Banana Chocolate Chip Gluten Free Dairy Free Bread

My Version of Banana Chocolate Chip Bread thats gluten free and dairy free!

I have been gluten free for almost 4 years, dairy free for almost 2 years. My wife has been gluten free and dairy free for 3 years and recently after dealing with some nagging medical issues with our two kids we decided to remove gluten and dairy from their diets as well. So we are a full gluten free house at this moment. One of my son’s treats over the years was a piece of Banana Chocolate Chip Bread from Starbucks which of course is not gluten free. So I decided to start tinkering with a gluten free/dairy free (GF/CF) recipe that would work as a nice treat.

Here’s my recipe:

1 cup sorghum flour(I want to try this with Almond Meal to lose the grains)
1 cup coconut Flour
1/2 cup cane sugar(also want to try this without the sugar)
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp xanthum gum
3 large ripe bananas
2 farm fresh eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup olive oil
4 TBS almond milk
3/4 cup vegan mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside. A 2 eggs to another bowl and beat the eggs, add 3 ripe bananas to the eggs and mash the bananas and eggs together. Add vanilla and olive oil. Once all the wet ingredients are mixed together, slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. My mixture was dry after combining the wet and dry ingredients so I added 2 Tbs of Almond milk and stirred and needed to add 2 more Tbs of Almond milk. Then add the vegan chips and combine. I then added the mixture to a parchment lined Ceramic Baking dish and placed in the oven for 60 minutes.

Allow the bread to cool on a wire rack out of the pan before trying to slice it. I used a serrated knife cut the loaf into slices and then placed in separate plastic bags and refrigerated half and and placed the other half in the freezer for later.

My son took a piece to school for lunch and loved it. So far its been a hit in our household…

Day 105 Beehive measuring cups

BeeHive Measuring Cups

My sister-in-law gave these to my wife as a gift knowing she’d love them and she does! Fun stackable BeeHive measuring cups! Just found that they can be purchased at Cost Plus World Market, BeeHive Measuring Cups.

Day 106 Orange Tulips

Love Spring Tulips

Always fun when there are fun flowers around the house

Day 107 Small Green Hydrangeas

Green and White Hydrangea

These weren’t marked as hydrangeas at the store, but I still believe they are. Every hydrangea I’ve found online looks like these.

Day 108 Brilliant Tulips

Tulips from a few days ago in brilliant light!

Loved the way the light was hitting these tulips today!

Day 101 Setting Sun on the Pine Tree

Pine tree in the setting sun

Captured this with my iPhone and liked the way the sun hit the tree against the blue sky.

Day 102 Cool Shades

Shades, Ready for Summer!

Found J’s shades out and ready for the summer sun… I think they’re cute!

Day 103 Spring White Daisies

Fun White Daisies

Was over at a friends house and found these beautiful White Daisies. I liked the silky feel to this… Almost like they are floating in space.

Day 104 J’s Big Girl Shoes

J’s Big Girl Shoes

My daughter found my wife’s shoes and I had to grab my camera.

Day 98 Rain Drops on the Lemon Leafs

Rain Drops

I decided to play around with the fun rain drops on the Lemon Leaves…. This is when I wish I had a macro lens..

Day 99 Sunset over the ball field

Beautiful Sunset over the Little League field

It was a cold windy night at the baseball diamond with a beautiful sunset! Taken with an iPhone 4s

Day 100 Dried Roses

Dried Pink Roses

This was a last minute capture to the end of the day… Not too excited, but I liked the textures as the roses started to shrivel up!.

Day 95 After School Treat

After School Slurpee

Enjoyed using window light for this capture… and it’s also fun when your 4 year old lets you click away!

Day 96 Batter up!

Batter up!

My Son got his first hit in a game this year! He was so excited! We were too!

Day 97 Face Painting

Butterfly and Tiger

Had fun spending the day with Thomas the Tank Engine… Which of course meant spending some time in the face painting booth!

Family 3 days in a row! It’s getting harder and harder to capture them as they get older.. I have to take advantage of every opportunity!

Day 91 Red Roses

Red Roses

I liked this blooming rose in the green vase. I was dealing with later afternoon almost evening window light so I was shooting at ƒ/2.8 at  t 1/13. I had to take a few snaps and hold my breath and really hold on to the camera to get this as sharp as it is… It’s not perfect but I liked the colors and feel of it.

Day 92 Yellow Lady Banks Rose Vine Clippings

Clippings from a Yellow Lady Banks Rose Vine

My daughter picked these fun yellow flowers from my Mom’s yard. It was fun trying to keep them alive!

Day 93 Easter Lily

iPhone Easter Lily Snap

My Mom always gets an Easter Lily in the spring! I love them. This was a quick iPhone capture with using the Camera Awesome app. I cooled it down a bit in post.

Day 94 Indian Hawthorn

Indian Hawthorn in Bloom!

We have quite a few Indian Hawthorn in our yard and right now they are in full bloom! I must say they are beautiful in bloom and really do well in the desert air!

A fun variety of flowers in this group!

Any flower suggestions I should be on the look out to photograph? Let me know in the comments below.

Are You A Doer or Do You Plan To Do

Ever met those that just do?

Ever met those that plan to do?

The doers get an idea/plan and do.

The planners plan and keep planning, waiting for the perfect plan.

I can relate to both.

I have lots of plans that have been rewritten and if I had just started somewhere along the way I would actually know if it worked or not!  I have quite a few exercise plans that have never been started.

On a whim I decided to take a photo a day and have been doing that for over two years now.

My photo a day project has morphed into many different things. I’ve learned far more about photography by just starting the project! My photo a day project has taught me lots about just doing. Sometimes I have a get an image, the clock is winding down on the day! Even if I don’t have a tripod or a flash unit, I have to figure it out. Somedays I’m not happy with my image for the day, but I post it anyways. What I’ve discovered is that often my best received images are the ones that I had to just do! As I look back over my images I can see growth from doing.

So why is it easy to just do some things and others it’s easy to keep planning?

I’ve also been planning this post for awhile now, pondering whether or not it’s worth posting as countless books have been written on this topic. Finally got tired of planning and decided to hit the publish button.

Nike has been telling us for 30 years to “Just do it!”

Do you Do, Plan to do, or both! Share you’re success or failures in the comments below.

The kids were off the week prior to Easter this year, so we spent a few days in Santa Barbara enjoying the sea air and beaches.

Day 88- Sun peeking through the fog

We had taken a long walk on the beach late in the afternoon as I was hoping the fog would lift a bit to display a fun sunset. I soon realized that the for was not going to lift so I decided to have fun with it and start using the fog to my advantage. This is a 3 exposure HDR taken handheld to capture the colorful flowers in the foreground and the sun peeking through in the background. I’ll admit I got lucky with the Gull in the left hand corner. I’ll be getting a print done of this in the near future. This image is available for purchase here, use the coupon code: blog13 for 15% off at checkout.

Day 89-Santa Barbara Sunset

After two days of fog in the evening I was excited to see the sunset for variety. This print is available for purchase here, use the coupon code: blog13 for 15% off at checkout..

Day 90- J in her Easter Dress

Got home in time to hunt some eggs!

For Spring Break we decided to head to the beaches of Santa Barbara. My wife discovered a bakery in West Los Angeles called Fonuts that sells Gluten Free and Vegan donuts. This discovery meant one thing, we had to alter our travel plans to find this place and pick up some donuts! For those not acquainted with being gluten free and dairy free this is a big deal. I do a pretty good making treats at home but there is something about heading to a bakery and picking up tasty treats to enjoy! My wife is one that really misses the bakery experience.

Comparing these donuts to Krispy Kremes is a mistake. They are quite moist and fairly dense. I loved them, in small bites.  I think we’ll be making other trips to Fonuts in the future!

While at the bakery I wondered how far away LACMA was. I had wanted to go check out Levitated Mass by Michael Heizer. A quick glance at my iPhone revealed that we were 2 blocks away, so back in the car with our package of Fonuts, it was on to LACMA.

Levitated Mass is a sculpture of a huge rock that came from a quarry in Riverside County, about 60 miles or so from LACMA. It’s the rock that took months to reach it’s final location. It’s an interesting piece of art. You can walk underneath the rock, you can get close to it and see if from all side but the top. The kids had a good time stretching their legs. If you’re in the area and didn’t have to pay for parking it’s completely free to check out Levitated Mass. I did park at the Museum so I paid the $10 for parking. If my kids were a bit older I probably would have paid to go check out a few other galleries, but figured my 4 and 8 year old had had enough with the big rock and they wanted to get to the beach!  Here are some photos I took of Levitated Mass:

Levitated Mass up close

Kids looking up at the rock

Artist Signature

Levitated Mass