Banana bread

[redbird]

I have just eaten the end slice off the first loaf of banana bread I've ever baked. It's okay, not great--though I'm hoping the non-end pieces will be better, since I suspect the "dry" feeling came from the amount of well-cooked end/edge in the end slice.

I am feeling ridiculously domestic. Not because I baked banana bread--the recipe is right there in Fanny Farmer, though I used pecans because we don't have walnuts, and it's quite simple. I am feeling ridiculously domestic because of what prompted me to bake banana bread: not a deep desire for banana bread, or for home-baked sweets in general, but because I had two bananas that had turned dark brown, and this recipe seemed simpler than the banana cake a few pages later.

I think this is the first time I've actually used my grandmother's loaf pan, though I seem to recall either cattitude or adrian_turtle using it for either potatoes or yams last month.

The recipe calls for three ripe bananas, so I bought two more bananas, one for baking and one to eat plain. (Also some other groceries--and I had lunch at a cafe on Broadway, doing my part for the local economy during the transit strike both by working from home, hence getting paid my normal salary, and patronizing a local business.)

Addendum: I just had another slice of the banana bread. It really is too dry. I suspect the problem is that one of the bananas I used was still bright yellow, not black or even spotted brown. Next time I'll know this. "Only be sure, always to call it research."

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Have you read the Thomas Disch story "The Happy Turnip"?

In that story, there's a black banana that's depressed because it thinks nobody will eat it. The Happy Turnip tries to cheer it up by suggesting that maybe someone will make banana bread, and the banana says "Whoever made banana bread with one banana?" and refuses to be comforted. But in the happy ending, the human does exactly what you did, goes out and buys more bananas to make banana bread.