Monkeying Around

My late nap yesterday totally threw me off, so at 1 am I was wide awake and decided to put some browning bananas I had to use and made banana bread. Sounds sensible right? Not really the banana bread did not finish until 2:30 a.m. I found this recipe on postpunkkitchen. I altered it a bit mostly because I didn't want to go to the store and get more ingredients and because I wanted it to have less calories and be a bit healthier. Here are my ingredients:

1 cup Splenda brown sugar

1/2 cup Earth Balance, at room temp
4 very ripe bananas, mashed well
2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup vanilla almond milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt

I followed the same directions as they recommended to in the recipe and baked it for about 1 hr and 10 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I held off until I woke up this morning to try some. This is how it looked in the end-

This morning for breakfast I had some heated up with Smart Balance on top along with some coffee. It was really delicious, very moist and not too sweet.

I wasn't too hungry at lunch time and decided to have 1/2 of a sandwich consisting of a piece of toasted ezekiel bread, lots of sprouts, hummus, and Tofurky.

Almost every time my mom comes to visit me up at school we eat lunch in Santa Monica at Real Food Daily which has amazing vegan food. My mom was nice enough to buy me Real Food Daily cookbook which tells you how to cook every item on the menu. It includes appetizers, sauces, entrees, deserts- basically every yummy vegan meal you can think of.

I decided to make the caesar salad with blackened tempeh which I have had many times at the restaurant. I am actually not a fan of non vegan caesar salad, but this vegan recipe was delicious. I won't include the recipe because I think it would be better if you bought the book.

These are the pieces of blackened tempeh that were coated in spices, olive oil and whole wheat flour. They had quite a kick to them & were packed with flavor.

Below are the croutons which were super crunchy and very rosemaryish (not a word real word I know, but the best one I could think of).

Here is the finished product. The best part was the dressing which was simple to make and very salty and creamy.

Close up.

There was enough to feed all three of my roommates, who even though they are not vegan said that my version was better than regular caesar salad! I felt quite accomplished : )

I had sorority stuff to do tonight but grabbed a soy chai tea misto w/ 2 splendas before hand to keep me awake through Chapter.

All this talk of food has made me hungry! May have to go grab a slice of banana bread....