A little anecdote about living in a half packed up home...
With our couches sold and our table/chairs taken apart our apartment is not only looking kind of bare, it also greatly lacks "livable space". So for dinner last night Brett and I had no other option than to sit in camp chairs around a pile of boxes. As we talked about our seemingly endless to-do list, I remembered a item sitting in our freezer. We have been trying to use up all of the perishable food that can't make the trip to Houston with us. We did a good job of eating all the frozen meat and using up the random half bottles of sauces from the fridge. Although I'm still not sure how I made the mental error and bought a large bottle of Miracle Whip a few short weeks ago.... Anyway, last night I remember that we still had a number of overly-ripe frozen bananas just waiting to be made into Banana Bread. Brett and I agreed this would be a nice treat and Brett got VERY excited.
Later that evening Brett and I were in the kitchen getting ready to make our yummy treat. I reached for my binder of recipes only to remember that we had already packed up my cookbooks. Good thing we live in a day of information overload and so I sent Brett to search out a recipe online. He pulls up a recipe and starts reading off the ingredients to me so I can get them all out. Bananas- check. Sugar- check. Eggs- ....whoops! We thought we were being good by using a large number of eggs that morning for breakfast and even proud of ourselves for thinking ahead when saved two for dinner (one for some homemade bread and the other for the recipe). My first thought was to go ask our neighbors. Unfortunately they have already left to go home for Christmas break.
Not willing to give up all hope for banana bread I sent Brett back to google to search out a new recipe. This time for one that didn't need eggs. He was successful and so we started again. Bananas- still check. Flour- check. Butter- oh dear. I'm not sure how I didn't think of these things BEFORE deciding to make banana bread. I mean, I know that baking requires some basic ingredients, I'm just used to always having them on hand. Anyway, back to the butter. I checked the fridge and we had 3/4 of a stick of butter (the recipe called for a whole stick). Oh well, we decided we would just make do. I put the butter in the bowl and added some oil to compensate and called it good. I was hoping the recipe wouldn't be too dry since we skimped on butter and cut out the eggs.
With all the ingredients in the bowl we are ready to mix them up! I open the drawer to get my hand mixer out and can't help but laugh as I tell Brett that its not there. I must have already boxed it up. Truthfully, I don't actually remember boxing it up so I sure hope we find it when we unpack! Yes, I know that you don't need a hand mixer to bake but when you are dealing with frozen bananas the electricity power sure helps. I apologized as I gave Brett the metal whisk and handed him the bowl. He was a great sport and mixed everything up.
We finally got the goods mixed and poured into our bread pan and baking in the oven. Thankfully we didn't run into any more surprises. It actually turned out yummy and we enjoyed our treat last night as well as some for breakfast this morning.
We finished packing up our dishes/appliances/kitchen stuff this afternoon so hopefully I don't get the notion to do any more baking. In the meantime we just try to laugh as we continue to try and find things we've already packed. Today's list was the envelopes, ace bandage wrap, a christmas present for my brother and a pair of my shoes I wanted to wear. Unfortunately we are also finding things that should already be packed up like a stack of printer paper, a random school book, and a lonely kitchen fork.
I will be happy when we are all unpacked and settled in our new place! Although it might take a couple trips to the grocery store to replace all the little things and who knows how long to get all the boxes unpacked.
