I grew up in a household where hamburgers, hotdogs and steaks were the only things that were grilled. If we went beyond that to chicken or anything else more exotic, it was a rare day.

Don’t you think the grilling revolution, where everything from salad to desserts are now grilled, has really made more of an appearance in the past 5-10 years or so? I have yet to learn how to actually grill, so now that it has come about that all these goodies can be cooked on the grill, I get to pass on the recipes to my husband and get a night off from cooking. Works for me!

And yes, I do understand that it is kind of pathetic that I haven’t learned how to grill yet. The truth is, our grill knobs melted off the very first time we used it and my husband now goes through some kind of MacGyver moves to get the grill on and it frankly, scares me. Grill shopping is on my to-do list for this summer because I totally want to learn how to grill. If you have grill recommendations, please pass them on. Preferably a grill with knobs or buttons that don’t melt off… that would be nice to have.

We recently tried Grilled Bananas and were blown away at the flavor! Topped with ice cream and some ice cream toppings, we had the best banana splits, ever. Grilled pineapple and grilled peaches are also favories of ours.

If you know how to turn your grill on, ahem, then making grilled fruit is easy as pie (which is something else I seem to be challenged at, so maybe that’s not the best terminology). Either way, try it… you’ll like it! I promise!

Recipe: Grilled Bananas (Adapted from Food Network)

• 2 bananas
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• Caramel sauce for drizzling
• Vanilla ice cream (optional)

1. Preheat your gas grill
2. Slice the bananas, in their skins, half crosswise and then lengthwise so each banana is 4 pieces
3. In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar and ground cinnamon.
4. Sprinkle the brown sugar cinnamon mixture over the cut side of the bananas. Allow to sit 5 minutes for flavors to blend.
5. Place the bananas, cut side down, on the center of grill. Grill for 2 minutes or until grill marks appear. Using a pair of tongs, turn them over and cook for 5 more minutes, or until the skin pulls away from the bananas.
6. Remove the bananas from the grill and serve them immediately, on top of vanilla ice cream and drizzled with caramel sauce.

The post Fruit on the Grill {Recipe: Grilled Bananas} appeared first on Dine and Dish.

What’s a mom to do? You have one kid who wants buttermilk biscuits for breakfast. Another kiddo wants banana muffins for breakfast. One, doesn’t care what you have as long as she gets to nibble on the dough…

What I decided to do was give my kids the best of both worlds. Plenty of dough to nibble on but it wouldn’t be regular banana muffin dough or buttermilk biscuit dough. I decided to combine the two and make Banana Buttermilk Biscuits. I wasn’t sure if it was going to work or not, but it did work…and it worked so well that neither kid wants me to make plain old buttermilk biscuits again or boring old banana muffins. They both want me to keep a hold of this recipe for Banana Buttermilk Biscuits and make it as often as I can!

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Banana Buttermilk Biscuits

Banana Buttermilk Biscuits

Author Dine & Dish

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 1 Tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup butter
• 3/4 cup buttermilk or use this substitution, which is what I always do
• 1/2 cup banana mashed
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 400° F
• Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Cut in butter until crumbly.
• Slowly add buttermilk, mashed banana and vanilla and stir to moisten.
• Pat out dough on a well floured bread board until approximately 1 inch thick. Do not overwork dough. If dough is too moist, slowly need in a bit more flour until workable.
• Using a floured biscuit cutter, cut out dough and place on a greased baking sheet.
• Bake for 15 minutes or until a nice, light golden brown. Serve warm with butter and honey.

The post The Banana and Biscuit Dilemma (Recipe: Banana Buttermilk Biscuits) appeared first on Dine and Dish.

Leah Meets Paula Deen BlogHer 2009 from Kristen Doyle on Vimeo.

The video above is of Paula Deen chatting with Leah during her appearance at BlogHer. Paula was hilarious, genuine and really an overall neat person! Seeing her was definitely one of the many highlights of BlogHer.

I returned from the BlogHer conference in Chicago yesterday and since that return, so many thoughts and ideas have been swimming around in my head. For those of you who are thinking about attending a BlogHer conference sometime in the future (next year is in NYC!) I highly recommend that you do so. Here are some of my random thoughts about the BlogHer 2009 conference.

• My friend Sandie (from Inn Cuisine) and I were roomies. Sandie and I met through our blogs a couple of years ago and have been fast friends since. It was so nice to get to hang out with her and get to know her better. It has been a very long time since I have laughed as hard as I did (so hard that at one point I spewed water all over our bathroom mirror because she said something hilarious when I was trying to brush my teeth!) Thank you, Sandie, for being such a great friend!
• As you know, I was so nervous about taking Leah with me to BlogHer. It ended up being great having her there. Granted, I was tired because of lugging her around for four days and we didn’t really go to any of the parties (and there are a LOT of parties happening at BlogHer) but she was one extremely popular little chick! She had to have had her picture taken at least 100 times. I met a lot of really nice people simply because they came up and started talking to me about Leah. If you are thinking about bringing your baby to BlogHer in the future, I personally think it is fine to do. There is a crazy amount of controversy surrounding the topic, but I say to go with your gut… overall, BlogHer is very welcoming to babies. As Paula Deen says above, it is wonderful that BlogHer doesn’t make moms of young babies make a choice.
• I have to say, in all honesty, I didn’t learn a ton from the sessions I attended, but I did pick up a few very valuable nuggets of info. By and far the best part about attending BlogHer was getting to connect with so many people with like minded interests (you know…those people who don’t look at you like an alien when you say you blog) and meeting people who I have greatly admired for the past few years. I am now happy to say that some very good friends who I first met online are now friends “in real life”. I also met some wonderful ladies who I did not know before the conference. I would pay for that experience time and time again.
• BlogHer ladies like to party and BlogHer’s love swag. BlogHer had some very generous sponsors this year and we came home with an enormous amount of quality swag. Thank you to all of the sponsors and individuals who provided all the loot. My kids were in heaven going through everything when I got home!

I could go on and on about how great BlogHer was and about how inspirational it was to chat and share ideas with such smart people, but I’m sure you get the drift. As much as I enjoyed my trip to BlogHer, I’m even kind of tired of hearing about it everywhere.  I hope that any of you who haven’t attended a BlogHer conference in the past get to do so in the future!

Now, for those of you who want a great recipe, my Mother-in-Law made these yummy banana bars for the kids while I was gone. I love that this recipe uses only 2 ripe bananas because that seems to be the most common amount of bananas I have when they ripen. Either we gobble them all up, or I’m stuck with two that no one wants to eat.

Love bananas? Dine & Dish has these other recipes you might love!

The post Babies, BlogHer and Banana Bars (Recipe: Frosted Banana Bars) appeared first on Dine and Dish.