Coconut Bread

May 17, 2013

The kiddos finished off the school week by both packing their lunches. My son had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, raspberries, and yogurt smoothie. My daughter had a peanut butter sandwich, applesauce, and juice. I had some of my favorite comfort food: pasta and home canned tomatoes.

I wanted to do some baking today. I was thinking about making the sweet potato bread again. It's been awhile and we all really liked it. I got side tracked when I was looking for the recipe. I saw a recipe on Honey and Jam for coconut bread. Hmmmm. The recipe called for eggs, milk, vanilla, flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, sugar, coconut flakes, and butter. I decided to alter a few things with the recipe. I don't buy cow's milk anymore. I had some coconut almond milk. Ohhh. That should go well. I also didn't want to have big flakes of coconut so I stuck it into the food processor. I like coconut flavor but don't really like the long pieces of it. I got out the butter. 6 tablespoons. Ugh. I had read that you can substitute half of the butter in a recipe with avocado. I decided to give that a whirl. I got out the sugar. 1 cup of sugar. Seriously? I couldn't make myself pour the whole thing in so I went with 3/4 cup instead. I was surprised with how well it turned out. The avocado trick worked great! You don't taste it (although I did still see a few flecks of green). There was still plenty of sugar. Wohoo! I may even try 1/2 cup next time. Surprisingly, even with all the coconut pieces and the coconut flavored milk, it still didn't have a strong coconut flavor. The kids really liked it. I had to say no when they asked for their um, 3rd (I think) piece before dinner! My hubby tried it and said we should make up a batch of the parrot bay coconut shrimp sauce for it and that it would be like dessert. I knew there was a reason I married him! Ha! I think I see some coconut/pineapple sauce in my future.

I made another batch of the lasagna roll ups that we made a couple weeks ago. Spinach, onion, mushroom, and asiago cheese rolled up and then topped with american cheese, mozzarella cheese, asiago cheese, and of course using my home canned spaghetti sauce. Yum! I steamed up a quick side of cauliflower and carrots. My son didn't want lasagna. He asked if he could have a hotdog. Uh oh. I don't have any. He asked if he could make a sandwich. I told him I didn't have lunch meat. He asked "don't you have ANY meat"? Oh, poor buddy. I remembered that I had smoked sausage (along with bacon and a bunch of other beef in the freezer). Tonight was a test. Can we grill up meat and smell it and still not give in? The answer is yes we can. My hubby, daughter, and I had lasagna while my son got his fill of sausage.