Every household should have a staple recipe for banana bread that they like to play around with: adding nuts, or chocolate chips or other random treats they enjoy. For that is the fun of your own wooden spoons – making something common uniquely yours. These are recipes and concepts that can be written in a leather journal, or laminated for future generations.
The Basic Recipe
Even as a new bride and mom, I found myself grasping for basic recipes. How does one roast a basic chicken? How can I make homemade yogurt? What is a simple pasta recipe?
Here are a few basic recipes that have helped me navigate the establishment of my own home cooking:
Venison for Dinner’s Homemade Yogurt
Farmhouse on Boone’s Breakfast Strata (for the ends and dried bits of homemade bread)
Farmhouse on Boone’s “Chicken in the Instapot“
Elliott Homestead’s Jam Galette (for hosting a simple dessert)
Love and Lemons’ Homemade Pasta
Toddler Land
In toddler land, we are buying the largest bunch of bananas each week and mostly devouring the bunch. Should some slide by and make it until their brown skinned maturity, they are equally devoured in haste via smoothies and banana bread. The banana, she’s special, isn’t she?
For me, toddlerhood has run in a two year cycle of “what is going on” to “gosh, how awesome is this” as each baby has come along. Newborns have not been easy for us, but two is a sweet sweet age. Equally, we are adoring the entrance to boyhood with four. Why has it been difficult to just enjoy each day for what it is?
Because change is hard. Because maturity is slow. Because parenting is so in depth. Because I made the wrong choices. Because one can feel like they are missing out.
Luke 10:38-42
When a passage of scripture pops up in more than one instance, I do try to pay attention. Coincidentally, it popped up in a book I was reading, my son’s morning devotional and then a sermon at our church. This was the passage:
“As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, He came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to Him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what He said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to Him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me.” “Martha, Martha, ” The Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed – or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Mary was concerned with how she could bless Jesus with her business, but she missed out on hearing Him. Marth felt justified with her preparations as well. Jesus gave her a timely reminder, so gently.
This is the place the Lord has placed me. In a position to disciple and enjoy my children. Not be overly busy with chores. Not to wholeheartedly pursue entrepreneurship. Not to socialize our calendar. But to be with them and enjoy them. The closer I find that I am to that purpose, the closer I feel to Him.
Was that too heavy for banana bread? Yeah, well it’s the end of the week, so…
Banana Bread Recipe
Ingredients
2 C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 over ripe bananas
½ c butter, room temp
1 c sugar (honey, cane sugar, maple syrup)
2 eggs
1 TB milk
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
½ c chopped pecans
Directions
- Combine dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt) and set aside.
- Beat butter with the sugar until combined, followed by remaining wet ingredients (bananas, eggs, milk, vanilla).
- Finish by adding cinnamon and chopped pecans and mix until incorporated.
- Line a muffin tin and distribute batter into twelve muffins, or place in a greased loaf pan.
- Bake for 25 minutes at 325F, turn the muffins in the oven and finish with an additional 8-15 minutes. If using a loaf pan, cook for 45 mins at 325F.
- Test muffins to ensure they are cooked, and allow to cool.
- Will stay fresh at room temperature for 4 days, or one week in the fridge.
Supplemental reading:
We hope you enjoy our basic banana bread recipe and delight your family and friends with sweet loaves this season! To make the banana bread more interactive, pair with one of these books or another from our “Bunny Book Club“!
- “Baking Day at Grandma’s” by
- “Curious George Rides a Bike” by Margaret and H. A. Rey
- “Bread and Jam for Frances” by Russel Hoban
- “Bunny Cakes” by Rosemary Wells
- “Kiss the Cow” by Phyllis Root
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