Lifespan of a Chennette

I had overripe bananas in the freezer – not bad bananas, just a bit overripe. My sister the elder, delivered them to me so that I could bake banana bread (her oven doesn’t work, I have also been the recipient of cornbread mix and lasagna noodles for the same reason). So not having cooked in Guyana in a while, I decided to bake some banana bread – healthy and tasty, mmm, what could be better?

I happened to mention to a friend (in Glasgow) via email that I was planning to make banana bread, and next thing I know I get a recipe sent to me specifically for overripe, FROZEN bananas. Cool. I got my hands on the flour (my mother had used up mine to make sada roti and fry bake while she was visiting) and set to it on Friday night. (Pictures, of course, follow this post)

I did follow the recipe – I did! (If you know me, here’s where you raise your eyebrow and ask “really?”) – really, I did, I even had walnuts…except I had possibly more than 3 large overripe bananas and decided to use them anyway. One more smaller than large banana could only make it more moist, right? Even my mother agreed when I mentioned it on the phone. Well, probably. If you mash all the extra banana properly. Or mix them into the batter better than I did. I have no defence for not mashing them properly other than being lazy to pull out my stick blender/whisk thing (and no, I don’t have an ordinary potato masher). But the recipe did say fold the mashed bananas into the batter. So I folded. And then tried mashing the bigger banana-blobs and then mixing a bit more vigorously. But if I had mashed them properly in the first place, folding would have worked. They were OVERripe bananas, they’re practically supposed to melt, right?

This is not to say that the banana bread failed. It didn’t. It looked and smelled wonderful. I had 2 slices straight out of the oven. It’s just that it seems a bit more like a banana bread pudding rather than a bread, because of the somewhat large bits of banana. And I know that’s not how my friend’s recipe was meant to be. I should have aimed for two banana breads and done my mashing and mixing. But I can claim I am still in recovery, right? Anyway, the 10-month old niece liked it, polishing off half a slice in record time without any distractions or need for water.

Sadly, this experiment also resulted in my realising that bananas, as healthy as they are for other people, cause severe sinus allergies in me. Sigh. All Saturday I had to deal with sinus pressure, headache and nausea. Well, onto other fruits for me…