Vegan banana cake

Towards the end of last year I was diagnosed with a range of food intolerances. Some, like a wheat intolerance, I already knew I had but others were quite a surprise. Kidney beans, egg white, almonds and corn also showed up as well as cow's milk, cashews, pear and melon. This has been quite difficult, especially as I often used to use almond meal in place of flour, not to mention eating polenta practically on a weekly basis. So I have been working on my diet and also trying to change the way I bake in order to fit in with my new food regime.

One thing I often made was Stephanie Alexander's simple banana cake. Very easy and very yummy but containing things like eggs, flour and butter. The other day I had some very soft bananas and thought I would give the recipe a go, but swapping the ingredients I couldn't have for those I could. Besides, I need to start doing something with the 5 kg of spelt flour I bought recently. Here is my interpretation of Stephanie's recipe.

Ingredients:
100 g coconut oil (approx)
1 and a half cups of sugar
Natural egg replacer to the equivalent of 2 eggs
1 cup ripe mashed banana - I used 5 bananas
Few drops of pure vanilla
250 g spelt flour
1 teaspoon bicarb
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon allspice
1/2 cup goats milk mixed with 1 teaspoon of lemon juice

Putting it together:
Line base of a loaf tin with baking paper.
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
Mix oil and sugar with barmix until light and fluffy.
Beat in egg replacer, banana and vanilla.
Add dry ingredients and goats milk and lemon juice.
Spoon into tin and bake for 1 hour.

Enjoy!

Just a minute - July

I saw the Just a Minute meme on Badskirt and thought I would give it a go - a good thing to do on the last day of the month ...

Winning... a crazy fort from KidsStyleFile for doing a survey. I never win anything so this was very exciting. It might be too old for Chet at the moment but that isn't the point.

Learning... about 10 month old baby development, blogging and google analytics.

Seeing... old friends in Brisbane, Pineapples from the Dawn of Time, people in my neighbourhood.

Collecting... fabric from charity shops, baby clothes and toys. The K-man is collecting hornsea mugs and cameras.

Planning... a trip to Tasmania and Melbourne in August, childcare for Chet from October.

Watching... Baby Einstein, The Wire, Flight of the Conchords, The Bill.

Listening... Radio National, Lucinda Williams, Vashti Bunyan.

Reading... info on rheumatoid arthritis, Revolutionary Road, Watermelon: husband in a coma & other setbacks, friend's blogs, the local paper, The Monthly, The Foolish Tortoise.

Making... a mess, corn and polenta muffins.

Thinking... about writing, about blogging, about what to make next, about health and illness.

Walking... round Iron Cove, to Marrickville, to Summer Hill, to the park.

We all breathe a sigh of relief

The holiday break is now well and truly over and we have all breathed a sigh of relief. The K-man went back to work today, the Minx is lounging on the outdoor table under the umbrella, Chet is happily playing with his feet in his chair and I feel that I can finally think clearly. The house is not resonating with the sound of the Family Guy on high rotation and the computer is all mine again. The Christmas/New Year period was good but pretty full on - lots of lunches and bbqs with Chet in tow - he was pretty good about being carted around here there and everywhere and didn't disgrace himself ... much. We had high-tea at the Sheraton, lunch at the Drummoyne Sailing Club, bbqs and drinks at friends places as well as a couple of overnight trips away from home. Here is Chet, asleep in his capsule on a friend's kitchen table surrounded by bottles of wine and corn chips - a sign of things to come perhaps?

In retrospect we probably took on too much over the break and the planned 4 days at Mollymook turned into three when we found ourselves in a house with 9 adults, 4 kids and 4 dogs, a highly overstimulated Chet, not much sleep for us or him - it was a recipe for disaster really. Still you don't know until you try and it could all be different next time we take him away. I got in some lovely swims at the beach though. We did try and take Chet swimming in a pool on boxing day but the water was quite cold and as soon as we put his feet in the water he screamed and held his feet as close to his body as he could! So, not wanting to traumatise him I didn't put him in the pool any further. We also tried giving him a cold bath in the backyard on one of the very hot days we had last week - he screamed blue murder and was very upset, even when we put warm water in. He might have inherited his father's dislike of cold water.

The K-man and I even managed a couple of meals out sans Chet. The K-man took me to dinner at Aria as a 'giving birth' treat and what a delightful meal it was. We got the summer tasting menu - K-man with wine, me without - and the sommelier gave me a couple of sneaky glasses of wine anyway. It was all wonderfully light and summery. Chet was looked after by his girlfriends in Surry Hills - they love looking after him and when we dropped him off he was asleep - although not for long as they poked and prodded him until he woke up! He also had some 'pants off' time during which Assy took photos of his nether regions until her mother told her to stop and she went off upstairs to sulk. We also had an anniversary lunch at the Bentley Restaurant and Bar - a very different venue to the one I used to frequent when I first came to Sydney in the mid-90s - then it was pretty grungy and feral, full of hippies, dreadlocks, dogs, flannel shirts and always joints being passed around the pool table. Now it is casual but elegant, with a wide range of wines and tapas on hand. No pool table and no joints either! We had the tasting menu and asked the sommelier to recommend appropriate wines for us; I had a lovely pinot noir which lasted me through the entire meal, the K-man had the pinot and a heavier Spanish red as well as a cognac to finish. All in all very pleasant. Chet was looked by after by friends at home this time and apparently he managed to hold his bottle all by himself - which is a first, although I never seem him drink from a bottle as that always happens when I am out or away from him for some reason.

I managed to get a few things down around the house - re-potting plants, endless washing, sorting out Chet's corner, getting rid of maternity clothes and winter baby clothes and generally enjoying the warm weather. I hung some curtains in the kitchen that I have been meaning to get to for well over a year and enjoyed a gin and tonic most evenings - just after a feed of course. I even read a novel - note just the one. Most summer holidays ever since I can remember I sit down and plough though a novel a day for a couple of weeks - this time I managed only, Vertigo by Amanda Lohrey. And it is a novella. Very good though, beautifully written and sad in parts as well. I also managed a story by David Foster Wallace - I felt the need to look into his writing after his untimely death last year. His story, A supposedly fun thing I'll never do again about a week long all-expenses paid trip on a luxury cruise, funded by Harper's Magazine was laugh out loud funny (I doubt Foster Wallace would have approved of acronyms such as LOL, neither does Hank Moody in Californication but I digress) - very droll and dry and serious at the same time. I hope to finish a few more of his stories this year and perhaps even tackle Infinite Jest - I realise that may be a little ambitious with a small baby but who knows?

Now we can look forward to settling into a routine of sorts - mothers group, walking, yoga, lunches and trips to the library - I think a quiet life for a little while will be good for all of us.