Banana Cream Pie

This morning I was thinking about what we need, dessert-wise, this time of year. The holiday gorging is behind us (thankfully) but that doesn't mean we don't want a slice of comfort every now and then. Something cool and creamy that hits the spot but won't do too much damage would be perfect. This recipe is adapted from The Food Network's Ellie Krieger's highly-rated banana cream pie. Reviewers loved it but there were consistent suggestions for a few changes to make it spectacular, which I've incorporated here*. Ellie's recipes are always terrific and the bonus is that they are the result of a make-over. As a nutritionist who loves food, she has found a way to duplicate the taste and texture of our favorite recipes using less fat and sugar, and overall healthier ingredients. I'll be writing a lot about my favorite EK recipes which is a good thing as we try to incorporate healthier eating in 2010.

Banana Cream Pie

• Cooking spray
• 14 graham cracker squares (7 full sheets)*original recipe called for 6 full sheets
• 2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 1/2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin
• 3 tablespoons boiling water
• 1/2 cup, plus 1 tbsp. sugar *origindal recipe called for 1/3 cup sugarplus 1 tsp.
  
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 1/2 cups 1 percent lowfat milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract*original recipe called for 1 tsp. vanilla
  
• 2 cups sliced banana (3 medium bananas)
• 1/4 cup whipping cream *use more, according to reviewers, up to 3x more
  
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Spray a 9-inch pie plate with cooking spray. In a food processor, process graham crackers until finely ground. Add butter and 1 tablespoon of water, and process until the crumb clumps together. Press crumb mixture into bottom of pie plate and about 1/2-inch up the sides. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, then let cool.

In the meantime, make the filling. Put the gelatin in a small bowl; add 3 tablespoons of boiling water and stir until gelatin is dissolved. In a medium saucepan, whisk together 1/2 cup of sugar and the flour. In a medium bowl lightly beat the milk and eggs together. Add the egg and milk mixture to the saucepan and whisk so the flour and sugar dissolve. Cook over a medium heat, stirring constantly, for 10 minutes, until mixture comes to a boil and has thickened. Stir in the vanilla extract and gelatin. Set aside to cool slightly.

Arrange the sliced bananas on the graham cracker crust and pour the pudding on top. Place in the refrigerator until the pudding has set, about 3 hours.

Whip the cream with an electric beater. When it is about halfway done, add 1 tbsp. of sugar, then continue whipping until fully whipped. Put the whipped cream in a plastic bag, concentrating it in 1 corner of the bag. Snip that corner off the bag and squeeze the whipped cream out of the bag in a decorative pattern around the pie.

Photo credit: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/banana-cream-pie-recipe/index.html

Christmas is Over

It was a good weekend to stay inside, and that's what I did. Katie and Bill were working hard all weekend to put the finishing touches on their side of the house. Living in construction is never easy, and this project has been consuming all their weekends for well over a year. I'm fortunate that my apartment is finished and that it offers all of us a place of respite from all the work. It's good, too, that they do have their own space to get away from Grandma when they've had enough!

With all the time inside this weekend I put Christmas away. My Balsam Fir Christmas tree dropped about four dust pans worth of needles on its way out the window. Yes, window, not door. My son-in-law Bill seems to find particular enjoyment seeing Christmas trees exit out second-story windows! When I lived on Lake Avenue, I went down the stairs and outside to "spot" the tree and to make sure no pedestrians were nearby as he sent that Christmas tree flying out my apartment window. I located myself directly under the window and against the house, not prepared for the 300 or so pine needles I was showered with. I had pine needles in all of my clothes, between and under layers. I itch just thinking about it. It was not comfortable.

I guess there are practical reasons for Bill's propensity to toss evergreens from second stories: far fewer prickly needles get stuck in carpet this way, and it is quick. When this season's tree took its dive, I looked out the window as if to see a body in chalk lines laying on the pavement. Instead, I saw a still perfect looking tree, the snow-covered ground around it confettied with pine needles. It was all very peaceful and pretty, in a sad kind of way. It forced me to acknowledge that Christmas is indeed over, and all that makes this season so beautiful has been stripped from my abode. My apartment looks almost antiseptic now that the glitter of the season has been removed.

Nothing ever looks quite so plain as a room once the holiday decorations have been put away. How much winter is left? I'm thinking palm trees...

Photo credit: http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/images/130/Gymnosperms/Coniferophyta/Pinus_Images/Red_pine_bough_MC_.low.jpg

A New Saratoga - I Miss the Old Community Theater

Yesterday's post about the Scudders sandwich has me waxing nostaligic about other blasts from the past. It got me thinking about places we used to go to in Saratoga Springs before the arterial and exit 15 diverted locals to new shopping malls, when downtown was the place to buy whatever was needed.

During my adolescence, in the late sixties and early seventies, Saratoga Springs was a humbler place. Woolworth's and National Auto were the only retail chains on Broadway. Rather than shopping at Gap or Eddie Bauer, we went to Glickman's, Erlanger's, or Starbuck's (NOT the coffee family) for our clothing. Our specialty children's store was Covkin's. For stationary or a little gift, we'd stop at Patricia's. For coffee -- there were no coffee shops -- we'd stop at the diner now owned by Compton's - it's still exactly the same as in the old days. There were drug stores and soda fountains and movie theaters. There were grocery stores -- the Grand Union and the A&P. I miss Farmer's Hardware where you could buy anything AND the only place to pick up a telephone for your house! Oh, it was a wonderful downtown. Now it's pretty and polished and trendy, but it is lacking the authenticity of the downtown I remember.

The Community Theater on Broadway was the weekend place to be. I remember approaching the ticket window with a group of high school friends. It was one of those individual little spaces outside the theater with an attendant inside. Once you entered the building, the stairs were before you, velvet ropes guiding your way. The refreshment counter was to the left. You could go up the curving staircases to the balcony, or find your seat down below. It was a magical space. I saw my first movie ever there -- Sleeping Beauty. Later my siblings and I would go en masse(there were seven of us) to see all the hits. My brother Michael was a movie buff at a very early age, so we went often. My mother used to pack our snack bags with Dum Dum lollipops and we'd walk from MacArthur Drive to the theater, holding hands as we crossed intersections. I remember seeing Pinnochio, Godzilla, and other hits at the Community Theater. In high school, I saw Love Story, and remember thinking I wanted to be just like Ali McGraw. I even learned to crochet just to have a hat like hers!

When the theater closed, so many of us were really sad, and that feeling lingers. I've often said that if I ever won the lottery in a big way, I'd buy it back and restore it to its former presence. To this day, when I walk by the theater, I'm angry at what has become of it. It is now home to a real estate office and retail shops. I never go in. Probably never will. It may sound harsh, but to me, these businesses are poachers, occupying this historic space in a way never intended by those who built the theater. It was built with a purpose -- to provide entertainment and joy for people of the community. The Community Theater. I mourn its passing.

Photo credit: http://funsaratoga.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c666d53ef0120a5a3de8e970b-800wi

The Scudders Sandwich - A Walk Down Memory Lane

January brings memories of the winter of 1969, when my family first moved back to Saratoga Springs from Huntington, Long Island. I used to go ice skating at the East Side Rec in the evenings after dinner with my friends and eventually started skating exclusively with my then boyfriend (and future ex-husband) Gene. We'd skate under the lights to blaring music coming from overhead speakers, and I especially remember "Crystal Blue Persuasion" playing as we skated round and round the rink. I was a cautious, inexperienced skater and he was a champion speed skater. He'd rush up behind me and push me in to the snowbanks and then offer me his scaber as a tether to pull me up after showing off, skating figure eights while I couldn't even get back on my feet! Nice guy! We had a lot of fun, though, in those days before computers and the internet, when kids actually did things outside!

I have many happy memories of Saratoga Springs during that time, and one is of an exceptional sandwich we used to get on Beekman Street, the Scudders Sandwich from the Scuderi family deli. Marino's (of great pizza fame) eventually took over the business and continues to make the Scudders sandwich (you have to ask for it), though they've moved from the Beekman Street location to West Circular Street. Every once in a while, I just have to have that sandwich again. Nothing else quite matches it.

The Scudders sandwich was made on a split loaf of Italian bread. Half a sandwich was plenty for two people, though I knew some hearty souls that could eat the whole thing. That means they could eat a whole loaf of Italian bread plus all the meat, cheese, lettuce, and tomato within. Here is what I remember my Scudders sandwich was made of:

Italian Bread, split
mayo
shredded lettuce
paper-thin slices of tomato
very thin slices ham
balogna
cappicola (that delicious hot ham)
american cheese (the real stuff, not processed)

They'd slather both sides of the bread with a lot of mayo, layer the lettuce, tomato, meats and cheeses, and wrap the whole thing up. My mouth waters just thinking about it. It's not so figure friendly, but it just might be worth being the only thing you eat that day -- it's that good!

Photo credit: http://hostedmedia.reimanpub.com/TOH/Images/Photos/37/exps40066_TH1421350D17C.jpg

A Winter Birthday and Sweet-and-Sour Chicken

With my daughter Katie's birthday today, our season of winter celebration comes to a close. It's always a very busy December and January for my family. It starts, for us, with Meghan's birthday on December 20, followed by Christmas, then my son-in-law Bill's birthday on December 26. My oldest son Jeffrey's birthday is January 3, and Katie's birthday is today. In between all that are important days for extended family and friends--anniversaries and birthdays in these two months are abundant. Friends Tina and Kristin's birthdays were yesterday. My father's birthday was January 17, and my parents' anniversary was January 8. My grandmother's birthday was January 13. I have two nephews with end-of-January birthdays, and every year there are more names added to the calendar.

With all of this going on, it's important to make my kids' birthdays (though they are grown) special. For Jeffrey's birthday on Sunday, I made a very chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. It followed a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, italian bread, a salad of spring greens with walnuts, blue cheese, and craisins.

For Katie's birthday tonight, I'm making sweet and sour chicken with green peppers and pineapple, to be served with basmati rice and oriental vegetables. My ex-husband's wife is a vegetarian, so I'm making her sweet and sour tofu. It's a first attempt and I hope it comes out well. The salad will be romaine with mandarin oranges, crispy Chinese noodles, shredded carrots, and a ginger vinaigrette. I baked her cake last night and frosted it this morning before work. It's a lemon layer cake with cream cheese frosting. There are fortune cookies to finish everything off.

My recipe for sweet and sour chicken comes from my neice, Lousie Eddy, who used to make it as a kid and that's when I fell in love with it. She told me she got the recipe from an old Betty Crocker cookbook and made some adaptions. I make it from memory and it always comes out great.

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Ingredients:

4 chicken breast halves, pounded lightly

1 cup flour for dredging

1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil

1 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup vinegar (apple cider or white)

1/4 cup ketchup

1/4 cup orange juice

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 can pineapple chunks, drained

1 large green pepper, cut in chunks

Make sauce:
Combine sugar, vinegar, ketchup, juice, and soy sauce in medium sauce pan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for five minutes. Remove from heat.

Prepare chicken:
Place flour on plate. Wash and pat dry chicken. Pound it a bit in a large zip bag using a rolling pin or mallet, just enough to tenderize and to get it to uniform thickness. Cut each piece in half if you prefer smaller pieces. Dredge pounded chicken in flour, both sides. Place in hot oil in large skillet and brown lightly on both sides. Remove to plate while other pieces of chicken are browned. You don't need to cook it all the way through - that happens later in the oven.

Assemble:
Spray rectangular baking dish with oil spray. Place browned chicken pieces in pan. Arrange pineapple and green pepper chunks over and around chicken. Pour sweet and sour sauce over all. Bake at 375 degrees F for 40 minutes or until green pepper just starts to curl and brown around edges. Remove from oven and let sit for a few minutes. Serve with rice and vegetables. Make sure to spoon extra sauce over everything!

Photo credit: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.dreamstime.com/confetti-stars-new-year-s-eve-background-thumb3770911.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-confetti-stars-new-year-s-eve-background-image3770911&usg=__66vY5Gz7cy4lNypnnlRrg2NUj-Y=&h=300&w=300&sz=63&hl=en&start=6&tbnid=6RaQS6sfeHerNM:&tbnh=116&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dconfetti%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

Individual Chicken Pot Pies

There's nothing quite like a chicken pot pie when it comes to warm comfort on a cold night. This recipe from the Food Network and Ellie Krieger might just chase the January chill away. It's Ellie's "You and Me Chicken Pot Pies" and is much healthier (as are all of Ellie's recipes) than the standard version. This pot pie has many positive reviews though I've suggested some changes, prompted by FN readers: reduce the thyme by half and feel free to use onions rather than leeks if more convenient. Other reviewers suggested replacing the phyllo dough with pie crust. Some insist on fresh veggies, though frozen peas work well. The nice thing about a pot pie is its versatility. Use what you have.

The general premise is that a concoction of meat and vegetables cooked under a blanket of dough is good stuff. Go ahead and switch things up to suit yourself. Then dig in to a warm and bubbly pot of steamy goodness.

You and Me Chicken Pot Pies from Ellie Krieger (4 servings)

Ingredients

• Cooking spray


• 1 1/4 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2-inch chunks


• 1 teaspoon salt


• Freshly ground black pepper


• 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided


• 2 leeks, bottom 4 inches only, washed well and chopped (suggestion: or 1/2 cup chopped onion)


• 2 celery stalks, chopped


• 2 medium potatoes cut into 1/2-inch pieces


• 1/2 pound green beans, trimmed and chopped into 1/2-inch pieces


• 2 cloves garlic, minced


• 1 1/2 cups low-fat milk


• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour


• 2 cups low-sodium chicken broth


• 1 cup frozen peas


• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves


• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves (suggestion*use half tablespoon fresh, or half teaspoon dried)


• 3 sheets frozen phyllo dough, thawed


• 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray 4 individual-sized baking dishes with cooking spray.
Season the chicken with 1/4 teaspoon salt and a few turns of pepper. In a large nonstick skillet, heat 2 teaspoons of the oil over a medium-high heat. Add the chicken to the pan and cook for 5 minutes, turning once. Transfer the chicken to a plate.

Add 2 more teaspoons of the oil, the leeks, and the celery to the pan and cook until vegetables begin to soften, about 3 minutes. Add the potatoes, green beans, garlic, and remaining salt and pepper and cook for 2 more minutes.

Add the milk to the pan. Stir the flour into the chicken broth until dissolved and add to the pan. Cook, stirring, until the mixture comes to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Stir in the reserved chicken, peas, parsley, and thyme. Spoon the mixture into the prepared baking dishes.

Put the remaining 2 teaspoons olive oil into a small bowl. Unroll the phyllo dough and cut it into quarters. Place a quarter sheet on top of each baking dish and brush with olive oil. Repeat with remaining 3 baking dishes. Tuck the edges of the phyllo into the dish rim. Top each pie with Parmesan.

Place on a baking sheet and bake until the filling is bubbling, about 30 minutes.

Photo Credit: Food Network http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/cda/recipe_print/0,1946,FOOD_9936_35872_RECIPE-PRINT-FULL-PAGE-FORMATTER,00.html

Happy New Year!

I'm a little slow out of the starting gate wishing you all a Happy New Year! I've been deliberately away from blogging since December 23, though I have been very busy otherwise. With Christmas and everything that goes with it, Meghan moving to California, my nephew Adam's wedding on New Year's Eve, and spending time with family and friends, I chose to leave blogging to the New Year.

But I'm back!

Like many people, I've been bouncing around resolutions in my head -- the standards -- and I could benefit from taking a few seriously. I must say that I HATE being bombarded by diet commercials. There's nothing worse than sitting with my zero-percent-body-fat-boyfriend and a Victoria's Secret commercial comes on followed by Marie Osmond touting her Jenny Craig success. When YOU need to go on a diet, or start exercising to be healthier, no one needs to tell you. You know better than anyone that it's time to get those chubby ducks in a row before they sink to the bottom of the pond. It takes a perfect storm of awareness, discomfort, self-deprication, embarrassment, fed-up-ness and motivation, all converging in unison, to be ready. It doesn't just happen. Finally, I'm there. I woke up in the middle of the night last night wondering if any of the few channels on my digital TV might have a 6 a.m. exercise program I could start following. Then I went back to sleep until 8 a.m. I have to be at work at 8:30 and live 20 minutes away. (By the way, Marie Osmond should get rid of the extensions and cut her hair, don't you think?) Rather than succumbing to the advertisements and catapulting myself into an impossible regimen of restrictive dieting and overly ambitious exercise, I'm going to my favorite Food Network chef/nutritionist Ellie Krieger for sensible, steady guidance. I already love her cookbook and my friend Diane is following her on-line program. We're buddying up to provide each other support.

This morning on NPR I heard a discussion about happiness. It was basically about the power of positive thinking, something that's been reshaped and packaged in many forms over the years. The bottom line is, if you're unhappy, start incorportating more positive thinking and soon the unhappiness will give way to a less-burdened you. Of course, there are life situations that we wish could be overcome just by switching our thought patterns, and that's not always possible, say in the case of a severe illness or a natural disaster. But maybe we can adjust the way we process the difficult information and learn to go forward with better-case-scenarios in mind. As an eternal optimist, I used to be disappointed, alot, when the world didn't go my way. Now, at age 55 and 3/4, I've learned to envision a plan B, C, D and maybe all the way to Z in order to realize a good outcome.

All this musing about resolutions and better selves and coping with life seems timely - it's everywhere around us as a new year begins. As this new year grows older and resolutions inevitably fade, optimism wanes, and coping becomes challenging, I'll try to remember the purpose of such proclomations: to get more out of this one life we're given, to enjoy it more, to realize some abundance, to have better relationships. It's not just about losing weight and having more money. It's about the quality of our lives.

Here's hoping 2010 is a wonderful year for you, in every way.

Photo image: http://thejudopodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/new-year.jpg