Who Has Time to Blog?????

Seriously, everyone I know is so busy we're trying to find time just to get enough sleep, it takes time to blog!!

Anyways, let's forget about all that for a little while and think about banana bread instead.  I think I first tried banana bread in the bread basket of this seafood restaurant my family used to go to when we were little kids.  Each basket had an assortment of rolls and breads, including one slice of banana bread.  Luckily, they always brought multiple baskets to our table during that window of time between ordering your food and the food actually arriving at the table, so we didn't have to fight over that one slice...  I didn't know what the banana bread was, I just knew that it was sweet and yummy!

Eventually I learned that you can make banana bread at home, WOW!!!  I've always heard that overripe bananas make the best banana bread, the ones that are turning brown.  Every now and then, we don't eat all the bananas fast enough and there's 2 or 3 bananas starting to turn brown.  It seems like the only logical thing to do is make banana bread.  Today my colleague told me that she used to intentionally not eat her bananas so her mom would have to make banana bread at the end of the week.  Good thinking!

This week I had like 6 brown bananas!  So I made 2 loaves, one with nuts and one without.  This recipe comes from the classic Joy of Cooking and it is enough for one loaf.  I made the banana bread slightly healthier by substituting whole wheat flour for 1/2 the flour and it still tasted really good.  You don't need a mixer to make this, it comes out perfectly delicious by using a wire whip (or even a fork) to mix the batter.

BANANA BREAD:

Dry Ingredients:
1 and 3/4 cup all purpose flour (or 50/50 whole wheat and all purpose)
2 and 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup sugar

Wet Ingredients:
1/3 cup shortening (vegetable oil)
3/4 teaspoon grated lemon rind
2 eggs
1 and 1/4 cup ripe banana

(1/2 cup nuts) (walnuts are best)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  You'll need 2 bowls to make banana bread; one for the dry ingredients and one for the wet ingredients.  Put all the dry ingredients in one bowl and mix them together.  Then put all the wet ingredients in another bowl and mix them together using a wire whip so the bananas get mashed as you mix.  You can use a fork if you don't have a wire whip, or you can also use an electric mixer.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix it all together really good.  Add the chopped nuts last and stir them in.

Grease a loaf pan with either oil or butter, then sprinkle some flour into the pan.  This step helps the banana bread get out of the pan after it cooks.  Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake it at 350 degrees for an hour.  To test it, you stick a long toothpick, metal or bamboo skewer down into the middle of the loaf - when you pull it out it should be clean.  If it still has bits of batter stuck to it, bake it for a few more minutes until the skewer comes out clean.  Yummy!!!  Your house will smell so good!!!