Office pudding

For some reason I've been really lazy about finishing up the Argentina series. I guess I've been letting too many other things take up my time. There is more of that to come, I promise. But not right now.

I want to share a pudding recipe that I've been making at the office. Well, "recipe" might be a little grandiose a term for it. But it tastes really good and is pretty healthy. Mind you, I work in an office with a well stocked micro-kitchen, and I also keep a few special ingredients in my desk drawer. And if you think I'm talking about booze, you're wrong. That stays on top of the desk. In the drawer, however, I keep a box of Roastaroma tea, bottles of cinnamon, cayenne pepper, stevia extract, blackstrap molasses, and a can of vanilla Biochem Vegan Protein powder.

Coupling some of these things with foods that are available around the office, I'm able to make a decent "banana pudding." Here are the ingredients:

• 1 banana, well ripened
• 1/2 cup soy milk (at home I use almond milk), sweetened
• 1 scoop vanilla protein powder
• 2 tablespoons of something crunchy. Usually a blend of seeds & nuts, but sometimes granola or some other kind of cereal.
• 1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses
• a healthy sprinkling of cinnamon

Only the first three ingredients are really necessary. Everything else is optional, though I really recommend not compromising on the crunchy part. Molasses can be an acquired taste, and it doesn't do much for the pudding's appearance, but I love the flavor as well as the extra minerals it provides.

All you have to do is mix all the stuff together in a bowl and eat it, but that doesn't make for very interesting blogging. So I'll share the one small innovation I have to bring to the table, as it were.

Our micro-kitchen has these flimsy disposable forks that aren't very good at mashing up bananas. So here's the secret that took me months to discover: you can mash the banana by hand while it's still in the peel. You'll want to do this quite gently so as not to break the skin open prematurely. Work the banana radially rather than length-wise until it's good and mushy. Then you can either peel it as usual, or just break the stem end open and squeeze it like a pastry bag.

So there it is: office-expedient banana pudding. Simple, delicious, healthy.