and Goat Cheese Pizza on homemade spelt crust

• Garden Eggplant, Olive, Parsley, and Provolone Pizza on homemade spelt crust

• Vanilla ice cream with local blueberries

Stay tuned to find out just what's happening in the garden this week . . . Bad news: we've got borers. Good news: It's not too late to re-plant.

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yum factor: goat cheese and zucchini pizza

I'll be the first to admit, it's been tough times in the kitchen lately. Not a lot going on, and when it does go on, there's a mess deal with and not a lot of "yum" to make the mess easier to handle. What you haven't seen here: a completely failed attempt at banana bread, some decidedly not delicious dinners, and preoccupation with other stuff. Bigger fish to fry, if you'll excuse the analogy.

So part of me was getting pretty put out about it all. We started eating out more and more, until I felt like we were eating out at every meal, and the only thing I found myself cooking were iterations of rice and beans. Healthy, yes. Sustainable, certainly. Cheap, you betchya. But food blog worthy? Challenging? Fun to brag about?

Come on now.

In the midst of it all, I watched our garden begin to falter. The bean plants and cucumbers were looking ill, with mazes appearing in the leaves (note: leafminers are vicious little buggers but can be combatted organically with BT). Pillbugs had stumped the growth of our first yellow squash in the garden. We were under heavy attack by predatory bugs.

Things were not boding well for my hopes and dreams of being an urban farmer/food writer/culinary artist/yoga instructor/expert seamstress (see how the snowball effect takes hold?!?). Things had to change.

We took action on the garden, seeking the advice of some pros (the tips? Water deeply, use BT and DT, and check the babies every day for signs of sickness). We set an intention for our garden and our food, and agreed that there was an opportunity here to reset and enjoy. And coinciding with this revelation, heralding it in, in fact, was the latest issue of Vegetarian Times. Cue choir of angels, bright shining light from Heaven, etc.

We're trying their 28-day Eat Green Veg challenge—and by that I mean cooking from their wealth of healthy veg recipes. And they're all in one place, which caters to my lazier busier side.

Here's an incredible recipe for Goat Cheese, Zucchini, and Bell Pepper Pizza, which I followed to the T! The only adaptation was to make a spelt crust from scratch, following Mark Bittman's dough recipe for the most part (I used 1 1/2 cups bread flour and 1 1/2 cups whole spelt flour, and since I was all out of instant yeast I just used the regular stuff. I let it rise in the fridge all day while I was at work, then brought it to room temp before moving forward.).

Oh, what? Pizza's not healthy? Actually, this one is—I'm no nutritionist (yet; let's put that on the to-do list), but the spelt crust is chock-full heart-healthy minerals and vitamins. The sauce is made from organic tomato paste and a little evoo; the toppings are fresh veggies and a little bit of local goat cheese. No grease to speak of, and very little salt. In fact, in lieu of parmesan I sprinkled a little nutritional yeast on top for just a hint of parm flavor. So, yes. Healthy pizza.

In other news, here are a few shots of the gardens. They're coming along and we are looking forward to a summer full of squash, corn, tomatoes, tomatillos, cucumbers, melons, beans, peas, eggplant, and peppers.

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a riff on beans & rice

Let's pretend you live in Austin. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. But have you ever gone to Mother's? It's a fabulous little cafe with one very important distinction: its menu is entirely vegetarian.

So we've been there a lot in the last year and a half. A lot.

A couple of visits ago, I decided it would probably behoove me to branch out, though I have some serious favorites, and work my way through everything on the menu. The garden salad with cashew-tamari dressing is a must on each visit, but since everything is me-friendly, I love the idea that I can try it all. No substitutions needed.

About halfway through the menu, I came across something simple: steamed vegetables served with sage mashed potatoes, brown rice, and black beans. And it is superb. As one friend put it, "Sometimes you just need someone else to steam your veggies." It's true. But that dish can just as easily be made at home (without the inimitable* cashew-tamari dressing, which is totally worth the out-to-eat pricetag).

Last night we had our first imitation: so easy, so healthy, so cheap, and pretty darn delicious. I'll leave the sage mashed potatoes to Mother's, but here's our latest riff on rice and beans.

This makes 4 full servings of the dish, plus enough beans for another dinner (which is still TBD). While this didn't wind up being a one-dish meal, it's easy and accessible, especially if you have a pressure cooker. This isn't so much a recipe as it is a recommendation; and if you don't want to cook dried beans, just open up a can or two, rinse, and heat 'em up. And really, you can steam any veggies you like. These were the two we had on hand.

There may have also been one or two green beans from yesterday's garden harvest. That being the entire harvest. Patience, patience, patience.

Rice and Beans and Veg

1 pound dried pinto or black beans (or 2 cans cooked pintos)

5 cloves peeled garlic

1 cup brown rice (dry, to make 2-3 cups cooked)

2-3 cups broccoli florets

4 large carrots

Soak the beans for about 9 hours, and then cooked them with the garlic cloves at full pressure for 5 minutes. (Read more about the pressure cooker here.) Cook the rice according to the package directions (I add a tablespoon of butter to brown rice while cooking, which makes me supremely happy). Peel and slice the carrots and steam them with the broccoli for about 10 minutes (sprinkle with a little salt, and drizzle with olive oil if you so please). Serve it all up in a bowl: rice, beans, and veggies. Then garnish and season with red pepper flakes, garlic salt, celery seed, shredded cheese, and pickled jalapenos.

* I say inimitable because I think that's truly the case. I tried to recreate it on a number of occasions with only limited success. My homemade versions are tasty, but they lack that certain... something. If you have a spot-on impersonation, please do share!

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