Ladle-ful of love

I may or may not have teared up during this video.





Alright. Definitely may. Especially Elder Scott's story. I love that story. It's so easy to get caught up in the everyday monotony of life. I've been realizing that a lot lately. My days are all pretty much the same, and that makes it easy to take a lot of it for granted, but I am so fortunate to have Chad and Emmett, and the gospel. Friends, that's what life is all about. Let's not take that for granted. 

The banana bread to kick the butt of the world's best banana bread

So we've been all about this banana bread lately. It's so good. One of our favorite wedding gifts has definitely been The New Best Recipe. We've gotten some amazing recipes from this book, and it's fun to read about how the cooks ended up with the ones they chose. They tell you about their experiments and stuff. Pretty cool.

Anyway, this is the banana bread recipe that we've been making lately. I use Oikos fat free plain yogurt, and it makes the bread a little denser and moister and wonderful. We also haven't used nuts because 1) they're expensive and 2) Chad doesn't like them anyway. So it's a win-win. But I'm sure it would be fantastic.

Ingredients:
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the pan
1 1/4 cups walnuts, chopped coarse
10 tablespoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 very ripe, sot, darkly speckled large bananas, mashed well (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs, beaten lightly
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Heaping 1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chips (plus a little more if you're like us)

Instructions:
1. Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 350. Grease the bottom and sides of a 9 by 5-inch loaf pan; dust  with flour, tapping out the excess.

2. Spread the walnuts on a baking sheet and toast until fragrant, 5 to 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

3. Whisk the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, walnuts, and chocolate together in a large bowl; set aside.

4. Mix the mashed bananas, yogurt, eggs, butter, and vanilla with a wooden spoon in a medium bowl. Lightly fol the banana mixture into the dry ingredients with a rubber spatula until just combined and the batter looks thick and chunky. Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan.

5. Bake until the loaf is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 55 minutes. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. Serve warm or a room temperature. (The bread can be wrapped with plastic wrap and stored at room temperature for up to 3 days.)

Some variations we've done:
We use a smaller pan (4.5 x 8.5" because it's what we have), and we leave the oven rack in the middle spot. In our oven at least, that keeps the crust from getting too crunchy, but it also means that we have to cook the bread for another ten minutes before it's done. And melt the butter before you do anything else. I always forget and then I've got to wait around for it to cool.

And speaking of measuring spoons, are these not adorable? And I'll take these too.

Anyway, enjoy!

Lately and some pictures

Hey guys. Sorry I haven't been on here in a while... I don't always feel like we've done anything worth blogging about. Chad works, and Emmett and I are either here, at the library, at Smith's, or (very seldom) on  campus. Exciting right?

Stuff recently:

Emmett finally had his 9 month appointment on Wednesday, even though he'll be 10 months old in about thirteen days. He's finally allowed to have peanut butter! And he has eczema, poor dear. So we bought him a big bottle of Cetaphil and he's already looking better. Now if I can just keep my dry, greedy hands out of it, it might last him a while.

The moms in our ward sometimes get together for "mother's week" where we all take our kids and gather at one of our houses so our kids can play together, moms can hang out, etc. Emmett and I went yesterday after our ward took a break from said groups because the organizing mom had moved. Anyway, Emmett had lots of fun. He loves other babies and kids, although they're not always terribly crazy about Emmett's style of showing it. He tends to climb up the kids who can already walk, or grab their face or leg or something. As soon as he learns how to be the right kind of friendly, he'll be set :)

Random sidenote: there's this guy who lives on our street and he looks like he might be part Australian Aborigine or something cool like that. Anyway, he's older, and he's got this sweet long, white beard. The other day, I saw him going down the street on his Moped and his beard was flying behind him over either shoulder. Kind of made my day :D

Emmett's been doing more and more of this lately:

(Standing, not chewing on stuff. He's always done lots of that.)

And now for my customary Emmett picture overload!

These were last night:

He's a bit of a wreck right now; all the standing alone has made him braver, which means that he falls down more, which means he's got scabs on his nose and a big welt under his eye. 

These start from about a month ago and move up til now:

One of his new tricks nowadays is pushing the stroller around the front room. I'll put up a little video of that as soon as I get it on youtube.

More new tricks: he can give fives and high-fives! He loves that. And just now, he even clapped for the first time! But then I got excited and clapped for him, and he stopped and won't do it again :) Ah well. And he loves books. He's even getting better at not automatically tearing them to shreds. He definitely still does it, mind you, but not automatically.

Have a great day everyone! 

A random list of updates

Hey folks. Sorry I've been neglecting this thing lately, but we're moved! Done and done. Everything's moved and the old place is clean clean clean, and we love the new place. It's basically the same, but the ceiling is about a foot higher and we get TONS more light up here. That's been so nice. Chad's new favorite thing about living here is that he can open the blinds in the morning and fill the apartment with fresh morning light. Not so with the old place. You just got a nice view of the asphalt. We've been trying to walk softly so as not to disturb the neighbors under us, but the building is way old and not all creakage is avoidable. But we try.

Emmett is 9 months old! But I don't have any stats for you yet. I forgot to make his 9 month appointment, so we're having that on the 7th. Whoops.

Chad's getting better and better at his job, and he meets some interesting people. I love it when he comes home with stories. He came home with a bull catalog the other day after doing an install at an artificial insemination salesman's house. That was kinda cool :) Sounded like a nice guy too. It's amazing the range of places he goes. He'll do installs on super crummy trailers and three-story mansions alike.

Wanna see pictures of my little brother whipping? Of course you do. See, look:

I dunno much about it, but being skilled with a whip is a big part of traditional Hungarian culture. Alex's is a Hungarian bullwhip (I think... maybe?). Anyway, I know he mentions that they go whipping sometimes :) Basically I have the coolest little brother in the world. And he can speak this language. Told you. Cool. (That links to a kind of goofy news report, but you get a good sense of the language anyway. Just make it illegal to jump from the stupid bridge and save yourselves a lot of time and money! Sheesh!). Anyway :)

Well, E-dog is waking up so I've gotta run. Have a fantastic day, and I'll be back soon with new pictures.