ReUnited!

My husband is home!!! YAY! I'm so glad our first deployment was a short deployment. I cannot express how glad I am that Luke is finally back here with me. It's kind of weird to not have Luke here to talk to about everything at the end of the day. The car ride home from the airport was pretty awkward but, as soon as we got home, things felt right again. I think the car ride was only awkward because my driving the car was very out of the ordinary for us. Luke hates sitting passenger. Anyway, he's home and I'm happy. It's been wonderful to have someone here to eat my cooking. I'm not sure what he was fed over there but it couldn't have been good. I say that mostly because he tells me it wasn't good but also because I've never seen the boy inhale so much in one sitting than he has at each meal this week. He's actually been eating himself sick. I don't mind the compliment to my cooking.
I may or may not have said this in this blog before but I love baking. I bake anytime I feel any extreme emotion, whether it's happy, sad, frustrated, excited... You get the point. Of course, I wanted to bake something this week. THEN we went to Bath and Body Works and they were having a wallflower sale. I found this delicious smell, "Creamy Nutmeg." I'm a nutmeg fanatic. I put it in almost everything. It has such a universal scent and flavor, it can go in savory dishes or sweet. I had to plug it in as soon as we got home. My diningroom and kitchen are filled with the amazing aroma of baked-sweet-nutmeg which only added to my desire to bake. I caved last night and made vanilla cupcakes with a light lemon frosting. The cupcakes are vegan but you'd never know. They are HEAVENLY! I took the recipe out of a vegan cookbook I own and tweaked it after realizing I didn't have some ingredients (I know! ME out of baking ingredients?!?! What has the world come to?).

Vanilla Cupcakes (makes 6 cupcakes)
Recipe adapted from 1,000 Vegan Recipes by Robin Robertson

3/4 cup Very Vanilla Soy Milk

1 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 1/4 cups All Purpose flour
1 tsp Baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla
Preheat oven to 350 and prep a 6 cup muffin pan.
In a small bowl combine soy milk and apple cider vinegar. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large bowl, combine sugar, oil and vanilla. Mix in soy milk mixture. Mix in flour mixture (it will be thick). Bake until toothpick inserted into cupcake comes out clean (about 25 minutes). The end result is a moist and dense cupcake.

I also have a few bananas sitting on the counter, ripening for banana bread. I couldn't find my bread pans (it turned out they were sitting exactly where they should have been and where I'd searched 3 or 4 times) so I made muffins instead. I've never made banana bread before so I decided I should probably look up a recipe. I found a basic one and decided it was horrible but didn't want to keep looking so I decided to wing it and see if I could manage. Guess what? I DID! The banana muffins came out light and fluffy, perfect for a snack.

Banana Muffins (makes 12 muffins)

Recipe by Deborah Schiefer

4 bananas, mashed

1 egg, beaten

5 TBS unsalted butter, melted

1 tsp Vanilla extract

3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 1/2 cups All Purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray or line a 12-cup muffin pan.

Mix together the bananas, egg, butter, vanilla and sugar. In a separate bowl, mix all dry ingredients. Combine the banana mixture with the dry ingredients. Pour into muffin tins and bake for about 20 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Remove to wire rack to cool (or eat them warm with butter).

The last recipe I'm posting today is for Spicy Beef and Broccoli. Luke and I decided that we wanted to eat "take-out" tonight without having to order or go somewhere. Besides, restaurant Beef and Broccoli almost always has a sweet sauce and I'm not a huge fan. I also don't tend to like the texture of the low-quality beef and I've been really excited lately for making home-versions of restaurant meals so we started with this one. It came out SO well! The broccoli stayed crisp and the meat tasted (and felt) like beef. The sauce wasn't overly sticky (due, in large part, to the fact that it wasn't sugary) and I could control just how much sauce made it to the plate.

Spicy Beef and Broccoli (feeds 2-3)

Recipe by Deborah Schiefer

1 sirloin steak, thin sliced against the grain

4 cups heads of broccoli florets

1/2 red onion, thin sliced

Sauce:

1/4 cup rice wine vinegar

1/2 cup Low Sodium soy sauce

2-3 TBS Sriracha (you can omit this if you don't like spicy food)

5 garlic cloves, minced (you can also use less garlic for less spice)

1 cup water

Whisk all ingredients for sauce in a bowl. Pour just enough sauce into a frying pan or wok to coat the bottom of the pan. Brown the steak slices in the sauce. Drain sauce and replace pan. Add broccoli and onions to pan and pour in remaining sauce. Toss broccoli and beef to coat with sauce. Cover and let steam for 5-10 minutes, until broccoli has reached desired tenderness, stirring occasionally.

You may need to add water if the sauce steams out. Once the broccoli was cooked, I transferred the beef and broccoli to another plate using a slotted spatula so our dinner wouldn't be swimming in sauce.

Luke and I both decided we definitely prefer my version of beef and broccoli to anything we've eaten outside of the house. The best part was we knew exactly what went into our dinner (no MSG! Yay). Oh, and we still have leftovers. I made fried rice with it but I switched up my recipe and it didn't work so we'll save that for another day when I can post a pretty picture to go with my original recipe.

Stop reading and go make your dinner or cupcakes or banana muffins. Go! Now!