Banananananananana Bread

Three weeks ago it was 30 degrees Celsius (84 Fahrenheit?) in the UK. In October. That's like saying there were herds of wildebeest running through the Yorkshire Dales, it just doesn't happen.

Fast forward to today and its 6 degrees (42 Fahrenheit I think), which is much more normal but also a shock, coming so soon after nice weather. So now it's time to cook roasts and bake cakes and anything else that gives me an excuse to stand next to a hot oven :D

A few weeks ago I discovered that one of the local corner shops discounts their bananas to 10p on a monday morning to get rid of them before the new stock arrives. Logically - cheap brown bananas = tasty banana bread time. In a lovely bit of coincidence my friend KKHymn had the same idea on the other side of the planet, check out her post here.

Since I also suffer from a chronic illness I have to pick simple recipes too. For me the American 'cup' measurement system is a huge amount of faff compared to just using scales, plus I don't eat nuts so I chose a different recipe - Shelley's Banana Banana Bread from AllRecipes.com. I find it very difficult to clean blenders and such so I just mashed the banana into chunks with a fork. I think that helped keep the bread nice and moist without the addition of soured cream. I did throw in some vanilla extract though.

The real secret of fantastic banana bread? Smear a thick layer of nutella on it. That's true for most things though.

Suspicious Wordless Wednesday

It Isn't Easy Being Green

The Frustrations of Being a Short Arse

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I've been working on the whole "being tidy and organised" thing. So far it isn't going all that well. One of the reason is accessibility. I'm 5'3", I know it's not THAT short, but it's not tall either. I can shop in the kids clothes/shoes department, so long as I don't have to reach the top shelf. And around our home, the top shelf is a major issue. Or rather the top three shelves.

Our house used to be owned by a builder, a tall builder. This is not an advantage on a lot of levels. Given the choice I'd never buy a house that has been lived in by a builder ever again. It's like he spent all day building, so didn't want to spend lots of time on his own home, but also didn't want to pay anyone else to do the work. He boarded up the stop cock, because clearly no one needs to switch the water off at the mains. Instead of laying the kitchen floor, then installing the cupboards, he realised it'd take less tiles if he did it the other way around. Which means that the cabinets are concreted to the floor. He also managed to make the space for the washing machine 5mm too narrow for a standard machine, normally that'd mean pushing the cabinets 5mm apart, a job of 10 seconds. Instead we had to hack a whole section of tiles out of the floor. The boiler was 13 years old, but he put a 5 year old casing on it. You don't want to know what he did in the bathroom.

Anyway, he installed all the wall-mounted cabinets at a height appropriate to someone 6'6" tall. All the cabinets have three shelves and I can only see into the lowest of them if I stand on tip-toe. I can't see into the other shelves without a step ladder. I wouldn't be able to use any of our kitchen cabinets at all without one of these folding steps, but I still have to resort to the "fling stuff into the back of the space and hope you never need it again" storage method. This problem also means that we usually end up with multiples of things because I think we've run out because I simply cannot see them.

Since I' also have a wealth of mobility issues, that mean there are many days when I can't bend or kneel, I can't really use much of the space in the base units either. The market is full of products to help organise cupboards but most of them require that you be able to get into the cupboards to begin with. They're almost universally expensive too. Do I really want to spend £10 on a bit of plastic to make an extra shelf, when I could probably make the same thing with old cardboard boxes?

I dream of a kitchen with pull out larder style units, where everything is visible and easy to reach, preferably with some kind of fold out step system so I can get into the high spaces without constantly tripping over the steps. But for now I'm going to have to find a way to make do with what I have, hopefully before I break a rib trying to clean the cooker. Again.

Roaring Wordless Wednesday

The Chilli Experiment

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We're currently in the process of building a set of raised planters for next years growing season. Growing your own veg seems like a lot of effort (and sometimes it is) and sometimes it's not worth it (potatoes, take up too much space and not enough return) but there are situations when it's a good use of your time. Have you tried home grown courgette (zucchini for the Americans)? They actually have a flavour! I never knew that until the inlaws started growing them and we were inundated with them. A single courgette is about 60p from the supermarket. The seeds are 5p each and you get more than one fruit per plant. You can grow them in bags and courgette tastes just as good frozen. I punch those numbers into my calculator and it makes a happy face.

But you can't grown courgettes in September in England so more on that subject will have to wait til next year.

I was surprised to find that a pack of three large red chillies cost up to a £1 from the local big name supermarkets. That's 33p per chilli! And they're not even the fancy burn-your-face-off varieties, these are just generic medium hot chillies. We cook 90% of our meals with chilli in some form or another. Those numbers did not make a happy face. So I decided to grow my own.

You can do this, even in England in September, provided you have a nice sunny windowsill. Our kitchen window gets full sun from 1pm til sunset every day so it's perfect. If you live in a very cold climate I'd move the plant into your warmest room over winter, but we've previously grown chilli plants successfully during winter in a single glazed house without any heating, so you'll probably be fine.

Here's what you'll need-

• 1 shop bought chilli (choose the variety you use most)


• all purpose compost


• 3 pots per plant - small, medium, large (yogurt pots and plastic coffee jars work fine, you don't need to buy any!)


• cling film / saran wrap


• water


• crop safe plant food (optional)