My first Monday

After a relaxing weekend at home, this Monday I decided to start a blog! Eek! I love to cook and enjoy trying new recipes although half of the time they usually end up like one of those Pinterest Fails. My husband, Paul, is a great guinea pig and always gives me his honest opinion whether I want it or not 😉 Today I chose some recipes for banana bread, a salad for lunch and a homemade dressing.

But first, how Brewster feels about Mondays…

I digress.

My husband and I usually eat a banana every day, but for some reason we left a few of them to die a slow death on our kitchen counter last week. I decided to send them off to a better place by trying a new banana bread recipe. I usually just search ideas or recipes I want to try with the ingredients I have on hand and pick the one that sounds the best (& easiest) for me to make. For this recipe I ended up choosing one from Natasha’s Kitchen. The recipe called for raisins, which I didn’t have and usually don’t include anyway, so I omitted that from my bread. It was super easy and turned out AHH-mazing! I probably cooked it a few minutes too long, as evidenced by the darker edges but it was still good. I decided to enjoy a mid-morning slice with a fresh cup of coffee. I always make sure to keep the ends for Paul.

Next up: lunch. I’ve been trying to eat less meat so I decided to search for a recipe with black beans and sweet potato. Again, just ingredients I had on hand. I really wanted a salad so I based it off of a recipe I found from Veggies Save the Day and just put everything over romaine lettuce. I peeled, cut up and roasted the sweet potato and just used black beans from a can.

Instead of adding chunks of avocado, I topped my salad with an awesome recipe for avocado ranch dressing from The Kitchen Girl. She didn’t have measurements so I just eyeballed everything. I completely overlooked the vinegar and milk and didn’t have dried dill or dried chives. I used half of an avocado, about 2 heaping spoons of Greek yogurt, a squeeze of mayo, a squirt of lemon juice, garlic, onion powder, dried parsley, salt and pepper. I put everything into my mini food processor and gave it a whirl! I then put everything in a big bowl, added a little feta (it makes everything betta’), topped it with my dressing and Bon Appétit!