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Best Banana Nut Bread

A great traditional baking recipe goes a step further when you use Blue Diamond Walnuts!

This recipe is posted on their Best Banana Nut Bread they have posted on their website http://www.diamondnuts.com/recipe/banana-bread

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups Diamond of California (R) Walnuts or Pecans

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour or 1 cup all purpose and 3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 1/3 cups granulated sugar

1 1/4 ups mashed ripe banana (about 3 or 4 bananas)

1/3 cup grape seed oil or vegetable oil

1/3 cup buttermilk

*Variation: Spiced Banana Nut Bread

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnemon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

*Variation: Ginger-Banana Nut Bread

1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger

The Steps

  1. Position rack in center of the oven and preheat to 350F*. Spread nuts in a single layer on a heavy small baking sheet or shallow pan. Toast the nuts in the oven until just golden brown and fragrant, stirring once, about 7-10 minutes for walnuts and 5-7 minutes for pecans. (If nuts are already chopped reduce baking time by 2-3 minutes and watch closely.) Cool and coarsely chop. Maintain oven temperature.
  2. Grease a 9×5-inch loaf pan. Dust the loaf pan lightly with flour, tapping out excess. Whisk the flour, baking soda and salt to blend in a lard bowl. Stir in 1 cup nuts.
  3. Whisk the eggs and sugar in a medium blow to blend. Mix in the bananas, oil and buttermilk.
  4. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and stir just until combined. Pour the batter onto the prepared pan. Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup nuts over the batter. Bake until a tester inserted in center of the loaf comes out clean, after about 1 hour. (Cover bread loosely with foil the last 10-15 minutes if top is very brown.)
  5. Cool the bread in pan on rack 10 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the bread to loosen. Turn the bread out onto the rack and cool completely.

IPhone IOS 13.1.1

For those of you who own Apple products, especially and iPhone, you may have already downloaded and installed the latest update.

Generally, I wait until the bugs are worked out of any new release as there’s almost always bugs but I decided to take the plunge sooner rather than later primarily due to my having some issues. My hope was the update would fix these issues.

So, today I downloaded the updated IOS 13.1.1. I am learning about the many new features this update has.

I have already seen a few changes that I can tell I will like but also a few that have me a little puzzled as to why they were a part of the update. My hope is to learn a little more and share but also encourage you to leave comments on your experience and thoughts as well.

For those of you who prefer the swipe keyboard (you put your finger on the first letter then ‘swipe’ the word to type it out, you’ll be happy to know this is now native to this update. Personally, I’ve never latched on to this way as typing so, for me, won’t change anything.

I love to use emoji’s with my family and friends especially if I want to emphasize a feeling. Now you can use ‘Memojis’….cute little characters you can design to look like you or you can have fun with this feature and add all kinds of crazy things. This is a cool feature that is now native so you don’t have to purchase an app for that.

This update now offers what is referred to as a ‘dark’ mode. This lowers the brightness of your screen and apps. I tried it but only briefly. Just didn’t feel natural to me but you can set this to only turn on at night or other custom times that work for you. I’ll have to play around with this more before I make a firm decision.

One of the best things you can now do with your friends or significant other is connect not one but two pairs of AirPods. This can be extremely helpful while flying, working out at the gym or doing other things where sharing the same music, webinar or audible book just sounds better with two people sharing the experience. Don’t have AirPods? Powerbeats Pro headphones work too so you do have another choice.

One thing I have not tried is the sharing of my phone’s hotspot. I’ll have to share more on this in a future post.

These are just a few of the new things I’ve found in my research so far and know there are more out there such as the changes in how emails are handled, the ability to have your tasks stay on your main screen on your iPad and more. (I don’t see the tasks choice on the iPhone, most likely due to the smaller screen).

Bottom line? I’ve only had a short amount of time to discover all of the changes that came with this update but I hope these few help you navigate the new features just a little easier.

Please feel free to leave comments on your experience and if you are a fan or maybe not so much. I encourage you to share your discoveries as well. I know I continue to discover new things for some time after a new update is introduced. The main thing though is to just have fun!

Is Your Rose In Full Bloom or Wilted? Mine fizzled, farted and faded today….all because of fraud and a bad attitude towards business in my state

So, here’s how today went.  My ‘Rose’ was in full bloom…. buzzing right along.  Making money.  Building a stellar reputation.  Building a great crew.  Creating jobs.  Lots of jobs….. then the unthinkable happened.  Fraud.  Fraud that only those in my state feel due to the huge unfriendly attitude towards business, especially small ones.  Maybe this happens in your state too.  That’s how I feel.  Defeated.  Deflated.  No one is there to help me and my employees.  No one is there to protect us, the innocent small business owners just trying to create jobs and opportunity and maybe, just maybe, make a profit.  Today, I lost my company.  Today I lost my company due to fraud.  Today is a very sad day.

But….I will survive, even if it means starting over again.

What about you?  Have you had this happen to your business?  How did you conquer and prevail?

We will you know.  We can….and we shall do it together.