Tiny Kitchen Tales: Apple Chips

It's fall in Washington and that means that apples are in abundance. So I took a few of mine that were verging on going bad and attempted to turn them into apple chips -yum. These were pretty easy to make -just slice 'em up really thinly, soak them in some water and apple juice and various spices (cinnamon, nutmeg) for ten minutes, strain, lay flat on a baking sheet (if you have a cooling rack, put the apples on that on top of the baking sheet), and bake in the oven at 200 degrees for a good while. Make sure you flip them and keep an eye on them. I flipped mine every ten to fifteen minutes. They're tasty!

Tiny Kitchen Tales: Banana Bread

So, I've decided to start a small feature on this blog called Tiny Kitchen Tales. My new apartment has a kitchen with approximately one square foot of counter space. When I moved in, I bought a baking sheet and had to return it because it was too big for my mini oven. Tiny Kitchen. Todays culinary adventure is a classic breakfast staple: banana bread. I've got a thing with bananas where I'll only eat them when they're on the verge of being ripe (still kind of green) and once they're all yellow, I won't touch them. It's a quirk but it makes for quite a few opportunities to make banana bread. So here goes.

If you want to make this you'll need:

• 3 or 4 smashed ripe bananas
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F. With a wooden spoon (or fork), mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Let cool and enjoy! (I made my with 1/2 a cup melted butter... so tasty.)