Creative food :: banana bread

How is banana bread creative you ask?...

before...

Take a look at these beauties that I pulled out of the freezer!  Ick!  When bananas start to loose their green tinge I'm done with them!  Luckily my family will still eat yellow bananas but eventually even they come to a point when they are not sad to see them tossed into the freezer!  Blah!

So now I've got this rather ugly looking, cold, mushy, overripe fruit in front of me.....not very appealing if you ask me!  But then I add some flour, spices, oil, maple syrup and a few other ingredients, pop it in the oven and....

...Voila! 

A warm, spicy moist loaf that looks, smells, and tastes delicious!  It's even better with butter (or in our house Earth Balance) and a cup of herbal tea, it really is a slice of heaven!

Now in my opinion when you take something that has absolutely no appeal and make it into something that your kids fight over to eat, that's being creative!  And it eliminated waste as well, another big one in my books!  My kids were not about to eat those bananas but there were only a few slices of that loaf left this morning!

So here's the recipe if you now all of a sudden have a craving for banana bread!

I have tweaked it here and there to make it a bit more healthy.  It's a very forgiving recipe so go ahead and experiment with different flour, spices, oil or sweetener!  I should probably mention that 1 1/2 cups of banana is about 3 medium bananas.

It's a recipe that I use quite often as

1) I can use either bananas, carrots or zucchini.

2) I can make it into one big loaf, mini loaves or muffins.

3) The carrot recipe makes fabulous carrot cupcakes that can be iced with cream cheese icing!  Perfect for birthday parties!

Since I can freeze the grated carrot and zucchini I like to buy the vegetables local in season when they are abundant and inexpensive.  I make up a bunch of grated pre-measured bags and toss them in the freezer.  So simple!

Let me know if you try the recipe, and I'd love to hear about any changes that you make!
All this talk about food, I've got to see if there's any loaf left!  Enjoy the day!
~ joey ~