Very Banana-y Banana Bread

This is the banana bread recipe I use, and it always gets rave reviews. I usually make it for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas brunch--I know, it's not very holidayish, but it's so good that no one complains. :-)

Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs, beaten
5 medium overripe bananas, mashed (about 2 1/3 cups)

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan.

2. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture; stir just to moisten. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan.

3. Bake in preheated oven for 60 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.

Makes 1 - 9x5 inch loaf

Bodega Bay Vacation

August 16-August 23, Matt, Jackson, and I rented a house in Bodega Bay (through Vacation Rentals USA) for a much needed vacation. The weather was scorching hot here in Davis, so we thoroughly enjoyed the fog, overcast days, and cool temperatures in Bodega Bay. We enjoyed having lots of friends and family come visit us there, and most stayed at least a night. We even had some deer visit the backyard one evening.

Jackson tried to climb into the hot tub whenever someone was using it (he LOVES water), so we cooled it down a couple of times so he could come in.

We all hit the beach several times. Jackson enjoyed playing in the sand with his cousins, and Owen Case.

 
He found the sand especially tasty, but also enjoyed chewing on driftwood, shells, and kelp. I thought it was totally cute how he left a trail behind him when he crawled on the sand, so I had to take a picture.

Matt and his family rented a house in Bodega Bay every year, when he was growing up, so we had a good time revisiting old familiar places and memories, and creating new ones.

I think we visited every town within a 40 minute drive of Bodega Bay. We liked Occidental, Jenner, and Bodega the most, even though they're so small they can hardly be called towns! We had dinner in Occidental at The Union Hotel. It was pretty good Italian, and a lot of it, with great service and ambience. The patio is so pretty that we HAD to eat out there, even though it had to be in the 50s. Occidental also has some nice shops to look in.

Guerneville and Sebastopol are a bit too hippy-dippy for our taste--you can only look at so many crystals, herbs, and stinky vintage clothes before they all start to look the same. The drive to Guerneville is gorgeous though! The road winds along the Russian River and through a redwood forest--it's so green and lush that it reminds me of Washington.

Monterey/Carmel Weekend

*sigh of contentment* It's Sunday evening, and we are 60 miles from home, on our way back from a fabulous and relaxing 3 day weekend in Monterey and Carmel. We decided on Thursday night that we needed to go somewhere for the weekend--partly because we REALLY needed a vacation and partly because the painters were going to be at our house all day Friday and Saturday. On Friday morning we decided we would go Monterey and Carmel, so we called up Matt's mom and invited her to come with us, and off we went.

We stayed at Hotel Pacific in Monterey, which was nice, but a bit overpriced. Our room was large and comfortable though, and it was walking distance to Fisherman's Wharf and Cannery Row.

On Friday we arrived and walked down to Fisherman's Wharf. We just wandered around a bit and had dinner.

On Saturday morning we had a great time at the Monterey Aquarium. Jackson enjoyed watching the fish and trying to catch them through the glass. He also enjoyed playing in the special area they have there for infants and toddlers, and touching the star fish and kelp in the touching area. We stayed at the aquarium for 2 hours, and Jackson was interested and focused the entire time. We were pretty amazed.

Saturday afternoon, Matt went golfing and Chris and I wandered around at Cannery Row, and then found a couple of thrift stores and a consignment shop, Plato's Closet, on Lighthouse Ave.

For dinner we went to the Mission Ranch Restaurant in Carmel, which was AMAZING.

Sunday morning we packed up, checked out of our hotel room, and spent the day in Carmel. We had a great breakfast at Katy's Place, window shopped, and found a great consignment store called Ritzy Ragz and Thingz.

Finally, with not an ounce of energy left, but with lots of good memories and a few nice new items of clothing, we drug ourselves back to our cars and started the 5 hour drive home (it would have been 3, but there was a lot of traffic).

Grandma Duvall's Monster Cookie Recipe

Grandma Duvall always had these cookies available when I was a kid. If the cookie jar was empty, there would be some in the freezer, probably right next to the ice cream. According to Grandma, children should only eat one (very large) monster cookie before "supper", and be sure to save room for ice cream after "supper".

Ingredients:

2 cubes margarine
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups granulated sugar
6 eggs
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
3 tsp. soda
9 cups oatmeal
1 12 oz. pkg. chocolate chips
1 cup flour
1/4 cup milk
3 M&Ms per cookie

1. Preheat oven to 325-350 degrees
2. In large dishpan, cream together margarine and sugars. Add eggs and cream again.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients, except M&Ms, and mix.
4. Use tablespoon to generously drop batter onto cookie sheet and slightly flatten. (Monster cookies are traditionally quite large, and who are we to break tradition?!)
5. Press 3 M&Ms onto each cookie before baking.
6. Bake 6 large cookies to a sheet 10-12 minutes, or bake 8-10 smaller cookies 8-10 minutes.
7. Remove from cookie sheet and cool on cooling rack.

Solano County Fair

Yesterday we went to the Solano County Fair, in Vallejo. We actually live in Yolo County, but this fair is multiple times bigger than our local fair. We had a great time eating totally unhealthy fair food, looking at the livestock, watching Allie and Ashley go on rides, and just enjoying the atmosphere.

Chris, Matt's mom, had entered 4 pieces of her art into the fair (she lives in Solano County), and 3 of them won prizes! One of them even won the "Best in Show" award for the amateur fine arts division! We are so proud!

Jackson, Ashley, and Allie especially enjoyed playing in a makeshift sandbox, made of straw bales and dried corn kernels. In fact, they happily played in it for close to 1 1/2 hours! The most amazing part was that Jackson only tried putting straw and corn in his mouth a few times. Thank goodness he seems to be slowly leaving that stage where he wants to put every microscopic thing he can find in his mouth!
But 3 things were VERY different from the Skagit County Fair that my family and I went to when I was growing up. #1. It was so big that we didn't run into anyone we knew (at the S.C.F--Skagit County Fair--it was like a big reunion for everyone in the county) #2. There wasn't a wide variety of animals that were there to be shown. There were just cows, goats, llamas, and sheep (at the S.C.F. I always looked forward to seeing the wide variety of poultry, rabbits, horses, etc.). #3. We had to go through METAL DETECTORS to get into the fair! Yes, METAL DETECTORS! What's the world coming to when you have to go through metal detectors to enter the county fair?! (Obviously, Vallejo is a bit more gang and crime-ridden than Skagit County, but still . . . )

I have to say though that we all had a wonderful time, and felt completely safe the entire time we were there. We had such a good time that we all decided we should make it a family tradition to go to the Solano County Fair every year.

Mommy's Little "Helper"

This afternoon I started wondering why I hadn't gotten more done around the house today. I was actually motivated and energetic (could've been the 3 cups of coffee), but I just hadn't gotten much done and I was feeling a little frustated. So I thought about it, and I decided to take a few pictures of the wonderful little reason why it takes so long to get anything done.

Here's Jackson "helping" me fold the laundry (he loves climbing onto and into the pile as quickly as possible, while laughing madly):

Here he is "helping" me load the dishwasher (I have to remove him from the dishwasher door every time I open it):

And here's Jackson "helping" me organize the cupboards, while I finish the dishes (no explanation needed):

It's lucky that my "helper" is so adorable and charming, because it helps me be okay with the fact that I have a tough time getting my house as tidy as I would like it to be.

All Hail King Jackson!

Yesterday, as we were walking to Manor Pool, Allie, Jackson's four year cousin, informed us that she is going to be a veterinarian when she grows up and her sister, Ashley, is going to be a firefighter. "What's Jackson going to be when he grows up?", asked her mom.

"Jackson's going to be . . . a king," was Allie's wise reply.