Lazy Day Sunday

Posted by Bonita

My apologies for having neglected this blog this past week. There were multiple reasons: 1) the insanity that I call school; 2) my computer is continually being temperamental on me; 3) my super exciting soup diet! Yes, I was back on my infamous soup diet last week, trying to shed off a couple more pounds that were still lingering from Christmas break and carried over into reading week. Good news is, soup diet is ending, which means I can come back to posting. The bad news is that there's still the insanity that I call school, and it will only get worse in the coming weeks.

With Daylight Savings Time pushed ahead by 3 weeks this year, it meant that I would get 1 hour less a whole month earlier. 1 hour of extra sleep, or 1 hour more to do my readings or research. But alas, I sucked it up, and ensuring that I don't sleep until the late hours of the afternoon, I set my clock to 11 (which is shocking coming from me! I usually get up at 8 or 9, even on a weekend so I can do work). Yes, it was one of THOSE lazy Sundays today; a day when you had planned so many things but really didn't accomplish much in the end. Was it wasted? Perhaps, if I look at it from an academic point of view. I probably did a total of 3 hours of homework, and the rest...well...let's just not go there. However, the day wasn't totally wasted. Ended up being domestic today by doing the laundry, cleaning the bathroom, going out to pick up some baking necessities, and oh yeah...BAKED! It's certainly one thing I missed while being on the soup diet: just being in the kitchen! And with a bunch of ripe bananas sitting on the counter screaming, "USE ME!", it was time that I made a fresh loaf of banana bread.



I love banana bread. I love the way it smells when it's baking in the oven, and the banana-ey goodness of it all. It's definitely one of my go-to comfort foods, and it's so easy to make. However, I wasn't always a big fan of them, and that's not the fault of the banana. Nor is it the fault of my mother really. It really all comes down to the recipe that she used. I always found her banana bread (no offense mom) on the dry side. After much experimenting myself over the years, I've settled on my own recipe that yields a delicious, moist loaf. And yes, I made banana bread today, in an attempt to make myself feel like I've atleast accomplished something in an otherwise unproductive day.

This is the easiest recipe ever, and can be whipped up in about 10 minutes. The original recipe calls for butter, which, I'll be honest, does make the loaf taste better (who am I kidding? Butter makes ANYTHING taste better!). However, since I'm just weaning my way out of this diet today, I thought I would make a slightly healthier version (please read note following the recipe).

Bonita's Banana Bread

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3-4 very ripe bananas
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup crushed walnuts

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Cream sugar and butter. Add bananas, eggs and vanilla and mix
   well. Sift flour, salt and baking soda together. Add to banana
   mixture and blend well.
3. Pour batter into a greased 9x5 loaf pan. Bake for 55 minutes, or until
   a cake tester inserted in the centre of the loaf comes out clean. Cool on
   rack.

(N.B. For a low-fat version, replace the 1/2 cup butter with 1/4 cup
vegetable oil and 1/4 cup applesauce. This will result in a wetter batter,
so I adjusted by adding an extra 3/4 cup flour, and increased the baking time by
about 15 minutes.)