My Story – Page 7 – mythankfultable.com

Birthday Blessings and Banana Cake with Browned Butter Frosting

August 28, 2017 by chrissy@mythankfultable.com

So today, I bumped up to the older age group box on surveys. I’m not so troubled by the actual number. There are certainly things I notice on the day-to-day, like the fact that I am certainly wearing more sunscreen and investing in a new skin regimen for reversing aging. Hey, a gal can hope. I’m also making healthy choices, tracking what I eat and exercising more, because I need to be living in this body for a lot longer.

One year ago, I made a goal to find a gift in every day. Whether it was the joy of my first cup of coffee, the way my daughter comes out of her bedroom all sleepy and beautiful, or the way my son will randomly give me an unsolicited hug. It could be the things I grow in my garden, the sound of my mother’s laughter, the way my puppy snuggles on my significant other. Every day, I anticipated and acknowledged the daily gifts I was surrounded by. I made it a personal challenge to, as my mother says, “Find the Good.”

Even though I didn’t journal about these gifts, If I could, it became a photograph, and I even used #everydayagift on my Instagram posts. So for me, I was able to document my gratitude journal in visual format.

Did it change me?

Absolutely.

Being aware of the gifts around me on a daily basis made for a more positive, thankful heart. It steeped me in gratitude. I stopped comparing myself to other people. I started to look for ways to bless others.

I can’t say I never had hard or blue days, or didn’t have situations where one of my children asked me why my face was angry, I am human. I can say I handled some pretty interesting stuff with grace that I might not have had, and it is something I will definitely continue to do moving forward. I’m a better person when I am a grateful person.

So, this morning, when I woke up, the few things I wanted to do on my birthday:

Surround myself with family, go to church so I could go forward for the birthday prayer (I was raised Episcopalian and it was one of my favorite things as a child), Field Hockey scrimmage all afternoon to cheer on my kid, and baking this banana cake. I can’t believe it, but I wanted this cake over everything else. It’s that good.

This recipe actually comes from the www.tastesbetterfromscratch.com website. The original recipe is Banana Bread Bars, I was just going to follow the recipe as it was, and then I made minor changes, the flour mix, more banana, and in the glaze, I used more vanilla and heavy cream instead of milk. It is so simple and easy to create.

Now, in my house there are always bananas, and I am not a banana snob. I will eat a banana with bruises. But even I have my limit; and end up peeling, plastic bagging, and freezing those babies. So, that is how I ended up with five bananas instead of the original 3-4. Thaw, mush up, add to the batter.

Browned Butter for Glaze

As for the glaze. Dear sweet goodness in a frosting. I know, browned butter sounds scary. It isn’t. You take the butter in a pan, turn on the heat, let it cook. Watch that it doesn’t burn and keep the heat low. When it is ready, add your glaze ingredients (I threw mine into the mixer) and combine until smooth. If you spread it on the still warm cake, it smooths out to this creamy layer of sweet, without being confectioner’s sugar sweet. It’s more like a penuche fudge flavor. If you are from New England, penuche shows up at fairs and festivals, it’s a burned sugar fudge that is insanely good.

Now, you can wait to cut this beautiful cake until it is cool, but on this quiet birthday morning, I just wanted a small square still warm without a plate, looking out at my flowers.

When did I decide every day was a gift? When my children

were little and I realized they would be big before I knew it. When my father was diagnosed with cancer and we had less than a year before he lost his brave battle.

When every school year goes by faster and faster.

When I am going to more funerals, volunteering to make meals more, and praying for more friends and families who are struggling. Realizing how really blessed I am.

Every day. Is a gift.

Leave it to my mother to find a place in my flowers to bring my Dad into this day. Cardinals are supposed to be our loved

Banana Cake with Browned Butter Frosting

ones passed on, coming to visit. So he was here with us.

Today, I felt loved, which is all any of us want, right? To be truly loved? To be surrounded by the people who want to be with us and show up in our lives?

And here is this new blog thing, this beautiful new creative corner for me to do what I absolutely love. The things that bring me joy. I am learning and hopefully getting better every day.

So on this day, this perfect end of summer day, I choose to celebrate with this square of deliciousness. The rest will be boxed up and brought to school to make the first few days of school sweeter! I can’t have this around or I will eat the whole cake. No joke. And that does nothing for my eating healthy exercising more resolutions.

I hope you enjoy this recipe, and as always, thank you for coming to the table!

Chrissy

Birthday Banana Cake with Browned Butter Frosting

Print Recipe

Delicious Banana Cake with Browned Butter Frosting. Based on the Banana Bread Bars recipe from Tastes Better from Scratch website.

Author: chrissy@mythankfultable.com

Ingredients

Scale

Banana Cake:

1/2 C Butter
1 1/2 C Sugar
5 ripe Bananas (If frozen, thaw and mash)
1 C Plain Greek-Style Yogurt
2 Large Eggs
3 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
1 tsp Baking Soda
3/4 tsp Salt
1 C AP Flour
1 C Cake Flour

Browned Butter Frosting:

6 TBSP Unsalted Butter
3 Cups Confectioner’s Sugar
2 TBSP Pure Vanilla Extract
3–4 TBSP Heavy Cream

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350*
Prepare a 9×13″ pan
Cream together butter and sugar until smooth
Add Greek-Style Yogurt, eggs, mashed bananas, and vanilla
Add dry ingredients and mix until combined
Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 25-35 minutes, until tester in center comes out clean.
In a pan, (I use a larger wok style fry pan) melt butter and simmer until it turns a light brown in color.
Remove butter from heat, add confectioner’s sugar, vanilla, and heavy cream until the glaze is smooth and to the desired thickness.
Spread frosting over the cake while it is still warm.

Naughty or Nice Fresh Summer Corn Chowder

August 20, 2017 by chrissy@mythankfultable.com

Fresh Summer Corn Chowder

Corn Chowder is on the regular rotation during the cooler months, when the world is dark and cold and gray.

In New England, once it turns cold…it stays cold for a long time. So a warm sunny yellow bowl of chowder is a welcome friend (you can be friends with your food, right)? It wasn’t until this summer when local corn is everywhere and on sale that my daughter said, “you haven’t made corn chowder in a long time.” Well yeah, because its something I make in the winter to bring back fond memories of summer.

Of course, traditionally I make it with frozen corn and in the crock pot. So, I got to thinking, could I make this recipe using fresh corn instead? Wouldn’t the best time to make corn chowder be when you can buy the ears down the road at the farm? The result? Best Corn Chowder I have ever made.

I’m not going to lie, in the realm of recipes this is a moderate level. It requires chopping and sauté-ing, and a run in with a blender. But, I have faith in you. You can do this. It’s not nearly as difficult as any of the other things you do in your day. I promise.

One dozen ear of corn, seven raw, five cooked. I cut the corn off of the uncooked cobs and set it aside. Cooked the remainder of the corn like you would for a barbecue, boiled it in water with salt and a little sugar. Set aside. When cool enough, slice the corn kernels off of the cooked cobs and keep them separate.

This soup has potential to be very healthy, vegetarian, and nutritious (the nice version). By NOT using the bacon (naughty edition) and sautéing the vegetables in olive oil, you will get a tender, flavorful base for this recipe. Use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock, and to thicken, take 1 and 1/2 C of the cooked kernels and pulse in a blender with milk or almond milk. Add this to the soup and you are done. It is delicious.

However, in my house, chowder means a certain creamy expectation. With most likely some shredded cheese, and a dash of hot sauce, and then there is the bacon. SO naughty. So so good.

I started with thick sliced bacon, cut into 1/2 inch dice, and browned it until cooked but not crispy. Add the onion, diced red pepper, carrots, and celery. When the vegetables are tender, toss in the uncooked corn and move those babies around in the pan until they are a bright yellow. Place all of the vegetables into a stock pot. Add 64 oz of chicken broth, and most of the cooked corn from the cobs that were boiled.

Would you need to do two types of cooking of the corn for this? I don’t know. I liked the ideas of layering the flavor. When you slice fresh corn off of the cob verses cooked corn, there is a definite difference. The two types also gave different corn consistencies, if there is such a thing. Have ever had a child with braces or who didn’t like to hold the ear of corn? You know exactly what I am talking about, those little slabs of cooked corn that come off in chunks add something to the finished product (note this doesn’t have any potatoes in it at all – so we need to have variety in flavor and color). Anyway, if you wanted to skip this step, it’s your chowder.

I saved 1 1/2 cups of cooked corn kernels and blended them with skim milk in an attempt to thicken the chowder without adding heavy cream or cheese. I then added this mixture to the chowder and gave it a good stir.

When my daughter tried it she said, “Are you adding cream? This needs something.”

It didn’t need anything. It was delicious. As will yours be.

I was once voted class angel in my high school senior year. I think I even had the nickname Sister Christine for a while. Truth be told, I’m always going to be that girl.

BUT NOT WHEN IT COMES TO CHOWDER!

I added heavy cream, shredded sharp Vermont cheddar, hot sauce, and boom. Naughty edition was served.

I’d like to tell you my tasters thought, “Meh, the first one was better.” They didn’t. Naughty edition won out.

Life lesson learned, Corn Chowder is not only for the winter. In fact, summer Corn Chowder, be it naughty or nice, is lovely indeed.

I hope you enjoy this recipe, and as always, thank you for coming to the table!

Chrissy

Printable Recipe

Nice or Naughty Summer Corn Chowder

Nice or Naughty Fresh Summer Corn Chowder

chrissy@mythankfultable.com

Ingredients:

3 slices thick sliced bacon

½ Celery stalk

12 fresh ears of corn

5 Cooked – sliced from the cob

7 Raw – and sliced from the cob (reserve 1 ½ C

Corn for food processor/blender)

¾ C Milk

64 ounces (2 containers approx.) chicken or vegetable broth

1 Red Pepper diced

¾ C Carrot diced

½ Yellow Onion, Diced

1 C Cream

1 C Shredded Sharp Cheddar

1-2 dashes of hot sauce

Instructions:

Dice thick sliced bacon into ½ inch slices, place in pan over medium heat and cook. Add diced onion and red pepper and carrots to pan, saute until vegetables are soft and onions are translucent. Add raw corn kernels to hot pan and stir until bright yellow.

Move all vegetables and bacon to stock pot and add stock over medium heat. Add cooked corn, reserving 1 and ½ C. Place reserved corn into blender with milk, and puree. Add puree to soup to thicken.

Allow soup to warm through, Add cream, cheese, and hot sauce. Stir and continue to heat until cheese is melted through.

Serve and enjoy!

Coconut Chocolate Chunk Zucchini Bread

August 9, 2017 by chrissy@mythankfultable.com

Coconut Chocolate Chunk Zucchini Bread

Have you ever had one of those recipes you can locate at anytime within a matter of seconds? You know, the tried and true and you almost don’t need the recipe but you keep an extra copy of it at arms reach just as a reference? For me, this is that recipe.

This started with an abundance of zuchinni more than a decade ago. We had a fantastic garden in Pennsylvania, as well as access to an amazing farmer’s market. While up to this point I was a zucchini evader (bring on the yellow squash all day…) I found myself growing and then harvesting, especially around this time of summer, an abundance of this green squash.

I am a veggie lover. I prefer “zoodles” to pasta at this point. We had created all sorts of healthy casseroles and zucchini lasagna, and yet…even after donating them to any who would take them, we still had more.

Here is where my life as a zucchini fan changed forever. A family recipe surfaced that included INSTANT PISTACHIO PUDDING, wait, and SHREDDED COCONUT? Squash drop. Sign me up.

Of course I added chocolate chunks. Because, hello? Chocolate chunks and steamy, beautiful bread work. If you are not a fan of coconut, I have to add that you really don’t notice it. I add coconut extract because I love coconut, but you can substitute it for vanilla extract as well. It doesn’t come across as one of those coconut cakes you see around Easter (which, I love, by the way). There is so much texture to the bread already, so I say, just try it. Worst case, you can give it away, and people WILL ask you for the recipe. Because, its that good.

This is a simple one bowl recipe the mixes quickly and easily. However, I must advise if for any reason you are a pre-measurer and want to get stuff done ahead, leave the pudding mix out until you are ready to go. Once upon a time I made zucchini bread with alien green chunks (apparently instant pudding will become pudding if say, there is any moisture at all present). It was good, but not as good.

The pistachio pudding makes the bread a little greener, but it also adds moisture and a nice flavor. I don’t always add additional walnuts to my bread, so the pistachio pudding gives it that nutty kick as well. You can substitute this flavor for vanilla or even chocolate if you feel festive. The bread mixture is versatile.

As for the zucchini, here’s where I do my thing. I like to use a fine grater for this. You can have your big chunkies of squash if you like it, but for me, a fine grate, and squeeze the moisture out. It just makes for me a more aesthetically pleasing bread.

Coconut Chocolate Chunk Zucchini Bread Mixture

You can make this recipe into two loaf pans, or as I do, in many smaller pans (then you have more to share). Either way, the recipe does take almost a full hour to bake, and trust me, you will want to slice into it as soon as it comes out of the oven. And hey, we need to taste the product before we give it away, am I right?

This bread freezes beautifully, so you can make a bunch of these breads and enjoy them later on, when the zucchinis in the super market are skinny and sad, and look road-travel weary. Some vegetables just taste better in the summer when they are fresh and local. Take advantage.

I hope you enjoy this recipe, and as always, thank you for coming to the table!

Chrissy

Coconut Chocolate Chunk Zuchinni Bread Finished Product

Coconut Chocolate Chunk Zucchini Bread

Print Recipe

Deliciously moist zucchini bread with coconut and chocolate chunks! So fantastically

Author: chrissy@mythankfultable.com
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 50-60 minutes
Total Time: 38 minute
Yield: 2 loaves 1x
Category: Bread
Method: Baking

Ingredients

Scale

3 Eggs
1 C Oil
2 C Sugar

Add:

2 C Finely Grated Zucchini
1 Tbsp Coconut Extract
1 tsp Baking Soda
¼ tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Salt
3 C Flour
1 Box instant Pistachio Pudding
½ C Shredded Coconut
½ C Chopped Walnuts
½ – 1 C Chocolate Chunks

Instructions

Prepare two loaf pans, combine first three ingredients. Add remaining ingredients until combined. Pour batter into pans.

Bake at 350* for 50-60 minutes

I Messed With Betty’s Buckle

August 5, 2017 by chrissy@mythankfultable.com

It’s blueberry season in our area. Call me an old fashioned girl, but there is something special when my daughter and I head out to our local farm, buckets in hand, ready to pick. Yes, you can buy them in the grocery store or your local farm stand, but there is nothing like being a part of the process. If you are lucky, the season extends for several weeks.

Often, you hear the people talking in the next row, or young families taking their children on an adventure for the first time. That’s when I look at my now willowy fourteen year old and think, “didn’t we do this with the baby carrier yesterday?” Sigh.

There is a sense of community and accomplishment to berry picking that is really unique. For every person I share this with who thinks, “OH COOL!” there is another person who gives the blank glazed over stare. As in, “That sounds painful.” I get it, to each her own. For some reason, I think the berries I pick myself…always taste sweeter. I’m sticking to it.

Blueberry picking is something we have done for years. I am a huge fan of supporting local businesses, and especially the farms in our area. By doing this, hopefully one day (WAY) down the road I can bring my grandchildren for the same experience.

A Blueberry Buckle is essentially a really great blueberry coffee cake. So for my base I used a recipe a friend of mine makes and brings to school if we are lucky. Thanks Lisa for sharing Betty’s goodness. Of course, leave it to me to mess with a good thing…

The original recipe can be found here and it is amazing.

https://www.bettycrocker.com Blueberry Best Coffee Cake

So here is where I went off trail…

I switched out half of the flour with Cake Flour. Cake flour is silky and light, and I found it made the cake batter less dense.
I also make extra crumble topping because, well, crumble topping is a good thing. You really can’t have too much crumble topping.
The blueberries are almost doubled because I like a little cake with my blueberries. There is nothing like cutting a slice and seeing the abundant bright violet blue of steamy blueberries (I’m sorry, did you think I waited to slice this up?).
I also switched out the extract to have either Almond or Vanilla because in our house…Almond Extract has a special place. Something about the smell, it’s a certain magic. (Yes, I swoon over extract). You can adjust the hot water to make the drizzle either thicker or looser depending on your taste.

This Blueberry Buckle is basically made in three bowls. The topping bowl, the cake batter bowl, and the drizzle bowl. It is made very quickly and is not stressful, I promise.

I used a smaller baking pan to make the serving size taller, and with the addition of the cake flour the overall result looked like one of those muffins you get at the good coffee shops…just bigger.

I tend to share everything I bake, so this got divided up and given away…which was a good thing, because it was really really good. It is quintessentially the perfect sidekick to my kick-off-the-day-large-cup of coffee.

Thank you for coming to the table!

Chrissy

I Messed With Betty’s Buckle

Print Recipe

This is based on Betty Crocker’s Original Blueberry Buckle recipe. SO good, with some changes in the flour, berries, and spices.

Author: chrissy@mythankfultable.com

Ingredients

Scale

Crumble Topping 1⁄2 C Sugar

2/3 C Flour
2 Tsp Cinnamon
1⁄4 C Softened butter

Cake:
1 C All-Purpose Flour
1 C Cake Flour
1⁄4 C Oil
3⁄4 C Milk
1 Egg

1 Cup Granulated Sugar

1 1/2- 2 Teaspoons Vanilla Extract

2 1⁄2 Tsp baking powder

3 -4 Cups Blueberries ( I used fresh- I believe frozen would work just as well)

Warm Vanilla Drizzle
1⁄2 C Powder Sugar
1⁄2 Tsp Vanilla or Almond Extract 1 Tsp Hot Water

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375. Prepare an 9 x 9 inch pan with cooking spray.
Prepare Crumble Topping. Mix dry ingredients and cut in butter until consistency is crumbly.
Mix Cake ingredients until combined well and stir in blueberries. I typically like my blueberries with a side of cake- so you can tailor the quantity to your liking. 3 cups will be ample, 4 cups will be just shy of overboard…but that’s how I like it.
Spread batter into pan,
Top with Crumble Topping
Bake for 40 -50 minutes.
Prepare Warm Vanilla Drizzle
When cake is slightly cooled – time to slowly drizzle the drizzle!

Welcome to My Thankful Table

July 21, 2017 by chrissy@mythankfultable.com

Welcome to My Thankful Table!

My name is Chrissy,

Food is my love language. I enjoy the whole process, from choosing ingredients, menu creating, meal prep, and serving family and friends.

It is a part of who I was growing up; big extended family suppers at Grandma’s on Sunday, and dinner around the table with my parents and my brother during the week. This is a tradition I keep with my own children, even though with school, work, and kids in sports means sometimes we navigate it creatively!

In my other life, I am a Language Arts Consultant, working full time in a primary school in Connecticut…so expect some book recommendations along the way, along with some New England goodness.

About a year ago, I began to intentionally start looking for the blessings in life, and tried to find a gift in each day. It could have been a flower growing on my back deck, a sunset, my children jamming on their ukeleles, my mother laughing…#everydayagift became my hashtag. So…when my sixteen year old suggested I needed to move forward with my love for cooking, photography, and writing in a new platform, I took it to heart. This is my first attempt at a website, and I am learning as I go – but isn’t that just like life?

Mythankfultable is an extension of our every day living. Imperfect, but grateful. Ever so grateful.

Thank you for joining us at the table!

Chrissy