Banana Chocolate Chip Bread With Lime Glaze

I always seem to have some over ripe bananas kicking around that are begging to be made into bread. This is JJ’s twist on regular banana bread. I start by combining my dry ingredients in a large bowl. Then I add some chocolate chips, coconut, raisins or cranberries and nuts to the flour mixture. I give everything a good stir and set the bowl aside. Then I mix my butter and sugar together and after it is well mixed, I add some eggs, bananas, yogurt, vanilla and dark rum to this mixture. Next I combine the wet and dry ingredients and give my baking pan a good spray. Then I spoon the batter in into a baking pan and using the back of my spoon, I smooth out the mixture. Then I pop it into a 350 oven for an hour or ‘til a pic comes out clean. Then it has to sit in the pan for 10 or 15 minutes.

Then I remove the bread from the pan and sit it (right side up) on a cake rack. In the meantime, I stir together the icing sugar, lime zest and rind.

Then I set the cake rack and bread on a plate and drizzle some of the lime mixture over the loaf.

Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or just slice and serve it on its own.

Here's the Recipe for JJ's Banana Chocolate Chip Bread with Lime Glaze.

2 cups flour ¾ tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt 1 cup sugar ¼ cup butter, softened 2 large eggs 3 bananas, mashed

1/4 cup yogurt

3 tbsp dark rum ½ tsp vanilla 1/3 cup coconut ¼ cup chocolate chips ¼ cup raisins or dried cranberries ¼ cup chopped pecans or walnuts cooking spray

½ cup powdered sugar zest of 1 lime 1 ½ tbsp lime juice

Mix the first 3 ingredients together. Then stir in the coconut, chocolate chips, raisins or cranberries and nuts. Mix the butter and sugar in a separate bowl. Mix in the next 5 ingredients. Add this mixture to the flour mixture folding gently. Don’t over stir. Spray the sides and bottom of a loaf pan with Pam. Spoon the mixture into the pan and bake for an hour or until a pic comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes on a rack. Remove from pan and place the bread right side up on a cake rack over a plate. With a pic, poke a few small holes in the top of the bread. Mix together the sugar, zest and lime juice and drizzle a bit over the loaf ‘til it starts to run down the sides. I often double this recipe and make 2 loaves or 1 loaf and 1 small cake. If I double the recipe, I double everything but the coconut, chocolate chips, raisins or cranberries and the nuts, but you can add more if you want to. If you are going to freeze this bread, don’t glaze it ‘til just before you are going to serve it.

My Sandy Seaside Garden

This photo shows what it was like on the beach side of Casa Que Sera when we first moved in.

Considering there is nothing but fine sand out there, it's surprising that my garden has done as well as it has. This is what my garden now looks like from our roof terrace.

The plants look small from way up there, but they are actually a lot bigger than they look.

This is what the garden now looks like from the deck off our living area.

This garden has come a long way over the time we've been here.

I often look at this garden and wonder how anything could possibly survive out there.

All my plants have somehow learned how to tolerate the daily abuse of constant salt spray and scorching heat.

My giant cacti obviously love living in the sand.

The many different textures, colours and shapes of the various cacti draw attention and add excitement to the garden.

Their unique style also complements all the other plants.

The huge spiky cactus in the next photo grows a foot taller each year.

And it is amazing how the flowering stems of my bougainvilleas can grow up to a foot a day, considering there is little or no nutrition in that sand.

I'm also surprised that the plants in this garden can produce so many beautiful flowers with such vivid colours. There are many different shades of orange, pink, yellow, green and white blooms out there.

The shiny blue balls that we picked up in Tonala last year, when Cory and Jen were here, looked so nice in the garden, that I had friends get me more when they were in Tonala a couple of weeks ago. These balls also add life and sparkle to my little seaside garden.

It's fascinating how the sun, casa and plants are reflected in this shiny, silvery blue ball.

Monarch Butterfly Migration

Every year millions and millions of Monarch butterflies migrate to the state of Michoacán in Mexico. We would love to visit the Monarch Butterfly Preserve in Michoacán to witness the astonishing phenomenon of millions of Monarch butterflies that migrate there each year, but I am just too afraid of heights. I can't imagine riding a horse down rocky roads that wind along steep cliffs. Our friends, Keith and Sharon, went there last year to see the butterflies and raved about the experience so I asked Keith if he would put together a few words to describe their trip, and this is what he had to say. "The drive is 9.5 hours or 790 kilometers passing Guadalajara and Morelia to the Monarch Preserve area. The Preserve area is about 125 kilometers south west of Mexico City mostly in the state of Michoacán. The most well known town is Angangueo and it is near the most popular and most crowded over-winter viewing site. We were directed by friends to a small hotel in the town of Zitacuaro.

Hotel Rancho San Cayentano is a former ranch that was converted to a Hotel about 15 years ago. It is operated by a Mexican-American gentleman and his French wife. It has spacious rooms and a very good restaurant.

Rancho San Cayentano somehow has access to the preserve area that is very quiet and secluded with no other people other than those from the hotel. For a fee they provide a driver and a car and box lunches for the trip to the Preserve.

Zitacuaro is about 6000 feet above sea level and to get to the Monarch over-wintering area you drive about half an hour up to 8500 feet above sea level. This is where you meet your new friends which consist of a horse or burro and a handler. After getting accustomed to your horse/burro you begin the journey to about 11,000 above sea level where the Monarch spends the winter.

The journey up to 11,000 feet takes about one hour on a trail that is straight up at times and at other times on the edge of the mountain with only room for one person at a time. The young Mexican handlers are each running ahead with a rope attached to each Burro/horse coaxing them up the mountain. The area where the Monarchs over-winter is a relatively flat area where we were ably to walk among the trees with literally thousands of butterflies flying around us. The Oyamel Fir trees provide their habitat and warmth for the winter. The Butterflies in this area begin their migration north in mid-March and lay their first eggs in Texas. These eggs turn into caterpillars which then form chrysalises and finally more Monarch Butterflies. This second generation then flies as far as Kansas and repeats the same process. The third generation then flies to the northern states and repeats the same process. At this point an amazing thing happens. The Butterflies hatched in the northern states and Canada fly all the way back to the same area and trees in Mexico that their Great Grand Parents came from.

Some of the pictures show the Butterflies clinging to the trees for warmth.

Other pictures show the sun hitting these trees and the trees literally exploding with Butterflies as they warmed up.

The last excitement we had was riding our burro/horse down the trail back to the starting point." Thanks to Keith for all the wonderful pictures. In the next few photos you can see how the butterflies were clinging to the milkweed plants that grow in the region that Keith and Sharon visited.

The larvae (caterpillars) of Monarch butterflies eat only milkweed and this is why the monarch butterfly is sometimes dubbed the milkweed butterfly.

There is something in milkweed that allows the caterpillar to grow and keep all of the vitamins needed to transform them into a beautiful butterfly.

In turn, the adult butterflies consume all sorts of different things including nectar, water and even juices from some of the fruits we consume.

Hooray for Friday Afternoons

Did I say that we were finished with all the renos around here? Well I lied! Over the summer we had a leak in our roof and last week, our neighbour, Siro, offered to help fix it. He has been a brick layer for a hundred years and has built many large, commercial buildings in the Toronto area. On Tuesday, Siro, his helper, Juan, and Bruce started tackling the problem. First, many roof tiles had to be removed, and as the boys worked away, lots of broken bits of concrete and brick fell from the roof and had to be hauled away. Once again we've been living with junk laying all over our patio, stairs and walkway. The bricks in this wheelbarrow are just a small part of the debris that's come down from the roof over the past few days. Plus the air, inside and outside our casa, has been filled with concrete dust and dirt all week. And wouldn't you know it, my fridge packed it in this week and had to be taken away to be repaired so I've got shelves and bins scattered around. The guys are well into the reno process now, but they still have a few days' work before they are finished. There are still many more buckets of concrete to be hauled from the vacant lot across the street, through my patio area and up to the roof. Bruce has been painting a special sealer on some areas of the roof, while Juan and Siro have been forming, pouring and finishing concrete in other areas. They have also been concreting tiles to the edge of the roof in various places. It's mighty hot up there working on the roof, but at least there's a bit of an ocean breeze and some great views. I'm sure Juan has worked on many sites that are hotter than this one, but it must be really hard on Bruce and Siro. Bruce should be ready to apply for a job in construction any time soon. Over the years we've been down here, he's honed his skills as an electrician, plumber, painter and now a roofer. He is also known for his expertise in pool maintainance, installation of automatic sprinklers, that actually get water on the plants and not just the patio, for construction of inexpensive solar systems, and occasionally, he is called upon for his knowledge in medical matters. The sealer that Bruce is using here is being applied to bare concrete. It will then be covered with a fibrous fabric and after 24 hours, another layer of sealer will be applied on top of the fabric. Our friend, Siro, is an Italian with personality plus, but he's a tough maestro to work for. All day long I can hear Siro nattering away at Juan to do things right and he's continually yelling at Juan, when he's across the street, to grab one tool or another. Siro demands perfection from himself and everybody around him, but his bark is much worse than his bite and Juan knows it. Siro and Juan actually work very well together and Juan is learning a lot from Siro. The next step around here will be for Siro to start pouring concrete on the framed area in the next picture. This part of the job will have to wait 'til next week because today is Friday. Needless to say, we will be living with a mess for a while longer. On a positive note, because today is Friday, it's the day Patricia arrives. By 2:30 this afternoon, I’ll be stretched out on my massage table for an hour and a half. As soon as Patricia begins working her magic, I'll start to drift off to la la land. Sadly, the 90 minutes that Patricia is here flies by really quickly as I drift in and out of reality. It always feels like only minutes ‘til my massage is over and Patricia is back on her bike and heading for home.