The "Good Night's Sleep" smoothie

I was going to blog about my bread making but since that didn't turn up well, I'm going to blog about my smoothie mix instead.

After a friend sent me a list of food that'd help me sleep better (forgot the link, sorry), I come up with this smoothie, which taste fantastic and I think is helping me sleep...

Ingredient
1 banana, roughly chopped
600ml milk (or about two mug's worth)
1 teaspoon of honey
a pinch of cinnamon, if you like cinnamon like I do. :)

To make smoothie
Use hand held mixer to mix them. What do you expect? :)

Apparently bananas have melatonin in them, which is what I've been taking in US to help me sleep (it's a prescription drug here in NZ. Grr). Milk being good for sleep is well known. And honey not only supposed to help you sleep better, I heard it's supposed to help with the liver too. Somewhere on the web will be an article about it. :)

Bacon and Mushroom Baked Rice

Ah.. baked rice. It's a Hong Kong cafe thing mainly. I was going to make carbonara and then I realise I don't have cream. So, what I did was making baked rice instead.

Pretty simple really: cook rice as per usual. We haven't got the rice cooker an adapter yet so I had to cook it in a pot the "old fashion" way. While the rice is being cooked, make the mushroom sauce. (recipe below)

Now the rice was done, add bacon. Pete and I get the bacon pieces because it's cheaper and "pre-chopped". We don't really eat whole rasher of bacon that often anyway. So add that on top, and put it in the oven at 180C.

Meanwhile, grate your cheese, enough to cover the dish, and make some bread crumbs. It's my trick really: just run a fork in the flesh part of the top of the loaf of bread. We use Vogel which means it's got yummy linseeds and soy goodness too. :) Just make it a wee bit more special.

Now: the rice and bacon should be warmed (it should only take about 10 minutes to grate those cheese and make those breadcrumbs. You do not need that much cheese!), put the mushroom sauce on, covered with cheese, and sprinkle the breadcrumbs. Back in the oven (still 180C) for about 25-30 minutes, basically until the cheese is slightly toasted on top.

I think I made a bit too much, so leftovers for tomorrow lunch I think. A mate's wedding tomorrow (on a Friday... a Lenten Friday too! Heh.) so I think that should be handy for us just because we head off. :)

Mushroom Sauce
It's basically a white sauce with mushroom in it. If you use pre-package stuff you probably want to heat it up with the mushroom in it. If you are making it from scratch, here's how (from the all-mighty Edmund's Cookbook :))

1. melt 50g butter in a pan
2. add your mushroom. I added about 1.5 cups of chopped mushroom. Depends how "mushroomy" you like it I guess.
3. Once the mushroom is softened and you can smell the gorgeous mushroom aroma, add 3 tablespoon of plain flour. Stir.
4. By now you should have a gluey mess. Heat it until it's a big foamy and bubbly. Then gradually add 1 cup of milk. The trick is to add a little, stir the heck out of that thing, and then add a little again.
5. Add salt, pepper, parsley, and whatever else that may take your fancy. :)