Lavender, Goji, Chocolate, Banana Bread

Often I have food in my fridge or pantry that's not on the list of ingredients for a recipe, but I lack a ton of the ingredients a recipe calls for. I could go out shopping and spend like $30 on whatever I'm missing, but why? The stuff in my fridge needs to be used or it'll go bad. Why not use that and save some money? To solve the missing ingredients problem, I take what I do have and match it as best I can to what I should have had.... and use those items instead. Sometimes what I end up with is amazing! Also, I probably never would have added all the ingredients together without the necessity. The creativity this cost effectiveness provides is a plus to remember when cooking. Here's one such recipe that resulted from just such a situation:

Dry ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoons salt (I used pink because I'm on a new kick)
• 3/4 cup sugar (I used raw cane)

Wet ingredients:

• 3 medium-size, very ripe bananas, peeled and cut into chunks
• 1/2 cup soy milk (or regular if you want)
• 1/4 veggie oil
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Ingredients for folding:

• about a handful or so goji berries
• about a teaspoon or more dried lavender
• about a teaspoon or so cocoa powder

To make:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Lightly oil a 9x5-inch loaf pan. Put a little flour in to coat the oiled sides, swish around and toss excess. Set pan aside.
3. In a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients.
4. In a different bowl, combine the wet ingredients and whisk until smoothish.
5. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix well.
6. Fold in the goji berries, cocoa powder and lavender.
7. Put contents into the prepared pan.
8. Bake on the center oven rack until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (around 50-60 minutes).

Allow to cool in the pan before removing.

Marzipancakes

Marzipan is made from almonds. ...there's actually no marzipan in this recipe although if you added it, you'd have super desert pancakes. These pancakes will come out very sweet and remind you of marzipan. For this reason, I recommend not putting a lot of syrup on them. Add more later if you want. Remember, this suggestion comes from someone who has an uuber sweet tooth. If you don't have a sweet tooth, use 1/2 tsp or 1/4 tsp almond extract instead of 1 tspn.

Dry ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• dash of pumpkin spice

Wet ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups milk
  
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tablespoons butter, melted.

To make:

1. Add dry ingredients together with a flour sifter, put in bowl and set aside.
2. In a different bowl, add wet ingredients together. Whisk until blended.
3. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients slowly while mixing together. Mix until you get a consistent batter.
4. use a 1/4 measuring cup (or something similar) as a ladle for the batter (so pancakes stay a consistent size) and scoop batter onto a smaller frying pan at med-low heat. (If you've got an electric range, I used the temperature setting 4.)