Quarantine Cooking, Week 2

• Linguine with Cauliflower Pesto – A Smitten Kitchen cookbook recipe that I hadn't made yet and that was really rather all right. I didn't get the pesto flavors quite to my liking--more sherry vinegar?--but the concept is definitely solid.
• Crackly Banana Bread – My brother prefers the SK banana bread with the bourbon and butter, but this one is tasty too. I had a sad lingering amount of whole wheat flour to use up and I made up the small difference with white; using all or mostly whole wheat flour definitely gives it a bit of a stronger crumb. (Important consideration if you're giving tiny pieces to your parrot, who will hold it in his foot.) I used to make this with millet when I had it, but I haven't for years and it's just as good without. I would definitely recommend the full 1/3 cup of maple syrup, as it isn't very sweet even with that amount.
• Banana Oat Weekday Pancakes – I made these on the weekend and they were still excellent, and an excellent way to use up some slightly gone-off bananas.
• Cranberry Crunch – This dessert is an old holiday tradition in my family, but it's been more than seven years since I've seen our actual recipe: five years ago when my brother and dad were packing up our old house to sell I was living in Japan, and I don't know whether the very old cookbook it was in made it into the storage unit or not. After several times making the dish off this version of the recipe, which is the closest I've seen to what I remember, I think I've finally figured out the changes to make: use 3/4 cup dark brown sugar, and increase the oats to somewhere between 1.25 to 1.5 cups. I don't think that will require decreasing the flour but I'm not sure. (Did our recipe also call for more butter? I remember it being much less crumbly. It might have called for two sticks of butter.) Bake for 40 minutes so it doesn't overbake. (If more butter, try 40-45.) I also suspect that it would be possible to sub ground oats for the flour for a GF option. Anyway this is obviously all a work in progress and I do intend to write up the recipe once I get it right. But I'm definitely much closer than I was before. And it was very comforting, just as I wanted it to be.