DETROIT: Greektown

I hope your enjoying my occasional posts about things in and around us here in south east Michigan - this is a bit of an old post so I thought it was about time I through it out into the blogging world. Greeektown is one of downtown Detroit's historic areas. Originally settled by German immigrants in the 1830s, they were replaced with a strong Greek populace, even with their outward migration the area remained highly influenced as an ode to all things Greek. It's an area not only home to Greek restaurants, with Greek music playing onto the streets but one of Detroit's three casinos - the Greeektown Casino Hotel.

At 25 I'd admit to never having stepped inside a casino so it was an experience seeing rows of one arm bandits [well their contemporary versions], endless streams of people and the huge scale of the place and had a play on some of the one cent machines. Afterwards we headed to one of the culinary highlights of Greektown - Pizza Papalis were the pizzas are HUGE and oh so very yum and they have a great reputation.

What culture areas of your city/town do you love? 

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Crocheted Blanket in a Heatwave

America may be having it's warmest year on record and we're constantly hitting the high 30s [even getting into the 40s at the end of last week] but to me that is apparently the best time to sit under a blanket while crocheting. I've never been one for logic. I started this project earlier this year as a blanket to throw in the car, and finally got determined enough at the weekend to finish it off with a border. I've always loved the ripple crochet effect which is achieved by repeatedly adding and taking treble stitches away at the same point. There's no true scheme to the colours either because I was just using up all the balls of wool I already add - although the purple was repeated every seven colours. I have a yearning for another blanket with granny squares but I'm not sure how many blankets a girl can get away with having ... this is already the second.

Now this has to be the perfect excuse to go on a picnic, right?!

A Banana Bread Recipe

So back to a post you might be interested in other then powder compacts  .... I've been eyeing up the idea of making banana bread for a while but being somewhat new to baking especially loafs/cakes I thought I'd wait till I had a little more experience under my rolling pin. Then we had four overly ripped bananas left and the opportunity arose to make some use out of them! For a first attempt it came out rather well and being a recipe that's very simple, quick to make and uses up fruit you might of otherwise have thrown out I thought I'd pass it along. 

3 ripped bananas all smashed and mashed up

1/3 of a cup of melted butter

1 cup of granulated sugar

1 beaten egg

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1 and a half cups of all purpose flour. 

You start off by smashing and mashing the life out of your bananas. I guess you could blend them but I hacked them to death with a fork against the edge of a bowl. Once they look like baby food add in your melted butter. 

Mix in the sugar, an egg and the vanilla extract. Then add in the baking soda and lastly the flour.

Pour into a pre-lined loaf tin and bake on 350F/175C for an hour. 

There are plenty of recipes out there with different takes on it - some even chocolate based. Next time I'm thinking of perhaps throwing in some raisins and/or nuts too. I've been eating it with butter but I'm sure it tastes grand even without that. I do have to hide it though because it's rather tasty and if I didn't I'd munch my way through it before the boy got home.

Are you a fan of the olde banana bread?

LAUNCHING - Vintage Powder Compacts blog

It's actually got to the point where I'm into my collection enough to want to create a brand new blog all about powder compacts. Nearly three years into collecting, with fifty or so compacts to speak off things are going to the next level. I'm slowly starting to up my game in the world of collecting compacts through not only selling the occasional one but through sharing my tiny bit of knowledge. I want to try and make a mark in the vintage compact world. I have no illusion that I'll become a BIG name but I do have the illusion that my collection should be shared. As a collector I try and hunt out information on the internet all the time, but I struggle and run into dead ends constantly - that's something I want to change and perhaps why I want to branch out into a new blog.

Don't get me wrong - compacts will still be a feature here [that's never going to stop] and there will be links flying here there and everywhere for new posts over on the blog. Nevertheless I have so much more I'd love to write and post about that I don't get chance because of the huge backlog I already have here on LOTS [trust me I have compacts I brought in March that haven't made their way out], not to mention the fear of boring you all about them. The recent poll I had running did come to show that although you all love hearing/reading about my vintage finds more posts on compacts didn't rank highly. To me they deserve a blog of their own so that's what they're getting.

I would be thrilled if you'd love to come over and additionally follow me on my Vintage Powder Compact blog!