The Great Palmy Foodlovers Winter Lunch of '08

A few weeks (OK months) ago I got together with some of the local gals who are regular contributors to the forum on the Foodlovers website. We had lunch at Rendezvous restaurant and I enjoyed the rare privilege of taking photos of my food in public. Not that I’m complaining about the gloriously sunny day but the bright winter sunlight streaming into the restaurant made lighting for the photographs a bit difficult. I can’t remember who had what now but it looks like we ordered a portobello mushroom panini, poached eggs on a potato and salmon cake, and seafood pasta. I'm think there was another sammich and some Eggs Benny but those photos were likely victimes of the aforementioned sun strike.




After lunch we were all delighted by a surprise gift from Raewyn G. She’d handcrafted pretty little boxes and filled them with YUMMY chocolate fudge - so delicious that I don’t even think mine lasted the rest of the day. Raewyn said it was Tammy’s recipe and you can find it on her blog Wee Treats by Tammy - it's really really good (both Tammy's blog and the fudge recipe).


Thanks to Raewyn Mc for organising a very pleasant outing. Let’s do it again soon.

Muffin Monday - Banana Chocolate Chip

I saw an announcement on Is My Blog Burning? for a one off event called Muffin Monday hosted by Elena of experiments and I thought to myself - hey something I can actually do! Instead of using Elena's basic recipe I went with something from one of my trusted recipe books. Only thing was that I didn't have any eggs. Did I let that stop me? No way! I decided to go for a banana muffin recipe because I figured that the bananas would do a fine job of keeping the muffins moist. While I didn't try the finished product myself as I'm restricting my intake of sweet stuff, my co-workers all pronounced the muffins "yummy". I know you'd be disappointed if I hadn't played around with the dairy and I haven't let you down today. I had some left over lite evaporated milk in the fridge so used half a cup of that together with half a cup of non fat milk. Whether that made any difference to the finished product I'll never know. Also, I took Lis's suggestion of adding some cinnamon to the mix. One taster commented on it so it must have been a pleasant addition.


Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
Adapted from Simon and Alison Holst's 100 Muffins and Slices cookbook
Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients
100 grams (3 1/2 oz) butter, melted
2-3 ripe bananas (you need approx 1 cup)
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Method
In a large bowl mix together melted butter, mashed banana, vanilla essence and milk
In another bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, sugar and chocolate chips
Tip the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix until just combined
Do not overmix or else you will end up with tough, peak topped muffins
Spoon into prepared muffin pan
Bake in a preheated 220 C/430 F oven for 10-12 minutes
Leave in muffin pan for 5 minutes before turning out to cool on a wire rack