Mmmm, mmmm....

Hello y'all! I got the chance to bake some yummy treats (for fun!) this weekend, so I thought I'd share my latest baking adventures with you. I got this nifty cupcake carrier for Christmas from my parents, so I thought, what better than to make one batch of muffins and one batch of cupcakes! Nate suggested I start putting out a tip jar in the break room at work next to my baked goodies...because my co-workers have got it made....

I don't know about all of you, but when I have some over-ripe bananas, I toss them into the freezer with visions of baked banana bread in my future. Instead of banana bread this time, however, I decided to make Banana Crumb Muffins. My mom gave me this recipe from AllRecipes.com as part of my Christmas gift, so what better time to give it a try than the first time I use my cupcake carrier. Click the link above for the recipe, or here it is:

Ingredients
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 bananas, mashed
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup butter, melted
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly grease 10 muffin cups or line with muffin papers.
2. In a large bowl, mix together 1.5 cups flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugar, egg and melted butter. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
3. In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and cinnamon. Cut in 1 tablespoon butter until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle topping onto muffins.
4. Bake in a preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.

I began by preheating my oven, lining my muffin pan with muffin cups, and mixing the dry ingredients together, as the recipe states.

Then I peeled my black skinned bananas (ha!) and mixed those in with the wet ingredients.


Then I poured the wet mixture into the dry mixture, and wha-la!

Easy cheesy! Into the muffin cups they went... Then I mixed together the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon (I added extra) and the butter. I ended up using the beaters from my hand mixer to cut in the butter, as I cannot find our pastry blender anywhere. Has anybody seen it? We re-org'ed our kitchen again over Christmas break, so I have a feeling it got lost in the shuffle.

Anyway, I sprinkled the topping over the muffin batter and put them into the oven straightaway...

I set the oven timer for the full 20 minutes, as our gas oven usually takes longer than recommended to cook things. However, when the 20 minutes was up, a toothpick inserted into the center came out clean. In fact, they were a bit brown around the edges, so I think I could have baked them the 18 minutes and they would have been perfect.

Regardless, they came out looking like this...

Big, fluffy muffins (now I know why the recipe recommends only making 10) and the crumb topping just looked scrumptious.



Of course I tried one (just one!). I love the crumb topping. I think this will definitely replace my traditional banana muffin recipe as my "go to." As I suspected, I think I cooked them a little too long, as the inside wasn't quite as moist as I had hoped. Not bad, by any means, but I'll keep a closer eye on them next time. Maybe it's the darker colored pan that made the difference.

Next up in my baking adventures, chocolate stout cupcakes...

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New Years Eve

I'm so glad we decided not to be party poopers for New Years Eve this year! Nate and I wanted to get a group together to do something fun, however everyone we talked to seemed to be going out of town for New Years. What did we do? Well, we decided to do something just the two of us...

A dueling piano bar in St. Peters called The Jive and Wail was a having a New Years Eve party...appetizers, all you could drink, party favors and champagne at midnight. The best part (or so we thought)? It was close to us, so we took a taxi there and back so we didn't have to worry about driving.

We bought the more expensive tickets so we could have a reserved table, and I snapped these pictures shortly after we had gotten there.


And, of course, a festive photo of me Nate snapped early on...

You'll have to forgive the picture fuzziness from this point on. These were taken with my iPhone, which does not have a flash. It actually worked considerably well in the low light. Anyway, I digress...

The big coincidence of the evening, while I was waiting in line for the food pictured above, I ran into some friends of ours...Dan and Lauren. Dan worked for/with Nate for awhile sometime back. So ironically Nate and I went to the party just the two of us, but ended up hanging out with Dan, Lauren, and some of Lauren's family for the evening. We had a blast!

Here are Dan and Lauren...


And us...


Nate tried to snap a photo of lots of girls dancing on stage, but not much can be deciphered here...


This was actually a lighted image that was shining on one of the walls, pretty cool...


Then things start to get a little weird. I take this normal picture of Nate...


And then this follows shortly after. Uhh, what is going on??


He then proceeds to take this picture of me....nice aim, eh? (and no, I am not drunk, thank you...in fact, I'll talk more about that in a minute)....


Finally, a self portrait at the end of the night....


So, as I mentioned, we had a really good time. My two beefs for the evening are as follows:

1. Drinks were not served fast enough. Since we had a reserved table, we actually were served drinks by a waitress the entire night. The problem is that by the time she took orders and got back to us, we had waited a long time. This isn't a bad thing when you're drinking straight vodka (Nate), however with gin & tonics (Kelley), this isn't ideal. Conclusion: I could have driven home at the end of the evening.

2. The taxi service on New Years Eve is riDICculous. Prescheduling a taxi to pick you up at the end of the night is not allowed. We proceeded to call for an hour prior to when we wanted to leave to several different taxi companies and all phones were either not picked up or busy. To call, one had to stand outside in the 20 degree WINDY weather and freeze. Brief periods of thawing happened when one would re-enter the bar and switch places with spouse. Then, we were all kicked out of the bar at 1:30 a.m. (Had been calling taxi's since 12:40 a.m.) So now we're both outside freezing to death, still trying to call a taxi, with no hope of warmth. Finally reach someone at about 1:50 a.m. Conclusion: I was FINE to drive. What the hell were we thinking??

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The Double Bind

I just finished a fantastic book, so I thought what better way to ring in the new year than to talk about it in a blog post! I have been quite absent lately, so I need to get things back in order in '09 with continuing our honeymoon narrative and keeping you posted on our everyday happenings. I did get an iPhone for Christmas which I'm loving, so now that I have the Internet at my fingertips 24/7, maybe I'll get better at posting. We'll see.

The book I just finished was called The Double Bind, by Chris Bohjalian. Talk about a page turner! The story was about a young woman, Laurel, who is attacked while riding her bicycle through Vermont's back roads. Formerly outgoing, Laurel withdraws into her photography, while spending all her free time at a homeless shelter as a social worker after graduating college. There she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs he won't let anybody see. When Bobbie dies, Laurel discovers a deeply hidden secret. In a tale that has a strong connection with The Great Gatsby, it definitely left me speechless with it's sudden surprise ending.

By reading up on some of his other books, the author seems to pick somewhat controversial or "deep" topics and delve into them in his writing. Compelling, addictive....highly recommend! And you'll be seeing some of his other books on my wish list this year!!

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Apples, Anaheim, and Celine

I went to visit my friend Lisa over Thanksgiving weekend. She and her husband Matt live in Anaheim Hills and recently had to evacuate due to the wildfires in CA. Luckily, their house is still in one piece and I still got to make the trip out!

Saturday morning we drove up to the Oak Glen Apple Orchard with some friends of Lisa & Matt's. We had a nice lunch while there (and yes, my salad had apples on it!) and we visited several little shops with food items and crafts.

Lisa and Kel

Matt, Lisa and Kel

Apple butter was definitely a popular purchase of the day. But none for me, as I didn't want to have to check my bag! Before we left, the guys insisted on buying these 5-pound apple pies. I mean, really...isn't this a little much?!


I have to say...I had a piece and there is definitely such a thing as too many apples. The apple-to-crust ratio was way out of whack, and I could have used a little more cinnamon and sugar and a little less apples. But, apples were their big thing, so I guess I understand. Mamaw, I'll take your apple pie any day!!

And then Saturday night, it was Celine. After waiting a full hour to go 0.5 tenths of a mile to get into the parking lot of the Honda Center, the Celine Dion concert was AMAZING. Lucky for us, she had an opening act, which we missed entirely, but we didn't care. The whole time we were creeping along in traffic we were really worried, as the ticket didn't state there would be an opening act...what it did say was the event started at 8:00....we parked at 8:20 and got to our seats inside at 8:30. However, she didn't come on stage until 8:50. Whew! And, we were so lucky she was even singing at all, as she had canceled approximately 12 shows before the Anaheim show due to illness...in fact, the Anaheim show was her first show back! Since all the stars had aligned for us, we were counting our blessings and were very excited for the show. I have to say, she is the best voice I have ever heard. You know how sometimes you go to a concert and are disappointed in the singing performance of the artist? Many times I have thought, "Wow, they sound so much better on their CD." Well, none of those thoughts even crossed my mind. She is absolutely phenomenal in person...even better than the CD version.

She went through seven outfit changes and definitely tried to pull off a more contemporary show with some creative dancers. But she seems to truly enjoy her job. She was very emotional and nervous, as it was her first show back... and she seems like a genuinely nice person. The only thing I found a bit cheesy were her fist pumps and her attempt to mug it up for the camera at points. However, she sang "The Prayer", which truly made my night, as it was one of the special songs I chose to be sung at our wedding. Her vocal range is just incredible and I am so glad I am able to say I've seen her sing in person. Definitely a one-of-a-kind experience and I would do it again...and again.

[Kelly Swift, OC Register]

[Kelly Swift, OC Register]

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The Terminal

Our trip to the Tahiti airport took about 10 minutes. When we got there, we were amazed at the small size of the terminal. It was basically a counter to check-in, a bar, and a few benches.

I was a little concerned as they stated that luggage could not exceed 44 pounds and I knew mine, in fact, did. But, I quickly learned that they didn't really care much. Their method of weighing luggage was putting every piece of luggage they had on a scale at once.

While we waited, since we got there really early, we had a drink at the bar. We spoke to a nice guy from New York while at the bar, who was trying to figure out what converter he needed so he and his wife could charge their camera. He was a marine and he was a little frightened about riding in the small prop plane we were taking to Moorea. Maybe that in turn should concern us? Nah.

Once we were allowed to board, we took our pick of the 8, yes 8 , seats available on the plane. We had to duck to get in and there was definitely no room for any extra bags...or our legs for that matter!

Six of the eight seats were facing forward and the other two were facing backward. The pilots were completely visible to us, which was a different experience than we're used to.

The marine kindly snapped a picture of us during our adventure.

As we were flying along feeling every bit of turbulence and all the bumps, Nate took some aerial pictures.

Moorea is surrounded by a reef, which is evident from these pictures. So the waves crash way out at the reef, away from land. Nate thought it was super cool that we could see the pilots and the runway as we were landing. I think I like traveling on the big Boeing planes much better.

We ultimately landed and arrived safely. Quite the experience.

The most entertaining part was when we went to find our transportation to the resort. Our reservations were written down in the book below...a bit different from how we operate back home!

Next up, our gorgeous bungalow in Moorea...

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