Food n Love

"Good food ends with good talk." -Geoffrey Neighbor


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Going Bananas Part Deux

My absolute favorite snack is banana bread…or maybe it’s ice cream…it’s hard to decide between the two.  Either way it’s at the top of my fav snack list.

I admit I’m super lazy when it comes to baking bread.  Why bother to make it when I can so easily buy a slice from Starbucks whenever the craving hits.  Much more convenient.  However, the day I impulsively decided to save a little extra change & bake my first loaf of banana bread my kitchen, of course, wasn’t properly stocked. 

The recipe called for walnuts, I had none.  No problem.  Almonds are sort of similar, I just chopped those up instead.  Sour cream?  Nada.  Not a big deal though since I had just made lasagna the week before & I had a little left over extra cottage cheese which was still good.  So I whipped out my food processor out of my cupboard, scooped it into the processor & smoothed it out….almost like sour cream.  Butter?  Well I didn’t have that either, but I had a container of Olivio which personally I think has more flavor than butter anyway.  White sugar?  Nope.  I haven’t bought that in over a decade.  But I did have raw organic sugar imported from Madagascar or someplace exotic sounding.  And of course for the part of the recipe that called for vanilla extract I splashed in a generous amount of vanilla syrup that I brought back from a past trip to Haiti.  Even if the recipe hadn’t requested vanilla, I would have most certainly added the Haitian goodness because it is my secret ingredient to achieving absolute heavenly deliciousness in most of my cooking adventures.

The end result?  My banana bread snack came out tasting like crack.  Well, to be honest I don’t know what crack tastes like, but I do know I’m officially addicted to the love of this banana bread recipe!

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Janet’s Rich Banana Bread *curtesy of allrecipes.com

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

2 medium bananas, sliced

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).  Lightly grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan.
  2. In a large bowl, stir together the melted butter & sugar.  Add the eggs & vanilla, mix well.  Combine the flour, baking soda & salt, stir into the butter mixture until smooth.  Finally, fold in the sour cream, walnuts & bananas.  Spread evenly into the prepared pan
  3. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.  Cool loaf in the pan for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. 

LOVE AT FIRST BITE ❤

 


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Going Bananas

 

Ummm……..why are there three bananas still on my kitchen counter?

Here’s the back story.

So my friend was coming over for dinner & I needed to whip up a quick dessert that would go with mac & cheese & a variety of vegetable side dishes.  I didn’t want to bake a pie since I’d just made a peach one that the night before for a couple of friends & I wasn’t in the mood to make anything in the form of cake.  Then a light bulb went off in my brain.  Banana pudding!  Quick, easy & tasty!  Why not?  On my way home from work, I stopped off at the store & picked up a box of Vanilla Wafers & 3 bananas.

Home in my kitchen I excitedly broke out a sauce pan as I prepared to stir up a coconut pudding spiked with rum.  In my imagination the coconut & rum flavors would mix well with the wafers & bananas.  The rum smelled absolutely delicious as it steamed up from the bubbling coconut pudding.  Once the pudding thickened, it was time to start layering the ingredients.  Wafers, spiked pudding, wafers, more pudding, crumbled wafers & for presentation a dusting of powdered chocolate to top it all off.  Desert assembly complete, off to the fridge it went to chill.  Now normally I don’t snack on what I’m cooking, but the rum infused pudding smelled so divine I couldn’t resist licking the spoon.  Of course it tasted as wonderful as it smelled.

About an hour later as I was slicing up an eggplant to pair with the mac & cheese my eye caught something bright & yellow colored sitting on the other countertop.   Ummm…….why are there three bananas still on my kitchen counter?????

When I told my dinner guest the story later that evening, he spent about 5 minutes doubled over laughing.  He then decided he would rather have a left over slice of pie from the night before instead of banana pudding sans bananas.  I sure couldn’t blame him.  A person can’t love the idea of banana pudding if it’s missing bananas 🙂