hours and hours

So I’m way ahead on hours. The way Americorps works is that you finish your year of service having completed a certain number of hours- for me, as full time, it is 1700. This means that I am supposed to work, on a normal day, from 10 to 6:15, taking out an hour for lunch.

However, given that I was in school at 8 am two days a week and would only take a moderate break, given the many ten-hour days I put in, my weeky 15-minute-stress-lunch on Wednesdays, and my many evenings and Saturdays put in, I am ludicrously ahead on hours. As in- for the rest of the summer, with some days off already prearranged, I only have to work 4.1 hours a day to fulfill my obligation. And if I finish those hours too soon, I will not get my “living allowance” (the stipend Americorps members make) for August. But still have to complete my contract… which goes through August. Do you get that? Please explain it to me.

So, my solution is, I will go into work when I feel like it. And if I don’t feel like heading in til 9:30 on my school days, I will stay home. And bake!

I finally jumped on the beans-in-baked-goods bandwagon!

Banana Bean Blondies

Put a can of chickpeas (I stuck with my true love, Goya low sodium) in a food processor. Blend for a very very very very long time. Then add:

2 bananas
3 dates

Blend s’more. Then add:

1/4 cup ground flax
2 T whole wheat flour
sweetness of choice (I added 2 T stevia baking mix)
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp. vanilla
3 T applesauce
2 T oil
1/4 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. baking powder

Put most of it in my brownie pan, but had a bit too much.

So dumped the rest onto a griddle to make pancakes.

Very very beautiful pancakes! The blondies were good, but my heavens the pancakes were AMAZING!

I baked the blondies in a 350 oven for half an hour or so (I kept having to put them back in: the toothpick test does NOT work on these!)

Pluses to these brownies: they are sweet, delicious, and filling, and have no taste of beaniness. Cons: they get a sort of bizarre papery crust on top.

Anyway, my family and I ate the whole pan in three days or so, so I’m considering the recipe a success. They also didn’t guess the secret ingredient til I fessed up!

Also on the topic of time, I’ve been trying to savor my leisure time. I’ve been finishing work feeling sort of dead tired. Steve was nice enough to suggest a spontaneous Tuesday dinner out. We were originally going to a place in Georgetown for which he has a groupon, but apparently it flooded. Oh dear. So we ended up at Leila’s Lebanese Restaurant, in Oldtown Alexandria, a place I had already been and savored.

Since I was semiconscious and not at all hungry and Steve had eaten like 12 sandwiches or something earlier in the day (whenever the kids reject a snack, he feels compelled to eat all the leftovers), we just got small plates.

I got really really really delicious lentil soup.

Couldn’t for the life of me figure out what green was on top of it, but it gave it wonderful, wonderful flavor. This was brothier than I typically make my lentil soup, and I really dug it. Note to self.

And these sweet little pies!

Spinach filling. Mmm. I love my Greek spanikopita, but I think the Arabs might do spinach pie better than us. The outside is almost like an empanada (mm, love those too.)

I actually ended up giving one of them to Steve (I really wasn’t hungry! Also, he really was, despite the sandwiches. His appetite is a force of nature).

He got the fattoush salad, with wonderful pita chips and greens and tomatoes and za’atar. I taught him about za’atar’s existence, for which he seems vair grateful.

And makdous, yummy yummy pickley stuffed eggplants.