Lemonade, Banana Bread with Chocolate, Cinnamon, & Sugar, and Salad

One of my favorite activities in NYC is wandering around Green Market tasting the fresh fruit and when finally hot enough buying an ice cold peppermint tea, apple cider, or today raspberry apple cider to enjoy with a sun-warmed piece of bread. It feels so luxurious.

Today I felt inspired and actually bought fresh veggies while sauntering. Orange, purple, and yellow carrots, which surprisingly all taste the same. Red romaine lettuce. Fresh beets. Apricots. Zucchini and summer squash. I couldn't wait to come home and eat.

I even had a new peeler, purchased from the infamous carrot man, to peel the vegetables. Unfortunately, I peeled my finger a little bit too, but that will heal with time. It did a great job and my salad, as you can see, was the prettiest salad I have ever made. I even made the dressing myself using the proportions described here. Not bad.

I also made homemade lemonade with a mint-lemon simple syrup. The lemonade was more labor intensive than I expected. I probably won't make it again, unless I am having a few people over and it can be served all at once. That said I think the syrup will be divine in a glass of tea, so I plan to try that sometime this week while scrambling to consume it before its untimely demise.

My other treat was making banana bread! The grocery store across the street always has the overripe bananas on sale for a $1.00 for 8 or something, so I walked over the buy a bundle. I came home to discover that I purchased plantains. I'm not sure what I am going to do with those...

Luckily, I had frozen a previous batch and was still able to move forward. I find it interesting that this recipe doesn't call for any liquid, really, butter, or oil. As you would expect, this bread isn't the sticky sweet, moist version of banana bread. It is much lighter, but still completely addictive. I can't wait to try it frozen as described in the blog entry. I also think it would be an excellent gift, if I bought cute little loaf pans to bake it in.

How is it that the result of every baking and other adventure results in my wanting to purchase something new that I don't have space to store in my apartment! Damn consumer culture!

P.S. The bread is amazing frozen! We'll see if I can make it last for a week.