When I was little, my mother always made banana bread with godforsaken black, overripe bananas that she would keep in the freezer. I think overripe bananas are terrifying and I do not want them anywhere near my freezer. Or in my bread.
So I tweaked my mom’s terrifying black banana bread recipe and came up with zucchini bread. And by tweaked, I mean I substituted zucchinis for bananas.
Also, please note I do not bake. The altitude in Colorado can make baking tricky and this is the one thing that I can pull off and it is delicious. Seriously, this is ridiculously easy.
Zucchini Bread (so easy a monkey could bake it)
3 cups flour (Use whatever you like, I prefer spelt flour)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 cup oil (I use coconut oil)
3/4 cup organic raw sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
Splash or two of coconut milk (optional)
2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup chopped pecans (totally optional)
Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. I usually add a few splashes of coconut milk, but this is up to you. The bread will be very dense without the liquid, I like the bread a bit lighter. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined.
Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan. Or just watch as your family devours it straight from the pan. Either way.
Let’s discuss woodpeckers. Or as they are called in Colorado, Northern Flicker, which are identified in flight by yellow or a pink color under their wings. They are also identified on the side of my house pecking the ever loving shit out of it around five a.m. every. single. day.
Also, the woodpeckers Flickers chose the side of the house to NEST in that corresponds with our bedroom wall. So every morning at five, on the dot, a gang of noisy ass birds start rat-a-tat-tating on the side of our house and we A. Bang on the wall with our fists (medium effective) or B. Jeff has to go outside and scare them off by yelling at them in socks and flip flops (he’s Asian) and his boxer briefs (very effective. And scary.).
After conducting important research regarding how to get rid of our Flicker infestation (googling that shit for days), I learned that the Flickers are hammering to attract mates (sluts), to establish and/or defend a territory (thanks, but we got this), to excavate nesting or roosting sites, and to search for insects. I freaked the eff out when I read the thing about bugs, we bought the house in August. I could just picture it infested and covered in hundreds of dumb woodpeckers and I’m sure that would be super inexpensive to fix (eye roll). However, when I made Jeff get on top of the house to inspect it for bugs, he informed me that he could see the top of the neighbors house and they had a gang of flicker holes on the eave of their house. AND that the Flicker had made a bunch of four inch holes in the side of our house and a NEST.
But good news! The internet said that mating season, see excessive pecking the everloving crap out of our house, is most common in the spring and usually ends by July 1.
Uh, hell nah.
The internet told us we should try to repel them with this sticky gel that may or may not stain the side of your house and is like $80 a tube. NEXT.
The internet also told us we could buy a nesting box (a birdhouse, duh) and guess what? Also $80. NEXT.
I am trying to get rid of the birds, not take them to raise. I wouldn’t even spend $80 on a squirrel house (YES I WOULD).
Now you might be thinking to yourself that we should just put a cap in their annoying bird asses, but dumb dumb Flickers are classified as “migratory nongame birds and are protected by the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of Colorado. A federal permit is required before any lethal control methods are employed. Penalties and fines are assessed to violators”, at least this is what the Department of Agriculture is throwing down.
And plus shooting birds is kinda mean. That could get back to the squirrel community and then where would that leave me? Sad and squirrel-less. And probably drunk. But mostly sad.
I dropped in our local wild bird supply store (it exists) and they mentioned that most folks have success with visual repellents and they tried to sell me plastic whirly things to hang off our house. That were $16 a piece. And they recommended at least SIX. That were $16 a piece.
I issued a polite no thank you/are you crazy and took my ass to the dollar store where I spent $9 on visual repellents. Or garden wind twisters. Whateves.
The idea is that the movement with scare the birds off. We threaded them with some sort of heavy wire and twine that we had in the garage and Jeff and his assistant went to work.
His assistant had one job, she was in charge of handing Jeff the twister thingies and the assistant’s mother wouldn’t let her walk any farther than STAY WHERE I CAN SEE YOU.
Here Troy pretended to help, he wasn’t into getting on top of the house. He knew I would be lonely on the ground all by myself.
And besides, we were on “Peckbird” watch.
Jeff stapled the wind twisters onto the eaves of the house near the patched woodpecker holes. Not pictured: Jeff patching the said holes on the side of the house because I had to climb onto the roof and sit on his legs while he hung over the edge with a piece of wood and a hammer.
Because if anything we are all about safety.
So far, our $9 repelling Peckbirds plan has worked and the Flickers/Woodpeckers/Birds From Hell have left our house alone.
And when it fails, Troy says, “Just use this rock”.
Flickers can go peck themselves and can totally flick off.
As a person who suffers from chronic sinusitis and nosebleeds (GROSS and thanks, Colorado), Spring season brings allergies, and that equals torture to my nose and eyes.
Most days it feels like I have cotton shoved up my nostrils, and let’s not talk about the sinus pressure.
Truth: Prescription nose sprays concern me. I mean, you are shooting chemicals up your nose, and that’s super close to your brain. Plus the taste grosses me right out.
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I’m not one of those moms that’s all, “I wish I they would just stay little” and “Oh, how I wish they would stay like this for life” because, dude, kids grow up, that’s what they are supposed to do. And the older and cooler the children get, that means I’m somewhat doing this mom job properly.
But yesterday when Troy lost his shit over a $1.99 golf club at the thrift store even though we were there looking for a side table and none of us know jack about golfing? And proudly cared it to the register and patted my leg with gratitude whispering, “Oh, thank you, thank you” the entire time I was buying it for him?
A teeny, tiny part of me wished it was always like this, it’s easy, almost too easy. He was so proud of his “new golf pick” all because I, keeper of the dollars and dreams, forked over a few bills. When Jeff got home, he met him at the door to him all about his new club.
One day, he will be texting and driving and have friends and secrets and that’s the way it goes. But today? Today we golf.
Here’s the deal, I like Easter. I like making the food, I like how excited the children are over their baskets that were stuffed with a hair straightener (Zoe) and rocket stuffies (Troy), I like the outfits, and I really like that I got the whole damn day off from work.
As far as holidays for J-Dogg (Jesus) are concerned, I actually prefer Easter over Christmas. Christmas is too much pressure, man. The whole month of December is a cluster, stockings, Carl, baking, gifting, wrapping (and rapping because I enjoy listening to Fiddy, whatever it takes to get you through the holidays), not to mention how freaking tired I am Christmas morning because we were up until 4 a.m. putting together a play kitchen set from Belgium and the instructions are printed in Dutch (I almost typed Belgianese) and then the kids wake up at 6:30 because HELL YEAH, PRESENTS!
So, Easter. I like Easter. Easter is chill.
We went to church in the morning, we were even a bit early. They handed out long stemmed carnations to everyone and we were supposed to place them up at the altar, but Troy wanted to hang onto his. While we were standing and singing the first hymn, Troy was next to me pretending his carnation was “blasting off like a rocket” and he caught the flower on the bottom of my dress and I managed to flash everyone my Target Spanx behind us (the entire church since we were in the second pew).
I was mortified, Jeff was silently crying/laughing, Zoe was oblivious, and Troy announced, “I saw your buttcheeks!” promptly when everyone finished singing.
Kids are precious. And by precious, I mean crazy. I shot my serious mom eye daggers at Troy through the rest of the service and he behaved himself.
Mostly.
I put Zoe in charge of dyeing the eggs this year, because no matter how hard you try, those eggs are going to look nothing like the ones on the box or on pinterest. It only took me 11 years of Easter to accept that fact. The eggs were a hot mess, but the kids had fun and I stayed out of it and drank a glass of Grigio. Jesus would want it that way.
Troy waited until the timing was right and then stole eggs out of Zoe’s basket, totally ninja.
Zoe is 11 and I’m not sure is she will want to hunt eggs next year. I bet if I stuff the plastic eggs with $20 bills it won’t be an issue.
She did get $5 for finding the prize egg, but the only reason she found it was because Troy was standing on it. (I gave him $5 too, finder’s fee.)
After the egg hunt, Jeff and the kids were playing catch with the eggs.
Which then turned into Egg Baseball.
Which then turned into See How Far We Can Throw Them.
Troy says, “Go Easter”.
As well as, “I saw your buttcheeks!”.
Wearing pants (and probably a disguise, like a Raquel Welch wig) to church,
ZDub
