Low-Fat Banana Ginger Bread

i got a new laptop for my birthday and now i 'm a little mobile, so i hope i will post more often. i wanted to archive good recipe that i've tried and if it turns out yummy i'll post it and share with you all. here's the first one... so i got a few over riped bananas at home and so i felt like baking on a sunday morning :-) what i love about this recipe is the spices i added recommended by epicurious reviewer and it actually has a really good kick to the boring banana bread.


Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients:
2 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup smashed ripe bananas (about 3 medium)

1/3 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon butter (or veg. oil)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon each of ginger, cardamum, nutmeg and cinnamon

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 325°F. Lightly grease 8 1/2x4 1/2x2 1/2-inch pan; dust with flour.
Using electric mixer; beat eggs and sugar in large bowl until thick and light, about 5 minutes.
Mix in smashed bananas, buttermilk, oil and vanilla.
Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt over mixture; beat until just blended. Transfer batter to prepared pan.
Bake bread until golden brown on top and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Turn bread out onto rack and cool.

Church Announcement

I surprised Marco with our church bulletin announcement on 5/31/2009 " A very happy ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY to parishioners Tammy and Marco Alves, married here last May 31st!"
... click here to see it :-)
May God Bless you all!

Our First Anniversary!!!

Can you believe it it's been a year!!! felt like it was just 8 months ago we did this. Marco has been in Portugal for the last week, because his mom was having some surgery done. He came back on May 30th and he surprised me with a flower delivery from our wedding florist Laura Miller with peony flower arrangements just like my wedding bouquet. I was almost had tears in my eyes... especially I had not seen him in a week- that was so sweet of him. The arrangement came with a card and it says to pack my bags and we're going to a B & B. hmmm.... I wonder where we're going...? north or south...? so i packed up everything and wore all of my wedding day accessories (Bling**) to the airport to pick him up. Oh- it was so good to see him. Then Marco started to drive 101 South, 92, then HWY 1 South... an hour later we arrived at Costanoa.

He was hoping we could catch the sunset at 8:35pm but it was overcast all along HWY 1 so... no romantic sunset :-( Costanoa is a eco adventure resort designed for you to explore the California coastline. What a great beautiful place!! and they don't even have a TV in the room... talk about exploring. We checked in then left to have dinner at Pescadero, another favorite little coastal town. We ate at Duarte's Tavern (Portuguese owner) a very yummy place for local seafood and artichoke dishes. The next day morning we went for a short walk around Costanoa and what an amazing landscape and tons of native flowers and plants, so pretty. We then headed back slowly along the coastline and stopped by one of our favorite place Arcangeli Grocery- they have the best artichoke bread in the world! Hot off the oven! yum!!! and we got some cheese and strawberries and had our own picnic at Montara beach - pretty big waves there. Marco was there surfing a few weekends ago when we had the heat wave, but man all I see was his long board jetting out of the water... more practice honey-
I can't believe it's been a year and what a wonderful year we had together!! We've done so much and so little, but we will always experience it together with good friends and family.

most romantic restaurant

tonight i came across online"Slow Club" a tinnny restaurant in San Francisco. i remembered walking in there once just to use the restroom... ( i think) back 8 years ago and i thought the place was so romantic. This restaurant seats about 10 tables if not 8 and no lighting what so ever other than the tiny candle lighting at each table & small continuous lighting washing the bottom of the walls. Everyone that was there were party of two and they all looked like they were on a hot date and so happy (maybe because it was just dark). I was 'Single' back in the day and at that moment i just thought Slow Club was the hottest place to go on a hot date.
I still yet to have that HOT date there... i think at one point the place was closed but it looks like it's open again and maybe this time i'll go on a hot date with my husband!

dancing veggies!

how cute is that!

NKOTB

ok i have to say yes i went to the NKOTB concert back in 11/2008 and you know it was actually kinda fun. Clara is a huge fan, so we both went as our first time and had a really good time. I have to say these guys are in their late 30's now (can you believe it...) and they can still reach the crazy teenage high notes and hop around the stage... not bad.
here are some of their new songs click here and yes they had a new album out last year.

Happy Valentine's Day

It rained all weekend but that didn't stop us from hanging out for the day. This was typical Sat. for us... We went to our favorite bakery in Oakland Arizmendi for some blueberry muffins and coffee in the morning. Then we got some grocery's at Trader Joe's from across the bakery. The rain still didn't stop... we continue on our exploration of the east bay and this time to Berkeley and visited the Spanish Table, it's like a CostPlus... but they only have imported goods from Spain and Portugal like wines, canned food, books/CDs, and tableware. We ended up getting some Portugal green wines and spanish sausage- yum! Then we went for a movie to see Benjamin Button out in El Cerritto - what a sad movie....but a very good movie.
We finally headed home around 6pm and Marco cooked a nice Valentine's dinner for me :-)


Spinach with mushroom wine sauce


Baked rosemary potato and taro.


Baked breaded cod fish.

FINALLLLY!!!!

Finally we got a President that we can be proud of! After many Obama parties at friends house and at the official Obama SF party (i was almost on Ch.2 news). Marco volunteered passing out fliers to vote for Obama throughout the streets of Alameda, in the meanwhile I waited in line for 1.5 hours for early voting ... finally we got our man! A change we and our future generations can be proud of, let's bring back community service, family values, and the good ol' hardworking mentality back to America. There will be a change on how the rest of the world sees us as Americans. I look forward to the change that Obama will make in each one of us.
oh and i have to say i was pretty happy that Michelle Obama has chosen Jason Wu's design (ck out his 2009 spring collection), a fellow Taiwanese dude-REPRESENT!!! (click here to read more)

Accredited Professional

well, this holiday season wasn't very fun for me. i was pretty much studying the whole time all the way to 1/3/2009. Then finally took the exam and passed!!! the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) (click here to learn more) exam and now i can say i'm an accredited "green" professional. Marco helped me with some difficult subjects such as CO2 monitoring and somthing about ASHREA ratings... i celebrated my x'mas/black friday/NYE all on 1/3/2009! what a relief to passed the exam!

mirror ... mirror...

There I was trying on my mom's earrings and using her mirror and the same mirror I held today to do some last minute touch ups. Thanks mom!

Candid Shots!!!

here are some more highlights from our wedding:
http://picasaweb.google.com/AlvesM/WeddingPhotos?authkey=wLiu-r177-k

Thank You card inspiration

This was a carpet pattern I came across online and thought it was beautiful and simple. The design of the rug has a cut-paper style that caught my eyes and I wanted to implement some of the floral elements on my invitations (Chinese invite). To tied in the same design, I used it again on the Thank You cards.

Thank You cards are done!... well almost...

finally i'm almost done with our thank you cards :-) for those who are cking out our blog page - thank you for reading and i'm sorry that it has taken us this long to THANK YOU. It has been really busy with us since we got back from our month long honeymoon and one thing lead to another things are piling up but we're catching up. We like to thank all of our friends and family for celebrating our big day with us and all of your best wishes and lots of gifts we really appreciated! I will be posting some behind the scene wedding pictures so look for yourself on this site - you just might be tagged. we hope to see some of you soon!

remember to Vote on Nov 4

euro "Cut Paper" design

I came across Robert Ryan's website and just fell in love with his work!

Abount Hunger

When we first looked into wedding favors we came across many silly useless products.... so we looked into charity donations. We wanted to give something back to our community back to OakTown - East Bay baby!!! We started with our search with www.justgive.org and then narrow it down and selected Alameda County Community Food Bank.

Did you know each month, tens of thousands of low-income Alameda County residents cannot afford well-balanced meals for themselves and their families. Many never imagined they would need to request food assistance, but barren cupboards and empty pockets have led them to local soup kitchens and food pantries.

We have donated 1,000 meals on May 31, 2008 behalf of you. We hope you too will look into supporting your local or international charity organizations.

Paper Assembly Line

here's an image of the "Save the Date" assembly line... lots of stuffing and sealing - look out for paper cuts and don't forget to sort the English and Portuguese cards.

Monogram Shortbread Cookies

Finally i have some time now to update you on some of our fun wedding planning do's and don't and behind the scene...
Sweet Adeline Bake Shop in Berkeley have made my wedding cake and many other desserts that day such as Mango Cream Puffs and Monogram shortbread cookies. I have originally thought of making the cookies out out this custom rubber stamp design I've designed (see it... we're always leaning on each other hahahhaaa!!!) but it was unsuccessful... so i guess it will just be a rubber stamp.

Sale @ Gump's!?!

yep- i was the lucky one to walked passed the sales window last week and found Eva Zeisel's ceramic pieces for sale! i just couldn't believe it!!! her pieces are beautiful-- the graceful and sensual curves (you should see the water pitcher, it reminded me of my wedding dress) and i'm getting it at a sale price- i can't pass that up... so with out a doubt or a call to my new husband- i (we) bought a few vases and a sugar/cream set!!! i can't wait to have you over for tea time!

we are back!

so we're back....
i think some of you don't even know we have a wedding blog page... i guess we should of had our blog address bigger on the invitation. Anyhoo-- we're gonna do that on the thank you cards... maybe you just might to see yourself online or hear more about us (lovers!!-hahhaaa).
for those of you who came to our wedding -- a big thank you and we hope you had a good time, like we did... and for those who couldn't make it --- sorry you missed it and i hope this site will show you a little about what we have been up to and call me we should do lunch :-)
so we're back....
things are kinda back to norm... (we miss South America already) still got presents in our living room with no place to store it... we'll have to make some room in our closet or garage. i have all the wedding cards on display, so when we wash dishes in the kitchen we are reminded of your wishes :-) thanks! slowly we're catching up on bills and laundry - The next big task is to review our 1200 wedding pictures and over 2000 honeymoon pictures of South America... so lots to do.