It was cold, dark, and rainy. I was in the middle of homework. I wanted monkey bread. Gooey, molten caramel over warm, soft bread with a touch of cinnamon! It needed to be in my belly. Trouble was it was cold, dark, rainy, and I was in the middle of doing homework. Also, monkey bread is not a health food and I am trying sooo hard to shift my diet towards healthy. But it sounded sooooo gooooood!
First, I tried drinking gratuitous amounts of peppermint tea. No relief from monkey bread fever. Just needed to use the bathroom a lot. Next tried healthy popcorn. Tasty, but not what I want. I got desperate.
I grabbed a mug from the cupboard and dumped in a few teaspoons of brown sugar, a small pat of butter, a splash of milk, a splash of vanilla, a dash of salt, and finally a few chocolate chips. I could settle without monkey bread but desperately needed caramel goodness. I microwaved it for 20 second intervals stirring in between until a smooth creamy chocolate caramel sauce formed.
I could not justify eating caramel sauce by itself with a spoon. That is not very adult-like. Also, felt kind of guilty for eating caramel sauce to begin with and wanted to "make it healthy." So I ended up slicing up a banana and drizzling the sauce on top and sprinkling it with chopped walnuts. Good. Make it better? Yes! Add natural applesauce of course!
I am full of good ideas.
The resulting dish was...all right. I probably should have stopped at the walnuts and forgot all about the applesauce (which, although natural, was super sweet). But, dash it all, it was smooth, caramel-y, had a touch of chocolate, and the bananas provided a very nice creaminess. Late night craving satisfied and possibly have an easy, relatively healthy snack recipe if I work out a few kinks.
Later, I noticed that I had a bottle of butterscotch sauce in the fridge. Will possibly just consider drizzling a little bit of that over bananas next time. Faster, easier, and probably a lot healthier if just using a little bit.
*Note: I recently visited the warm, sunny, full of flowers city of San Antonio, Texas. Ate lots of tasty food, met lots of nice people, and will blog about it when I have time enough to devote to a possibly lengthy blog.
