Chocolate banana bread & simple cooking

After the frenzy of cooking and baking around the holidays, we've been keeping it pretty simple for the month of January. I'm always trying to balance what we would like to eat with what the kids are likely to eat, which doesn't make for novel or exciting fare. What it does make for is repetition. As in most areas, kids seem to like repetition in food--until they get tired of it, that is. So I've baked a lot of buttermilk bread lately (since school started, we're back in the lunch packing routine), and we have pizza or tacos about once a week. Both are pretty frugal meals, often using ingredients left over from earlier meals. Chicken soft tacos always come a couple days after a roast chicken, and pizza is a popular choice for Friday night (I save any extra dabs of tomato sauce in the freezer--just enough for a pizza or two).  Pasta with pesto and soba noodles with sesame peanut sauce are two more recurring players on our menu.

Which is all to say that I haven't tried many new recipes to share with you lately, aside from this yummy Chocolate Swirled Banana Bread from Our Best Bites.  It's similar to the Coconut Lime Banana Bread--more yogurt, less butter, less sugar--but you add some melted chocolate to part of the batter and swirl the two together.  I'll need to practice my swirling technique to more evenly distribute the chocolate, but it's yummy.  I substituted white whole wheat flour for half of the white flour, which made it slightly drier, but that hasn't bothered anyone here (especially when it's toasted and buttered!).  Right at home for breakfast, snack or dessert.

So here's my plea to you readers:  What would you like to see more of on this blog?  Should I expand and include recipes beyond baking?  Is there an elusive recipe out there that you just can't conquer?  Give me some ideas and we'll practice together!