Banana Bread: Yes, We Have No Bananas

I love banana bread!  Yet, I have had trouble finding a good recipe for it.  But today, my mom made a new banana bread recipe and it turned out GREAT!  Even though I didn't make this recipe, I wanted to share it with you today because I have been eating it!

Whenever I think of bananas I think of the original Sabrina movie starring Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and William Holden.  A strange connection?  Not really, in the movie the character Sabrina goes on a date with Linus and they take a portable record player with them and play "Yes, We Have No Bananas."  I always thought the "yes" before the "no" was very odd, but it did make it memorable!

BANANA BREAD

5 bananas, unpeeled in their peels

2 c. white flour (or combination of 1/2 c. wheat and 1 1/2 c. white flour)

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

1/8 tsp. ground ginger

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 c. sugar

1/2 c. melted butter, cooled

Topping

3 Tbl. brown sugar

2 Tbl. flour

4 tsp. butter

Pierce bananas with fork several times then lay on aluminum foil lined jelly roll pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes to caramelize the sugar in the bananas.  They will look black and ugly!  Set aside to cool.

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg and ginger in a bowl.  Set aside.

Combine eggs, sugar, and melted butter.

Spray bread pan(s) with Pam.  Use one large loaf or two medium loaf or four small loaf pans.

Pour liquid mixture into dry, barely mixing together.

Pour into bread pans.

Combine brown sugar and flour then work butter into dry ingredients to make topping.

Crumble the topping over the top of the loaves.

Back at 350 degrees for 25-45 minutes depending on the pan size.  Remove from oven when batter pulls away from sides of pans.  Check for doneness by inserting a toothpick or a sharp knife.  If comes out clean, the bread is done.

Family: Our Love is Here to Stay

Remember yesterday's blog about family life?  Well there's more about it today!

After mixing the songs from our live jazz album most of the day, Erik decided to rearrange and clean the garage...and clean he did!  He reorganized the workbench, made the work flow more obvious, and freed up space we didn't even know we had.

I've been meaning to make Crabmeat Rangoon for him since we got home a month ago but haven't had the chance.  Now I'll be honest--oil scares me A LOT.  So I do all the prep and my mom always does the frying.  She's braver than I am when it comes to cooking with oil!  Let's put it this way: she's had more experience with it!

So a repeat song is worth repeating because in our family "Our Love is Here to Stay!"  And who could sing it better than the sublime Ella Fitzgerald?


CRABMEAT RANGOON

2-6 oz. cans of white crabmeat, drained (no imitation!)
1-8 oz. package cream cheese, softened
1/2 medium onion, minced
1/4 tsp. black pepper
dash of salt
1-12 oz. package of won ton wraps (I buy Nasoya)
approximately 2 c. Canola oil

In a medium mixing bowl combine the crabmeat, cream cheese, onion, black pepper, and salt.  Mix by hand with a fork.  Set aside.

Fill a small bowl with about 1/2 an inch of water.  Open the package of won ton wraps.  Working quickly so the won tons don't dry out, take each square and put a 1/2 tablespoon sized dollop in the middle.  Dip your finger in the water bowl and wet the edges of the square.  Pinch two opposite corners together, then the other two corners together and seal the edges together to make the shape in the photo above.  Be sure to double check the seals so the filling does not leak out when frying.

Prepare a plate with four layers of paper towels.

Heat oil in a fryer (ours is a Delonghi fryer) following directions for heating oil.  When oil is at the right temperature, put four to six won tons in the wire basket and lower into the oil.  Fry until light golden.  Lift wire basket out, draining oil off won tons. and set them on the paper towel lined plate.

Serve with La Choy Sweet & Sour Sauce.  It's the best!

You Know You're a Family...

What do you do when someone's childhood memory gets shredded by accident?  Everyone in the family immediately gets on floor to sift through piles of shredded documents to find the pieces!  (Note the gun earmuffs still on Erik's ears to block out the shredding machine noise!)

That's what happened at our house today.  My brother's first library card was in the to-shred-pile when my mom exclaimed just before she inserted it into the shredder, "Oh, look, Erik's old library card!"  Erik looked up from the game he was playing with the saddest face imaginable!  No one knew he treasured his "first piece of plastic" with his signature on it!

So we dumped out the shreds of documents and felt our way through the paper to find the hard orange  plastic shreds!  Not as easy as it sounds!  Plus, in our search we also found his second childhood library card.  Painstakingly, he pieced together both cards onto very sturdy tape!  I save mementos for my brothers and put them into scrapbooks for them.  That's where these two pieced-together library cards will have a safe home!

It takes family to put pieces back together and create more family memories in the process!  At the heart of family is the willingness to sustain the connection we have by supporting what is important to each other.

And when I think of family, I think of the Disney song from Tarzan, "You'll Be in My Heart," by Phil Collins.  So here it is!

Birthday Cake: Vanilla Ice Cream...Favorite?

My brother, Keith William, has a birthday tomorrow!  But we couldn't wait for cake.  We had to have it today.  And, of course, it has to be a Dairy Queen ice cream cake.

Every year we special order his cake because he likes DQ vanilla ice cream so much he has the chocolate layer replaced with vanilla.  So his birthday cake is a double layer vanilla cake with the chocolate caramel and cookie crumble middle!  We gave up writing on the cake long ago since his favorite candy is Heath.  As you see it's just not easy to write on.  Well, you can write on it, but you'd have to be really good for it to come out legibly...

I've highlighted "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" before, but seeing as Keith William's favorite flavor of ice cream is vanilla (no joke) and the second verse of the song talks about the finer pronunciation points of the word vanilla, I feel it is very appropriate!  Enjoy this classic jazz duet sung by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong!