Blog Backlog + In the Kitchen: Banana Bread

Dearest readers, I must apologize for my lack of blogging in recent weeks. The start of the school year has been keeping me busy (lame excuse, I know). But I'm back and hope to be posting more in the coming weeks, though my budget and my busy student life may necessitate writing posts less frequently or else broadening the scope of this blog a bit. Since I am currently taking an 'Edible Education' class, taught by Michael Pollan and Nikki Henderson, attended regularly by Alice Waters (I sat two rows behind her yesterday, awesome!), with amazing guest speakers so far, I feel that my thinking about food is shifting and that I am becoming more interested in the food movement and food justice in general. So, maybe a few of my future posts will address this theme, along with my regular restaurant reviews and in the kitchen posts. 


But for now, let me bring you up to date on one my culinary adventures from a few weeks ago. I had just returned from Santa Cruz and had lots of leftover food that was too much for me to eat alone. I recruited Ben and ate Zachary's pizza more frequently than I would like to admit and had been making good progress. But there was one item that I received that I was just not interested in eating: three overly ripe, browning bananas. I found this one item to be so frustrating because I really hate throwing away food, especially when there are others out there who are hungry and I was able to get this for free. (This sentiment has only been reinforced by a recent 'Edible Education' lecture by Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food International, who said that in the U.S. alone, we throw away 22 tons of food a day. Eek!). So it felt wrong to waste these bananas, but it seemed I had no other choice, until Ben suggested that I make banana bread. Such a simple idea had never occurred to me, but as soon as he mentioned it, I was thrilled! This way, I got to use my bananas and eat something delicious, win/win. 

Banana Bread: Waste Not, Want Not. 

We decided to spice our banana bread up a bit with some chocolate chips, and after looking up a recipe, ran down to the store to get some. We returned to Ben's apartment and baked up a banana bread storm, which was much simpler to do than I thought it would be. It was, of course, delicious and the bananas were at the perfect overripeness for making banana bread. We did, however, make the mistake of refrigerating the leftover banana bread, which made it pretty tough when we ate some the next day. While it was still edible, it would have been much more enjoyable had we not done that. Overall, though, I felt triumphant in being able to create something pretty darn tasty out of something I was considering throwing away.