ABC's of me

Does anyone else remember when surveys like this were rampant on myspace and facebook? I loooved em, so when I saw this had been making the bloggy rounds on Olives 'n' Wine I mean...I had to do it!


A. Attached or Single? 
If you've read this blog and are familiar with me, you know about how very attached I am to my boy (of 4 years!) Michael. :)

B. Best Friend? 
(Other than Michael): Alex. I've known her since she was born and we lived 3 houses down from each other until I moved to NYC. She is my sister and we've been through so much together, I love this girl. For truth.

I'm in the center of the 2 photos--so the right on the first photo and on the left in the second one. The first photo is from Halloween, she was a Native American and I was a brunette Barbie-very appropriate for our personalities. Plus, how cute are we?!

C. Cake or pie? 
Generally speaking, pie. For one thing: crust. Yum. For another, I'm really picky about cake, and the cakes I tend to really like are like on the border between cake and torte lol. I don't do fruit pies, however, just sweet  ones (or pumpkin) like Oreo, peanut butter, chocolate...

...Nutella Crack Pie, etc.

Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Banana Pops

I love summer, ok? I do. I wait for it all year round.

But it has been HOT! 

Last week I had to walk for a half hour, dragging a bag with 4 wine bottles, to work, in 100 degree heat (wearing all black). I WAS MISERABLE. Oh sweet lord it was awful. Luckily, it's cooled down a bit since then but...still...hot. And while we're still in the midst of this heat, let's get the most of the frozen treats that both refresh us and make our hearts and tummies happy.

Like with these popsicles.

Do you all remember when I talked about my Zoku Quick Pop Maker? Well, this is another popsicle I made using my beautiful little pop maker. But I made it up. Soo...sorry for the lack of actual written down ingredient amounts...this is sort of a make it up as you go kinda recipe. It's cool though, we don't need to be completely structured here, right?*

*(omg I'm so control freak-y, planner, type A, that just typing that sentence made me feel wrong.)

Growing up, my house was the only house in the neighborhood (in which children lived anyway) that had A/C. My grandpa owned (and my dad worked at) a heating and cooling company so...I mean obviously we had to have a good system. Anyhow, because of this fact, all the neighbor kids congregated at our house to make the most of the cool, cool, air conditioned air. One of those kids, my (still) best friend Alex, who is living at home for the summer, just tweeted at me that I need to move back home so she can come over and bask in the air conditioning...like old times.

Another very strong summer memory I have is of frozen chocolate covered bananas. They were one of my mom's summer staples and I was always clamoring for them, I LOVED em! Couldn't get enough. They were one of my favorite parts of summer.

So, these pops are sort of meant to emulate those flavors. And...I added peanut butter...because...it's never not a good idea to add peanut butter. Plus some people have peanuts on their frozen chocolate bananas (something I never experienced until trying one at a fair) and so you could say the peanut butter adds that flavor element there.

See? Perfect sense. Eat some popsicles, yo' while we still can!

Whole Wheat Brown Butter Pancakes

These are some of the best pancakes I've ever made. Certainly the prettiest.

I'm pretty sure they're Michael's favorite too (even though he's not generally a big pancake fan). He's totally on the browned butter bandwagon.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

My girl, Kristin, of Baker Bettie, (remember her?) has this amazing Back to Bake-sics series that is just...revolutionizing how I make things. I suck at science so making my own recipes has always seemed confusing/intimidating but she breaks it down in a way that makes SO much sense and it has taught me SO much! Anyway, as soon as I saw her basics recipe for pancakes I knew I had to use it immediately. Wanna know why? She said I could use any liquid fat...which made my brain go: BROWNED BUTTER PANCAKES ARE HAPPENING! And I knew brown sugar would be a perfect partner, and I thought the nuttiness of whole wheat flour would complement the recipe too. So that is what I did.

Such a great idea.

These pancakes had such a great, different, flavor. They were soft and fluffy. Pretty much overall deliciousness in pancake form. You can also get crazy and throw in some fruit or chocolate chips or whatever (which of course I added chocolate chips to mine, but I actually think they distracted from the delicious browned butter flavor. Michael's were chocolate chip-less). Whatever. Bottom line is you just need these in your life. For breakfast. Or dinner, hey, whatever floats your boat.