Festival Time

Clearly this blog is not written by someone dealing with the record high temperatures of summer 2012.  Who else is cooking up pots of lentil soup and pans full of rice and beans as they try to stay cool in 100+ heat and/or have lost power due to summer storms?  July in San Francisco is cool, grey and foggy.  We do get our sunny, warm days but warm is a high in the low 70's, maybe.

But, there is warm sunny bright spot in all that cool grey fog and it's the High Sierra Music Festival. Four days of music, fun, friends, more music, blue skies, sunny days and blessed, blessed real, honest, sun created HEAT.  So hot you can go swimming, so hot you carry a mister around with you all day long, so hot you are rousted from your tent as soon as the sun peeks over the horizon.  Not this year, thanks to luck and a strategically placed tarp and sun shade set up.  Luck because someone else set it up and my tent just happened to be in the right spot to take full advantage of shade until 11:00am everyday.  Shade luxury. 

With four full days of music and camping you are going to need some serious sustenance to get through it .  You can eat every meal from the food vendors but that gets boring, and expensive.  You could also bring your camp stove and cook your own dinner but that takes time.  Time that could be better spent lolling around under a shade tent listening to some great music.  Which leaves you with prepared food.  With a little bit of work at home you can eat delicious food with minimum hassle.   I cook up food that can be eaten easily, food that has protein to keep you dancing, food that appeals when it's warm out and food that will still taste good after a few days in a cooler.  

After years and years and many music festivals I think I finally have the food plan down.  There have been some errors, cut up strawberries do not last, carrots and hummus seem good but, they take forever to eat.  Ditto peanut butter and anything. 

First up breakfast.  Here is where the breakfast bread is king.  Easy to eat, tastes delicious and zero prep work at the festival.  I opt for banana bread with chocolate chips but any breakfast bread will work; zucchini, lemon poppy seed, walnut and whatever.  But, banana bread is my favorite and banana bread loaded with chocolate chips is even tastier so chocolate chip banana bread it is.   

What about my morning caffeine?  I usually opt for the canned Starbucks or Trader Joe's coffee.  Pretty tasty and they do the trick but they can be too sweet for my preference.  This year my friends made their own coffee at home sweetened and creamed to their own specifications and transported it in a water bottle to the festival.  I am impressed with their ingenuity and will definitely be trying that next year.

I use my Mom's banana bread recipe.  I have two versions, one told to me over the phone by my Mom and another written down from my Mom and somehow they are different.  One calls for 1/4 cup oil which I imagine makes it moister but after skipping that one time I had no problem leaving it out of future versions.  I have yet to run into a too dry banana bread. 

Tomorrow, daytime festival food.  Today, here is breakfast.

Mom's Chocolate Chip Banana Bread
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
3-4 ripe bananas
2 eggs
2 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup chocolate chips

Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add bananas and eggs and mix until combined.

Sift together flour, baking soda and salt.  Add to wet ingredients and mix together.  Stir in chocolate chips.

Pour into greased bread pan and cook at 350 about 1 hour.  A toothpick should come out clean when inserted into the middle. 

The banana bread can cool in the pan.  When it is cool cut in half lengthwise and then into slices and place into a gallon sized ziploc bag.  The ziploc bag can go into the cooler during the day to keep the chocolate chips from melting everywhere.  Half a loaf is perfect for one person for a four day festival.  The other half can be frozen and eaten the week after you get home.