The bananas on the counter were ripe. Actually, they were past ripe. My husband gingerly picked them up by their equally ripe stems and headed for the trash.
"Don't throw them away." I said.
He immediately gave me the "look".
"I'm going to make banana bread with them."
His demeanor changed instantly, he smiled and gingerly placed them back on the counter. Ah yes, a way to a mans' heart..... Now I had put myself in the position of actually having to do something with them.
I don't bake much. How do I know this? Well, it's like this, when I finally found the loaf baking pans, buried deep in the cabinet that houses such bakeryish items, they had cobwebs in them. Seriously, I can't make all this stuff up.
Betty Crocker I'm not, but I do have Mother's old B.C. cookbook and I drug it out to look up a good banana bread recipe. This cookbook is old and although I'm sure the recipe it revealed was probably a good one, I resorted to Google to find another. I found one that called for two sticks of butter. Since my husband considers butter at the top of the food pyramid, I chose that recipe.
I had just finished cleaning the kitchen, so I don't know what I was thinking. Anyone who has seen me cook, knows that my kitchen looks as though an F5 tornado has gone through it when I'm done.
Of course, the first rule of thumb, when cooking, is to make sure you have all the ingredients. I scanned the recipe, nope, no flour, not enough sugar, and no baking soda or baking powder. The last canister of baking powder I had was nearly 30 years old. I'm not kidding.
My husband and I tried our hand at running a restaurant, our oldest daughter was 2 at the time. She is now 31. When you buy things for a restaurant, you usually buy things in bulk, hence the large and lasting can of baking powder. Yes, I suppose deep down I do like to cook, but if I'm not cooking for an army, it's not much fun. Anyway, the baking powder was gone. I imagine if my kids saw it and it had any thing remotely close to an expiration date stamped on its surface, they probably threw it out. Mother's been gone six years this past September, and they finally made me throw her peanut butter away, this past fall.
I go to the store to get nearly all the ingredients except the bananas. The cost of baking powder has obviously gone up, but if it lasts for another 30 years it should prove to be most cost effective. I ponder purchasing some pecans, even though the recipe called for walnuts, but the price of them seemed a little high for so few a pecan, and I decided against it. Besides, I had a large container of cashews at home.
Finally, I'm ready to start. The dry ingredients, minus the sugar, have to be sifted together, so there's one bowl. The eggs have to be beaten, there's another bowl. The bananas needed to be mashed. That wasn't going to be a problem. I could have probably just cut the ends off and squished them out of their skin like a tube of toothpaste, but no, I got out yet another bowl and hand mashed them to perfection. I figured I'd toast the cashews, so out came a nice clean skillet, then I dug out the small food processor, that has recently become my friend, and chopped up the nuts.
Since the fresh out of the frig butter is hard as a brick, I nuke it. I may not bake much, but I have astounding skills when it comes to the microwave. I once nuked a whole turkey, because my oven quit working that morning, and it didn't bounce like a rubber ball when it was done. I use my microwave oven finesseiness to make the butter un-brick like, but not soft, and did I mention, in ANOTHER bowl.
The recipe says to blend the butter and the sugar. I pour the sugar on top of the butter and march over to the cabinet to get my electric hand mixer, only to discover it isn't there. No, it's up the street at my daughter's house. I've already been out of the house to get the ingredients, put the car in the garage, the outside temperature is still falling and I'm not going back out the door.
Since the food processor is already out, with only a dusting of cashews in it, I dump the butter and sugar in there and press pulverize until the last chunk of butter quit spinning around on the inside of the lid.
Finally all the wet stuff got to be put in with the dry stuff and I grabbed the wire whisk to mix it up, because there was no way it was all going to fit in the food processor. Then I decided the wire whisk that has the little steel balls on the ends, instead of the curved wire like the first whisk I retrieved, will work better.
Eight bowls, one skillet, one food processor and 14 utensils later, the batter was in the generously greased pans and in the oven.
Although the bottom of each loaf stuck just a little bit, I scraped said stuck pieces out of the pans and placed them in their correct holes, much like a jigsaw puzzle, flipped them over, let them set a bit and served a couple of slices to my husband.
The cashews turned out to be a great alternative to the walnuts, my husband was in banana bread heaven and the dishwasher was whirring away. And the best part? The recipe didn't even call for baking powder.
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