Healthy banana muffins. Friendships and a risky pregnancy

Manila is my third diplomatic posting so far, not counting the time spent in Canberra in between each one. What I like about the diplomatic life is the great cultural experience you live and the people you meet with very different backgrounds. 

In this particular posting I have been lucky with my friendships. I still have 8 months before we leave in June for good, so I am sure more people will cross my path. However, some of them are acquaintances and only a small number are real friends. Even if  I do not write their names, they know whom I am referring to.

How do you feel a true friendship? Well, I felt it in many occasions during these 2 years but especially during and after my pregnancy. The day it was confirmed that I was pregnant, I was shocked and Nick fainted on the floor. He didn't recover for the next 8 months.

This happened the day after Nick and I hosted at home a Christmas party for the local staff of the embassy. During the party, Nick organised a quiz game and asked the crowd:"how many burgers my wife had tonight?"...I am too embarrassed to tell you the number but more than usual, that's for sure.

I spent New Years Eve at the hospital watching the Doce Campanadas in the Spanish TV; it is a tradition in Spain to wish you good luck for the new year, and you eat 12 grapes, one at the time, every time the old bell in the Puerta del Sol makes the sound "ding". It was officially 2013 and I was in bed, in the high-risk pregnancy room of the hospital, without my family. Pretty depressing to be honest. "Es lo que hay" (literally, it's what there is or there's no point complaining) as my mum would say in difficult situations.

By April, my pregnancy was still risky but it went ahead. I had to stop my culinary course, exercise, and in general any "normal"activity that it could cause a miscarriage. I was interned in the hospital a couple of times. Not easy.

Anyway, in July Juanan was born and spent the first 12 days of his life in an incubator. One of the hardest moments of my life after my father passed away. Today, he is 3 months old and a healthy little boy.

During all this year, these friends have been next to me, helping me and my family, with moral support and through playdates with Aurelia (so she kept busy). I am very grateful.

This is a photo of one of the playdates I hosted this week with my daughter's friends.

Recipe of banana muffins-or cake-

• 225g plain flour (or mix 50g wholemeal+175g plain)
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 3 large very ripe (lots of black spots!) bananas, mashed.
• 300g sugar (I use brown sugar)
• 2 free-range eggs
• 125g unsalted butter, room temperature
• 100ml buttermilk (I mix 100ml full cream milk with half of lemon or plain yogurt)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven 180C for the cake (or 200C for muffins). butter and flour a 26 cm ring tin or 24 muffin tray.
2. Put the dry ingredients in a bawl and whisk them by hand (it will create air).
3. In the food processor, pureed only 1 cup of mashed the bananas until smooth. Add the sugar and eggs and whiz for 1 minute. Add the butter and whiz until thick and creamy. Add the buttermilk and vanilla.
4. Add the flout mixture of the bawl and press "pulse". Do not over mix or the cake will be dry.
5. Scoop the batter into the tin or muffin tray, and bake it for 35 min, the cake or 12 min the muffins. Make sure you are not tempted to open the door for the first 5 minutes or the batter will deflate.
6. When the cake is ready (a fine skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean), leave it to cool in the tin on a rack for 10 min. 

Buen provecho!