Time to get cookin' - 100% Whole Wheat Banana, Blueberry Pancakes. No added sugar!

Well, good morning! I would like to say it is a glorious day, but the only ones who might be enjoying the heavy rain will be the Ducks! As we sometimes say.."Great weather for ducks".
It is also a great day to curl up with a book, or just go back to bed. The latter isn't an option, but the former might be.

Having a surfeit of Blueberries in the fridge which really needed to be eaten (Buying from Costco or Sam's Club has it's disadvantages...HUGE containers!), I decided to make my favorite Pancakes for breakfast.
I also decided that I should share the process, because many people don't know how to make good pancakes from scratch. These are very easy, are light, and taste good You can also easily multiply the recipe for extra people. Obviously, I make mine just for the two of us:)


The whole wheat thang came about because  I have finished the last bag of plain white flour, and wasn't going to replace it. I have a bag of 100% whole wheat flour, which I bought to make bread with, and I'm not making bread...soooo...You get the picture.

Well, without further ado...Here is the recipe....with photos! I'm not good at following recipes and wing it a lot, making small changes each time I make things, but I feel confident that the proportions I have here will make you a good pancake.
Bear in mind that because you are not ADDING sugar, there are plenty of NATURAL sugar in this recipe. There are also plenty of carbs, if you are worried about those too!

Store bought buttermilk has natural sugars (it is milk!) and carbs. If you are counting sugar and carb grams, then you will want to eat less, rather than more of these. The carb content is quite high, for obvious reasons. It is flour! albeit 100% whole wheat. You are not adding any processed ingredients, other than the raising agents, salt and flour. Everything else is natural.

100% Whole Wheat Banana and Blueberry Pancakes.

Please read the entire recipe BEFORE you start!
This recipe makes approx. 10-16 pancakes, depending on how big you make them. I use a Tablespoon to measure mine.

Heat a skillet, electric frying pan or like me, a griddle/Panini press that opens flat. I make mine quite hot.

 

Into a medium bowl place...

1 level cup of 100% Wh. Wheat Flour....stir with a fork prior to measuring. This gets air into the flour if you don't have a sifter. Otherwise, sift the flour into a bowl with the following ingredients.

1 slightly heaped teaspoon of Baking Powder

1/4 teaspoon of Baking Soda

1/2 Teaspoon of iodized salt.

 

 

Rinse 1 cup of fresh or frozen Blueberries. (Do not thaw berries first!), and add to the flour.

 

 Toss the berries in the flour

 

Meanwhile....

In a large pyrex measuring jug (or other that has cup measurements on the side), melt

 

2 Tablespoons of butter. (you can use two tablespoons of Veg. oil if you choose. Different flavor results). Please cover the butter when you microwave!!!

 

 

Add
One large egg

Whip the two together well.

 

In another bowl squish One Ripe banana. Over- ripe is great!!

 

Make sure it is really smooshed up!!!

To the Pyrex jug containing the butter (or oil) and egg, add Cultured Buttermilk (Store bought is best) to measure a total of 1 3/4 cups. Don't forget to shake the buttermilk well before pouring!

 

 

 

 

Using a fork, whip the mixture together until everything is well incorporated.

 

 

Now add the smooshed banana

 

Add The Buttermilk smooshed mixture to the dry mix with the blueberries.

 

 

GENTLY incorporate the wet with the dry. It is NOT BEATEN. The flour should be wet, and no large globs evident. I do this with my fork, tines flat against the side of the bowl, starting from the outside and bringing the wet mix into the center before going out again. Don't forget to pull the mix across the bottom to get any dry mix that might be there. FOLDING is the operative here!

 

Let the mix stand for about 10-15 mins before you start cooking. This gives it a bit of a rest and allows all the raising agents to do some of their good work.

As you can see, I can get 6 per side of the Panini Press. It doesn't much matter how you cook your pancakes, as long as the pan etc is hot enough. You want to seal the bottom of the pancake fairly quickly without burning it.

 

I DO NOT grease the skillet first. No need. Make sure you are using a NON STICK surface though.

 

 

The cakes are ready to turn when there are bubbles on the surface. Make sure the bottom is sealed well before you turn them. Take care to not smash them down when you turn them.

If you leave it too long to turn the cakes, they will not rise very much. The top of the cake must be quite moist when you turn it.

 

Because I have added no sugar ( per se), to the recipe and I personally don't add Maple Syrup at the table, I whip up some cream, and have that on the side instead. Waz has this as well as the maple syrup...Hey, it tastes great! Extravagant? No! If you like it, have a little. It is all in the quantity used.

I use Heavy Whipping Cream.

Waz likes the real deal

6 pancakes might look a lot of food, but these are very light and fluffy, and they seem to last us through to lunch time when we are working hard...or not! You can eat less pancakes and add more fruit, or fresh fruit salad, if you wish. Be creative!

  Some people like eggs and bacon with their pancakes, sweet or savory!

Well, it must have been good!!:)

 

 

 

I hope I didn't make it too complicated! It really isn't, and if you want to use plain white flour, go ahead...Use exactly the same ingredients. One LEVEL cup of pl. white flour is fine!

 

To increase the recipe, just double everything except the salt. Cut back on that a little.

 

If you want to make even lighter pancakes...do the following:

 

Separate the egg yolk and white. Beat the yolk into the butter before mixing in the buttermilk and then banana. In a sep. bowl, whip the egg white to dry peaks. After all the ingredients have been lightly mixed, FOLD IN the egg whites. This makes them super light and fluffy!:)

 

ENJOY.

 

 

...and the good news is....

...All necessary precautions have been taken to stop any further hacking of my personal information of every kind that we can think of. If I detail it here, that might be courting further trouble!:)
However, it did take the best part of the day to sort it all out, and it left us a bit worn out, to be frank. It is very stressful when 'crap' happens to us, isn't it?

We spent two hours at the local branch of my US bank, and then went to the Charlotte Mall for some lunch (it was 1.30pm, by this time) and to buy me some 'better' winter shoes. I currently only have my trainers! Not good for cocktail parties, lol.

Coming back into town the other day after looking at sewing machines (I forgot to document this!!), we stopped off at Pier 1 Imports...where I was hoping that the cushions I desired (and have done for almost 6 months) were on sale...everything else was.

We had purchased the green cushions to go with the new chair upholstery, and they look great. The intention was to go back and get some red ones to sit on the existing sea green leather sofas. That never happened.
I had taken all the slip covers off the existing small cushions...all the Kiwiana...to wash, and thought this might be a fantastic opportunity to go look for those red cushions. It was!

Apparently the cushions were on sale in December, but someone forgot to take a tag of one of the ones we were purchasing, so the sales assistant (associate?) gave us the discount on both. How nice!:)

We now have red cushions...the inners are down, which we particularly like. We also replaced a cup that Waz had broken. We are now complete!!!

 

Not very good color showing here, but they are a glorious color in reality.

 

While at the mall today we visited our favorite shoe store...Payless Shoes. I object to paying hundreds of dollars for shoes, so $27 was the perfect price for me. I have a titanium pin in my right big toe which the surgeon tipped up so that I could wear not much more than a one inch heel. Finding 'better' shoes that are lower, is a bit of a challenge. They are either flats, or stratospheric in height.

 

These might look boring, but they suit me to perfection...AND, they are comfy. I am dressed for success, now:)

I did have to purchase some hose to go with them. I only wear trousers, so knee-highs are fine. Does anyone wear panty hose any longer?

 

 

I did have some Asiago/spinach sausages thawing in the fridge, for dinner...and the fridge still smelled bad. Couldn't for the life of me think what might be smelling so bad...and getting worse. I  was forced to evacuate the entire fridge contents while sorting food out for dinner.

 

I finally found the culprit. Masquerading as something else, was a bag with a small piece of corned beef in it. Blech!

The fridge is back to it's sweet smelling self now.

 

I didn't feel like cooking sausages, so I put together a yummy pot of vegetable soup. I threw  Onion, garlic, ginger, potato, pumpkin, celery, leek, and parsley, and finally, some French beans. I also cooked up some croutons to throw sizzling on top.

 

Bubbling away on my little one burner Induction Cooktop.

About to brown the croutons. This is Seeded bread. Lots of chia seeds, among others, less than 1g of sugar and very low carb. I made enough to have with the leftovers...

Leftovers all ready to cool and put in the fridge for tomorrow lunch.

Somehow soup just hits the spot on a cold and rainy night. It has been raining all day, and the temperature has steadily dropped.

 

 

Waz has spent considerable time replacing seals in the hope that no more water will make it's way inside, through this door. This is the Pilot House door that I almost amputated my right index finger on. The bucket is to catch a drip coming from the top of the door. The bottom corners are now sealed and no water was seeping in through there, this time, thank goodness! We will have to investigate the drip further when the sun shines again. In the meantime, the bucket stays.

There has obviously been leaking from the bottom corners of the door for a long time. The staining was there when we bought the boat, and we have worked hard so that no further staining occurs. Keeping fingers crossed!

 

 

 

Because this is a boat, and it is floating, any time we move to one side of the boat together, it tilts that way, of course. This is particularly so when we are about to disembark. We exit on the Starb'd side right now, and because there is much water on the soft bimini of the fly deck, the water runs down the side of the boat just where we disembark. Of course the first time we experienced this was yesterday when we were getting back onto the boat. Waz had already climbed aboard, but the boat rocked again and tipped towards me as I put my leg over the railing onto the boat. Down came all the water and wet me thoroughly all down the back. It was like taking a cold shower with clothes on! ACK!! Of course it wet me through my thick sweat shirt which was duly hung on the line out of the rain. Several hours later, and it hadn't dried at all...why did I expect it to? so it had to be brought inside to dry. We have had the heater on for a bit, and it was dry by morning.

 

We watched the temperature drop, this afternoon, from 71F inside the Salon, to 65F, to 63F, and finally 59F. At this point I got up and put the heater on. I had been sitting on the sofa all bundled up in a rug, before that. I had to be reminded to put the heater on, lol.

 

We had two parcels arrive today. One had the new light bulbs in it. These are new LED bulbs which Waz has replaced as a trial, in the Salon, and the Kitchen. They are fantastic in the kitchen! YAY! I can see to prepare the food. Not that I couldn't before, but this light is bright and white. Makes quite a difference.

The salon bulbs we aren't too sure about. They appear to do the job for reading, but their beam isn't wide enough for general use. We might have to get something with a different width beam. As I said, a trial.

The other package contained the Video Amplifier for the pilot station on the fly deck. This is for he depth sounder that Waz has just installed.

 

Little jobs being done all the time:)

 

I took time out to take a look at some of my photos, this afternoon. When it is grey and rainy, it does me good to look at beautiful things.

 

 

The following photos were taken when my mother and I went to the Botanical Gardens Winter House, in Auckland, NZ, and also Eden Gardens, in Mt Eden, Auckland.

Mum has been a wonderful gardener and we share a love of plants, so our garden visits are such simple pleasure to the two of us.

I cant go visiting with her now, so here are a few of the simple pleasures to share with you all.

Remember...if you want to see the photos in larger format, click on one of the photos and you can see them all without the text. Click outside the photo when you want to return to the blog.

 

Babies in a nest. Rhododendron buds.

 simple white rose.

Magnolia

Rhododendron in bloom

Vireya Rhododendron

California Poppies

Cymbidium Orchids

Ranunculus

 

Cattleya Orchid.

 

Maple

I love these stunning Green Hybrid Tulips.

I believe this is a Parrot Tulip, but cant be sure.

 

If you want to see more beautiful Tulips photos...click on this link.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Green+hybrid+tulips&qpvt=Green+hybrid+tulips&FORM=IGRE

I found it when I was searching for the correct name for my photos. Glorious colors!!

 

I know it isn't about boating, but heck, we have to take a break occasionally, don't we?:)

Besides, I miss my garden:(

 

Sweet Dreams. I'm off to watch a movie on the computer with my hunny:)

 

 

 

 

A quick visit to Sarasota

Robyn and Dave, our Boat Buddies from the Gulf Crossing are about the leave their boat in Sarasota again to return to their home in upstate New York, on Saturday, so we thought a day out might be fun to catch up with them.
We arranged to meet them at the Marina at around 11am, arriving just prior to that. It wasn't raining when we left home, but was cooler this morning with rain threatening.
I don't like driving as fast as most do, on the freeway, which is usually in excess of the 70mph speed limit. I guess there is a 9mph grace margin which many people push towards 80mph. I just don't feel that comfy at 130kph (NZ speed). We could have driven north to Sarasota on Hwy 41 and stopped at all the traffic lights and gone through all the towns, but that might have taken more than the hour, to get there. Instead we headed north on I75.

We enjoyed a cup of coffee and chat to catch up with them and their plans etc before heading out to a seafood restaurant for lunch.

Robyn and Dave have crossed their wake now, and fly the Gold Loopers  banner on the bow of their lovely boat. They have cruised in so many of the places we are going to be visiting, and we were especially interested in the time they spent in the Georgian Bay area of Canada. It looks stunning! Robyn has taken some wonderful photos, which she shared once we returned to the boat. We were interested to see if we could get our vessel into some of the tight spots they had visited in their 52 footer.

The covered cockpit deck on their boat before it started to rain.

 

We also enjoyed going over the Sarasota Bridge, which we had gone under, in  Sarasota Bay, on the way south to Port Charlotte.

 

The architecture is interesting, in the lead up to the bridge crossing.

A blustery crossing!

Looking along the ICW, below.

...and out to Sarasota Bay . We parked the boat in a crescent bay on Longboat Key, in December, and said we would go back there by car, if we got the opportunity. We did, today.

Some of the boats in the marina make us look tiny, by comparison.

Gorgeous lines!!

Can you see the large vessel behind the masts?

 

Walking around the small village square at Long Boat Key, after we picked up a Latte...well, not like we needed the coffee, but we needed a pit stop! So, best to buy something when you use the facilities!!

We were really impressed by the variety of retail therapy in this area known as St Armands Square. This place in particular took our fancy. Some who know us well will agree that this is our kind of place:) We kinda like funky art!

Even the Cello on the chair is made from Aluminum! It even plays!!!

The artist or the owner needs to get his grammar correct. No apostrophe needed here!

We had quite a chat with the fella who owns this store, and he gave us his card and said "When you are going up the east coast and you have ANY trouble, call me! I know people everywhere that can help you out!" WOW! He likes Kiwis:) having worked with our kind in NZ within the boating industry. He is a former boat builder!

This restaurant seating is along one side of the 'square'.

I persuaded Waz to stand beside Neptune, to show the size of the statue...well, maybe:)...(evil grin)..Why does he always look so bored???

Sorry this is blurry...I was being hurried along the crosswalk because I had stopped in the middle of the road to take the photo! hmmm....This is another side to the 'square'. A pretty place.

 

We left Longboat Key around 5pm, heading along Hwy41, going south. We decided that we would see some of the city by tracking along the water as far as we could go.

Please forgive the blurry photos...low light plus speed of car, a good photo does not make!

 

Going south over the Sarasota Bridge.

On the right

....and the left

Too bad this one is blurry...remember the large sculpture of the couple dancing, from the Key West posts? This was similarly large.

The Bay Front. Lots of sculpture along the waterfront, which Waz photographed as best he could, but they are just too blurry to include here. Bummer! You will just have to go and see for yourself!:)

He gave up photographing after a while as the light was just too low.

 

We turned onto I75 eventually, as the going was too slow in the rain on 41, and 5pm traffic...this being a normal work day for most. How we forget that simple fact, sometimes, lol.

 

The traffic on the I75 was slower, thank goodness, due to ran and wind, but it was a bit stop and go at one stage, for no apparent reason. We made it home in the dark and wondered what we might eat for dinner. As Kentucky Fried Chicken has a Buffet restaurant just down the road, we decided to again avail ourselves of that. It is reasonable value, and we don't feel the need to over eat, just because it is a Buffet.

 

Finally home, We turned on our computers and checked mail.

 

Yesterday we found out that someone had hacked into my e-mail account. They had targeted my banking mail in particular and had sent (this is how I found out about the hacking) a letter to my FORMER  New Zealand bank, asking them to verify the account number to send thousands of dollars.

The bank, fortunately, did not give the required information, but they did slip up in that they didn't check with me to ascertain that the message was bona fide. I have not had an account with them for some time.

I did the appropriate thing and contacted the bank. They now have strict instructions on my behalf.

 

Today, when I checked my e-mail, there was a letter returning information to MY E-mail account, but in reply to the same hacker, about money going through a Wire Transfer FROM NZ. Aieeeeeee!!!

 

We thought this might happen, so last night I sent a message to my US bank to say that I had been hacked, and to accept no message from me unless they check with me by phone.

They had, however, accepted this message sent by the hacker, and replied to it....and I had already changed passwords, so it came back to me. The Hacker will not have received their reply!

 

We have set the Fraud wheels moving on this.

 

I seriously urge you all to change your passwords to EVERYTHING, often. We can get very complacent.

 

The result of all this is that it is extremely time consuming to have to deal with the fallout. No matter. Put alarms on your computer to remind you to change your passwords, especially to sensitive information. We take so much for granted, and it is clear to me now, that when we write e-mail to our various trusted institutions, they do not necessarily know whether it is bona fide. I have the evidence in my Inbox!

 

Time to have this computer dealt with by Malware. Do not assume that your Anti-Virus software will take care of all invaders!

 

Ciao, Ciao.