Month: February 2012

Island Time and Giveaway

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Well we meant to get this post up earlier in the week, but let’s face it, we’re living on island time right now.

So while we enjoy our last few days in the sun, we thought we’d have a little fun (giveaway is coming…read on). Last month we celebrated our one-year milestone for Eat, Play, Love, and in these past few weeks we’ve had a lot of fun planning this post and looking back over our year of blogging. When we first started this little adventure we had two goals in mind. First and foremost, we wanted to open the kids up to the world’s many cultures. We want them to have open minds, hearts and an understanding that there’s a big world outside of our little suburb – which brings us to the food.  Continue reading →

Last But Not Least – Quest for the Best Banana Bread

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This is it! Our very last banana bread recipe for our quest, and it’s a special one. There were two things that prompted our search for the best banana bread, which started in early 2011. The first was our friend Doree’s recipe. We knew it was amazing and were quite sure it was the best ever, so we wanted to put it to the test. The second was today’s recipe – Big Bird’s Banana Bread – which I used to make with my dad when I was a little one.

And so while the kids are still adjusting to the time change here in Hawaii (we’ve been up since 3:45 a.m. this morning), here’s a recipe that’s close to my heart. Big Bird’s Banana Bread is a recipe from The Sesame Street Library books that came out in 1977. These books were a favorite of mine as a child, but were ruined in a flood many years ago. Fortunately, when Mr. N was born I was able to find the complete set on eBay. Since then, I’ve been waiting for the day my kids would be old enough to make their very own Big Bird Banana Bread.  Continue reading →

A Cowboy State of Mind

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Hopefully by the time you read this we’ll be well on our way to sunny skies and warm sandy beaches. So if you don’t see my comments around for a while, you’ll know why. I’ll be back and caught up on things after our return – hopefully nice and refreshed and with a bit more color in my face. Until then, we thought we’d share a recipe from our most recent state night dinner. As you may remember, we’ve been trying to keep things a bit on the lighter side. That’s why when we started looking for recipes from Wyoming, the Cowboy State, we wanted a nice warming soup.

We came across a recipe for Butternut Squash and Jalapeño Soup in Pamela Sinclair’s A Taste of Wyoming, which just sounded fabulous. The only problem with the soup – the original recipe called for two cups of cream. Now I’ve used cream in soups before, but never two cups of cream. Even my terribly sinful tomato cream vodka sauce doesn’t use that much cream. Then just for kicks I looked at the nutrition panel on the cream and calculated the calories and fat for two cups – ACK! I mean I knew cream wasn’t the healthiest of things on the planet, but wowzers! So here’s our adapted version of this Cowboy State delicacy, Butternut Squash and Jalapeño Soup. Continue reading →