Banana Oatmeal Pancakes

Banana Oatmeal Pancakes

Found this simple, delicious recipe on the Ellen Degeneres Show website.  It has become a part of our Friday night routine as we need a really easy recipe that the kids love after a long week of work, school, and activities.  These are so good they don't even need syrup. We usually make a double recipe as leftovers heat up nicely in the toaster or even use them as bread for sunflower butter sandwiches during the school week.  Single recipe makes about 8 medium pancakes.


Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups nondairy milk

1 cup rolled oats or quick-cook oats (original recipe called for quick-cook oats but our Vitamix blends so well we use rolled oats)

2 medium-size ripe bananas, chopped

1/2 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon, plus 1 teaspoon baking powder

Directions:

In blender (we use a Vitamix), purée nondairy milk and oatmeal until smooth.  Add remainder of ingredients, purée until ingredients mixed (a few seconds more).  Allow batter to rest for 10 minutes.  Heat large pan or griddle to medium heat.  (Use nonstick spray if needed.)  Scoop 1/4 cup of batter for each pancake or to desired size. When pancakes show air bubbles over the top and bottoms are brown, flip the pancakes and cook until golden brown.  

We usually have this with a green smoothie, bowl of fruit or the kid's favorite Chunky Banana Smoothie.

Easy Bean Curry

In the search for an easy new bean recipe, I ran across two which I combined to make a dish we all like.  One recipe is from the Rancho Gordo website.  We get our beans from there when we can as they have the most amazing heirloom beans.  They are a real treat but are pricey as you can expect.  The other recipe was from allrecipes.com.  We make a spicier version for the adults while the kids like it with a lower amount of curry powder.  Our curry powder is noted on the label to be hot so you need to watch what kind you are using, adjusting the recipe as needed.  I enjoy it without the tomatoes, too.  It took adding the tomatoes to get my kids to eat it.

Ingredients
1/2 pound dry beans (Scarlet Runners, Garbanzos, Christmas Limas)
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 tablespoon (kid version) or 1 1/2 tablespoons (adult version) curry powder
2 large cloves garlic, minced
28 ounces crushed tomatoes
1 teaspoon cumin, ground
salt to taste

Directions
Cook the beans.  A pressure cooker is the fastest but, if you have time, a slow cooker produces a nice tender bean (currently my favorite way to cook beans).  Rinse and place beans in slow cooker on low in the morning with an abundance of water.  6-8 hours later you have a very tender bean. (You can soak the beans the night before and reduce the amount of time needed for cooking.  If you are using Rancho Gordo beans, soaking is not needed.)

Once beans are cooked, sauté onion is 1/2 cup water for about 5 minutes until softened. Add garlic for about 2 minutes.  Add more water if needed so contents do not burn.  Add curry powder, cumin, beans, tomatoes, and more water to desired consistency.  Simmer on low for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Add salt to taste.

2 out of 3 children prefer it with guacamole.  Tastes great over steamed brown rice.

  *Tip: If you cook an entire 1 pound bag at a time, you can put 1/2 of the cooked beans into a mason jar, allow beans to cool, and place jar in freezer or fridge for later use.  A pound of dry beans makes about 4 regular sized cans of beans.  (If divided evenly, the contents of each mason jar would be about 2 cans of beans).