Muffins, bean salad, guacamole and...school!

Guess what, school is tomorrow!  Eeek!  I must say that I don't feel ready in the least.  I would much rather stay here and cook to make up for lost time in the last week.  On that same topic, I must explain why there have been no post for the last five days.  To begin, I went to visit my grandparents and from there went to a camp my friend's family was renting on Great Pond.   While there, we had half a day with power and the next two days I was there we had no power at all.  Two trees had fallen onto the power lines and my friend's family still expected when I left for there to be no power for a couple more days.  Thus, there was no way to blog at all!

Well anyways, yesterday I got back home and knew that I had to do something for dinner and specifically made bean salad and guacamole for fajitas we were having.  Bean salad is something I generally just throw together without a recipe and the gaucamole is made with a recipe I have just made up.  Here are both my recipes from last night:

Bean Salad:

3 cans beans (drained and rinsed)-I used cannellini, kidney, and black beans
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon
1 tablespoon sugar
3 large cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped fine
1/2 large green pepper, chopped
Slat and pepper to taste

Combine all in a large bowl

Guacamole:

2 avacadoes
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro
2 large cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste

Place all ingredients in a bowl, and using a paring knife, cut up the avacado in the bowl so that it looks like this:

Today though, I decided to make banana muffins for my brothers to keep in their lunch.  I recently recived minature muffin tins from my Aunt who was trying to get rid of some extra cooking things.  They worked very well for gluten-free banana muffins, which turned out wonderfully.  They have cinnamon and a little nutmeg, which make them quite good.  They are best made with really ripe bananas, which we had a plethora of.  The recipe is below.

Banana Nut Muffins

Joy of Cooking

12 Muffins (or 36 miniature muffins)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease a 12-muffin pan or line with paper liners. Whisk together thoroughly:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour or wheat bran  (I replaced these two ingredients with 2 cups of a gluten free flour blend, being 1 cup white rice flour, 1/2 cup potato starch, 1/2 cup tapioca starch, 1/2 teaspoon xantham gum)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon grated or ground nutmeg

Stir in:

2/3 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (I omitted)

Whisk together in a large bowl:

1 large egg

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

11/3 cup mashed ripe bananas (2 or 3)(Really ripe bananas always seem to shrink so three is needed)

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

Add the flour mixture and fold just until the dry ingredients are moistened.  Do not overmix; the batter should not be smooth.  Divide the batter among the muffin cups.  Bake until a toothpick inserted in 1 or 2 of the muffins comes out clean, 14 to 16 minutes(I found that 7-8 minutes is good for the mini muffins).  Let cool for 2-3 minutes before removing from the pan.  If not serving hot, let cool on rack.  Serve preferably the day they are baked.