Banana bread will cheer you up...

I’m a notorious procrastinator. It’s true. I’m trying to get better but sometimes I “fall off the wagon,” if you will. There are some days (seems like most days lately…) when the sun refuses to smile and the clouds slowly creep lower and lower until I feel like the sky will slowly crush me into a vitamin D deficient blob of gray goop. In college I learned that on days like this I have to accept that I won’t put checks next to everything on my to-do list, it’s better to just go out and do something constructive, something maybe not “productive” but at least satisfying. In the most gender roll-perfect sense, I find that baking is the perfect activity…I may not be solving the world’s problems, but at least I’m making something tasty that will spread a little joy to others.

Today, I made banana bread. Not just any old banana bread, this is a chock-full, pantry-cleaning, hearty, fattening, warm, soul-filling sort of banana bread…as rule 60 in Michael Pollan’s Food Rules states: “Treat treats as treats.” To me, that means fill them full of sugar and butter and really enjoy, there’s no shame in a treat. I modified this recipe from Bon Appetite…I’ll explain my modifications after the recipe because I have a tendency to add without measuring so there’s no way to give you the exact recipe I used.

Banana Bread with Cinnamon Crumble Topping

INGREDIENTS1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, divided

1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup mashed ripe bananas (2 to 3 medium)

2 large eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup water

2 1/2 tablespoons (packed) golden brown sugar

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour 9x5x3-inch metal baking pan. Whisk 1 1/2 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, baking soda, and salt in medium bowl. Whisk next 5 ingredients in large bowl until smooth. Add dry ingredients; stir to blend. Transfer batter to pan. Mix 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and brown sugar; sprinkle over batter.

Bake bread until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Cool bread in pan 30 minutes. Turn pan on its side; slide out bread, being careful not to dislodge topping. Turn bread right side up and cool completely.

So, I added much more cinnamon and honey, because really, that stuff is GREAT. Next, I added about ¾ of an apple because I noticed a delightful looking loaf of banana apple bread on the Bella Eats blog. Plus, I could probably eat apples with every meal for the rest of my life and be totally content. I also made a middle “layer” of cranberries, pecans and cinnamon sugar.

I made up my own crumble. If you’ve never made up a crumble, you should. They are so wonderful and pretty close to impossible to mess up, plus, every time you make one it has a slightly different character than the one before. Beautiful. My crumbles generally involve oats, brown sugar, honey, and a generous amount of butter mixed up by hand (nothing will make you feel better than getting your hands dirty in a nice, oaty crumble). I sprinkled it on top with more cranberries and pecans pieces to give the final loaf a little more color.

My confession: the pan was too small and the edges/top are a little overdone while the inside is a little gooey…the slices don’t come out so beautifully…but the whole thing is delicious enough that you can just spoon it out—no one seems to be complaining about appearances over here...

Why buy local?

What better way to start a dreary Monday than a cute video about buying local? Thank you Brad Aldridge for supporting local stores and putting this animation together.

FAT!

Last night I went to the in-store talk at Rebecca’s by Susan Dunlap: Butter is Better! (learning about healthy fats). If you’ve ever been into Rebecca’s you’ve probably seen Susan’s smiling face, she’s been there doling out healthy advice for 20 years and has over 30 years of natural food and nutrition experience! She’s a really wonderful speaker who is clearly full of tips that would make us all a little healthier.

The basic premise of her talk, as I understood it, is that we should be eating the “foods that have sustained people over long periods of time” which means that we need a balance between saturated and unsaturated fats. Saturated fats (butter, cream, whole milk, even lard) are NOT the evil, body destroying creatures that our society generally considers them to be.

I can’t even really begin to go over her whole talk because I’m sure I could never do it justice, but I’d like to give a few interesting bullet points, facts and definitions that I learned.

-Crisco was invented in 1911 and marks the beginning of processed fats in our society.

-Trans fatty acids “are a type of fat molecule produced by a process called “partial hydrogenation,” which rearranges the hydrogen atoms in an unsaturated fatty acid to produce a fat that is solid at room temperature.” (definition from The Weston A. Price Foundation)

-Our brain is mostly fat! Saturated fats help solidify cells, especially brain cells! BUT, hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated saturated fats don’t fit into our receptors in the same way as natural saturated fats because the molecules themselves have been modified and transformed by human interference…they have been literally blasted full of hydrogen (yikes).

-Two grams of trans fat is the maximum that the body can handle and get rid of. By law, products can be labeled as “0 Trans Fat” if they have .5g or less…that means if you have 4 Oreos which each contain .5g of trans fat, you’ve already hit your max! Many McDonald’s meals contain 30 or more grams of trans fat!

-Butter is anti-microbial, anti-fungal, anti-carcinogenic and contains CLAs.

-CLAs (Conjugated Lineolic Acids) help with weight loss, build muscle mass and help fight off cancer. They are found in high concentrations in grass-fed beef (all ruminants really-think Wolf Creek beef or Wild Oats lamb/pork) as well as free-range eggs/chickens (Davis Creek, Polyface, Meadow Run).

-Fats coat the lining of your intestines, which helps your body absorb vitamins and minerals. This is why humans traditionally put salad dressing (a fat) on salad (high in vitamins/minerals) or bacon grease in collards. For the same reason, French fries are MUCH better for you (still only as a treat) when cooked in beef fat (YUM)! Along the same lines, vitamins A and D are actually in the fats of milk…which means whole milk (especially when it comes from grass-fed cows full of CLAs) is actually better for you than skim!

-Good fats (like chicken skin) actually make you feel more satiated as well so you eat less!

SO! That was just a small selection of the facts I found interesting, but if you’d like to know more, stop by Rebecca’s and talk to Susan…I think I’m going home to cook some beef fat French fries now.