banana bread with chocolate chips and walnuts

I love my iPhone 4. It's the most amazing smart phone I have ever owned. It also takes very nice photos for a cell phone. I get every shot I need instantly, because I always have my phone with me. I can instantly add nostaglic filters to them. I can instantly share them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

But by this instant nature, they feel very temporary, because that photo never has to leave that iPhone to get where it's going to go. And while my Polaroid Super Shooter Land Camera produces a real product to satisfy this tangible desire, I really needed a more modern solution to solve my dissatisfaction with my blog imagery. Two friends have the Canon Powershot S90 and adore it (and so do the consumer report sites). And since Canon released the S100 model, the retail outlets put the S95 on sale, making it an affordable option to put on my Christmas list.

I needed to test my brand new toy. And I needed to get rid of these:

So I decided to bake my mother's famous banana bread with chocolate chips.

Using a recipe I found on epicurious instead of hers, because this one is on an iPad app and I'm that person now.

Look how fluffy that butter gets.

I needed two hands to get a shot with an iPhone, so this was nearly impossible before. Because this is a test run of the camera, I hope you'll forgive that my nail-polish is chipped. And my hands are so pale and chapped. It's December. In Minnesota.

I couldn't let this entire blog post go without some of my iPhone's charm. I hastily created an animated gif from Gif Shop to demonstrate the layering technique of this recipe.

This lovely baking dish is courtesy of my mother. Dancing vegetables are always winners.

A baking skill I've been strongly missing my entire life has been the buttering and flouring of the pan as evidenced here. When I tried to flip the bread onto the rack, only the top half followed orders. I tasted this specimen though and it was fantastic nonetheless.

Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips and Walnuts
from epicurious

Makes: 1 9-inch loaf

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup walnuts, toasted, chopped
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter and flour 9x5x2 1/2-inch metal loaf pan.
2. Whisk first 4 ingredients in medium bowl to blend.
3. Combine chocolate chips and walnuts in small bowl; add 1 tablespoon flour mixture toss to coat.
4. Beat butter in large bowl until fluffy. Gradually add sugar, beating until well blended. Beat in eggs 1 at a time. Beat in mashed bananas, lemon juice and vanilla extract. Beat in flour mixture.
5. Spoon 1/3 of batter in prepared pan. Sprinkle half of nut mixture. Spoon 1/3 of batter over. Sprinkle with remaining nut mixture. Cover with remaining batter. Run knife through batter in zigzag pattern.
6. Bake bread until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour 5 minutes. Turn out onto rack and cool.
   

2011 in polaroids

In September 2010, my parents' home, which sits on a bluff in Pine Island, Minnesota, was among thousands of homes that suffered from flood damage in southern Minnesota. The basement was submerged and my parents spent the entire winter cleaning carpets and throwing away relics stashed from the past. When visiting in March 2011, an unfamiliar rainbow cube caught my eye in the damp laundry room. Inside the worn, colorful box was my father's Polaroid Super Shooter Land Camera, a $5 purchase from a thrift store in the seventies. I brought that camera back to the Twin Cities with me and it accompanied me for most of the year.

Joshua Tree, California — April 2011

A month after finding the camera, I flew to Los Angeles to visit my boyfriend. We took a vacation to the Mojave Desert and stayed at the famous Joshua Tree Inn & Motel. I brought along color and black and white film, only to find the black and white finicky. It only produced one nice photo at the very end of the pack.

Minneapolis, MN — May 2011

Sanden flew into Minneapolis for the wedding of Molly Bloom and Andy Ducett and little did we know hard winds were following. The day these photos were taken, I had brought Sanden to Art-a-Whirl to see my Artcrank poster. The clouds rolled in menacingly and we decided to head back to Uptown. While we fled Northeast Minneapolis, a violent tornado struck North Minneapolis, separated only by Highway 94. Unaware of the disaster just a few miles away, we played in the rain.

Memorial Day, Minneapolis, MN — May 2011

Memorial Day felt like a regular Monday this year. My savior after a hard holiday spent at work was a barbecue thrown by Jared A. May.

My Birthday — June 2011

I took these photos just before Etta jumped into my face and gave me a fat lip. And that happened just before my roommate ambushed me in our own apartment with a surprise party.

Rock the Garden, Minneapolis, MN — June 2011

I didn't have the stomach to take on Rock the Garden in its entirety this year, especially a rainy one. So we stood outside the fence and tapped our toes to what we could hear of Neko Case's set.

Strawberry Basket, Monticello, MN — June 2011

Strawberries make a popping noise when you pull them off the vine. I picked a pound more than I needed to make strawberry jams because of this discovery.

Gold Rush, Oronoco, MN – August 2011

Etta slipped a disc before the Bark at Art poster show and the next four weeks were spent trying to keep her comfortable while under medical treatment during a incessant heat wave. She did enjoy being carried around Gold Rush.

Casey Quinn's Memorial – August 2011

Casey's tribute was my first experiment with Flash Cubes. Like the goal to launch 34 lanterns for Casey's 34th birthday, the cubes proved to be rather unsuccessful. I ended up sharing the photography of Justin Mueller when I blogged about the event.

Minnesota State Fair – September 2011

These photos were suppose to be a part of a blog post about the Fair that never came intro fruition due to some scanner issues. But the highlights were the heat, the food, the group karaoke, the food and the glitter bombing.

Oktoberfest and Amery, Wisconsin – October 2011

Arlie raced in the St. Paul Dachshund Races and performed well above expectations. He also had the opportunity to meet the Kaiser, himself. After our Oktoberfest adventure we visited my cousin in Amery, Wisconsin, where I spent summers as a child.

oktoberfest and amery, wi

Madcap cooking adventures aside, this weekend I broke out the Polaroid Super Shooter with an aging pack of black and white film. I don't share all of my photos (I had an entire post about the Minnesota State Fair that never came to fruition because I couldn't access a scanner until everyone was sick of hearing about SPAMcurds) and this post doesn't contain a necessary reason, so I'll keep it short.

Arlie met the Kaiser at St. Paul's Oktoberfest. Arlie, Etta and I are a part of a meetup group called Dachshunds Making a Difference (whose proceeds benefit the rescue I adopted Etta from, Coast to Coast Dachshund Rescue) and this month, the gang was participated in this Oktoberfest celebration's dachshund races. As the Kaiser announced prior to the race, Oktoberfest is a 201 year old celebration of a marriage that originally held horse races. Since it's pretty difficult to obtain a license for such an event on Rice Street, they went with racing small German dogs.

As for how Arlie did in the races? We came close, which was an upset for me. Arlie was just happy to get the cheese I held for him at the finish line.

After the races, Arlie's pit crew and cheering section crossed the street to dance polka and enjoy authentic Deutsch cuisine (um, a sausage with kraut and pretzel) prepared in food trucks.

When I was not mourning the meal I created for the trip to Amery, WI, my cousin and I went to visit the home that once was our family cabin. My uncle Ross and aunt Mary sold the cabin a few years before Mary passed away in 2009, but the current owners didn't mind (a.k.a. were not home) that we explored the grounds. It seemed so unfamiliar. All the danger was missing as the deck, dock and stairs have been replaced with modern materials. How are you suppose to get a splinter to go with your horsefly bite? The house is brown instead of rust and the neighboring shack has been demolished to be an empty lot. Oh well, all's fair in love and real estate, but one thing didn't change:

Lake Wapogasset still looks like all my favorite memories from the original Parent Trap. And autumn is a such a funny season when you live in a climate doomed to six solid months of winter. It's a time where people are holding onto summer with their right hand while premeditively bringing along the winter coat in their left. But so is spring. The lake was missing the speed boats and pontoons, but docks still dabbled at the water's edge, hoping tomorrow will be another of these indian summer days. I didn't spend much of autumn in Amery, WI growing up. It was a summer tradition, but it seemed appropriate to say goodbye to the old cabin on a day like this.

One final note: thank you Phineas and William, BBDO's ever trusty receptionists, for scanning my photos.

another entry about my dogs

Blerg.

This weekend was suppose to be a beautiful affair. Poster show. Dinner with friends. Gorgeous weather. A short trip home to Rochester to visit my family, aunt and cousin and the usual suspects at Gold Rush. But as John Lennon said, "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

On Friday, I rushed home from work, pedaling as fast as I could without breaking too much of a sweat. If I could walk the dogs in record time, I might have been able to make it to Northeast by six with a quick trip to the grocery store. So I leashed the pups and we did our usual dance down the stairs—all ten of our legs trying not to miss a step. I couldn't see anything was wrong until we were three houses down.

Etta laid down in the grass. I smiled, assuming she was being her usual petulant self, and kneeled down to pet her exposed belly. But it wasn't soft and warm. It bulged and trembled. The pet medical dictionary definition of "bloat" flashed before my eyes.

Xrays, blood tests and urinalysis could not pin down why six-pound Etta's stomach had expanded. Why her pulse was weak. Why she was in so much pain. Pain killers got us through Friday night, but we had to return to the vet Saturday in the morning because she was dehydrated. Her appetite is still off and on, but she's back to barking at the neighbors, cuddling and begging for treats.

After the vet closed on Friday, Etta and I traveled the half a mile to Hang It to greet the coworkers and friends who promised to see the opening of Bark at Art. We weren't the prettiest couple there. I did not have the chance to change out of my biking clothes and she was heavily sedated. But we received a great amount of compliments on the behalf of the poster Jared A. May and I designed. We saw many people carrying around our yellow paper. My ears burned as I overheard people say the "yellow wiener dog poster" was their favorite.

Word is we sold very well, but you can still get a copy of the poster at Hang It until September 10th. Jared and I plan on taking photos this week so expect a new poster in my work section soon.

After the second trip to the vet, Etta, Arlie and I did manage to get to Rochester. And I couldn't forget my Polaroid Super Shooter (circa 1971) to document:

Etta relaxes on a trunk while my family and I clean up my grandmother's Gold Rush booth in Oronoco, MN. My grandmother's antique business is so antique, she does not have a website. Do look for Lantern Antiques off Hwy 52 in Pine Island, MN though. It's in an impressive pre-Civil War home. So impressive, Bon Jovi once stopped their tour bus there to get a photo. That photo is inside the album "Slippery When Wet". Or at least, that's how the story goes.

My dad turned on the light when I was loading this pack of film into the camera, so I punished him with this photo. We were busy hauling the antique furniture and drinking "real beer" as my uncle Bryce calls it. I believe it was a Newcastle. Yup, that's what passes for fancy in this part of the state.

My aunt Nancy and cousin John agreed to model in front of my childhood home. Note the new "Victorian Velvet" paint on the house. Pretty risqué for a town without any stoplights.

Arlie learns how to be still for a camera with the temperament of a classical painter. Where he stands is where I learned to ride a bike, roller skate and back a car up while texting. Darn kids.

Sure beats Instagram, right?