Daddy and Charity Bake Banana Bread

Dad and Charity getting ready to bake

******WARNING this post contains a large amount of photos******

[I decided to make this more a photo essay, but every now and then you might see some narrative. 🙂 ]

Well in an attempt to keep a certain  someone occupied and make sure that my wife got a break, I had to come up with some other things to do.  We had some bananas that were “on their way out” and attracting some very annoying fruit flies.  I hate fruit flies.  So I came up with a solution that solved many problems at one time.  If I made banana bread that would take care of the bananas.  If Charity helped me that would keep her occupied and my wife could go and take the break that she really, really needed to take.  The finished product would also be desert  for after dinner and, of course, enough would be left over (from two loaves) for a midnight snack!  Woo Hoo!

Here is Charity ready with the mixer. Watch out ingredients

The "offending" bananas

I had to  figure out which banana bread recipe to use and that involved first deciding

which recipe book to use.  My wife, thankfully, made this part a little easier for me.  One of the books had the ingredients already doubled (good thing since I wanted to make two loaves of banana bread) and so figured that was the one she used most often.  I love it when  a plan comes together.

Preheating the oven to 350 degrees

The ingredients all in the mixing bowl and ready to mixed

This was also part of Charity’s school for the day (in case you haven’t guessed, we home school) so she was helping me with the measurements of the ingredients and then she was determining (by means of subtraction) how much we still had to had of certain ingredietns.  She did a fantastic job.

Charity mixes the ingredients after we add them to the bowl.

After all of her math, Charity was rewarded with the  privilege of mixing the ingredients together (which had to be mixed at speed #2 on the mixer for 2 minutes.  I also tried to capture this in move mode.  I’ll try to put a link to the video below, but I’m not sure if it will work here or not.

View the Mixing Video here

Now the ingredients have been mixed and its time

This photo (taken by Charity) is of the mixed ingredients just before being put into the bread pans.

to put them into the bread pans!

Oh my I forgot all about the bread pans and have not even prepared them!  We to use stone baking pans because the cook more evenly.  (Is that true, not sure but it sounds good).

OK… got the pans ready and now its time to put the batter in.   Well a still picture would not do that justice, so its time for another movie!  My camera lady (Charity) is ready so here we go!

Click Here to see this exciting process!

In the oven and ready to go!

The “loaves to be” are now in the oven on the top rack and ready for some serious baking.   Its already beginning to smell like banana bread.  Can’t wait until the real thing actually makes it out of the oven……Patience……Patience

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Oven timer is set for 55 minutes

Charity enjoys the beater! Her "just desserts" after a job well done

mmmm! Thats good stuff.....

Really good!

Here we are half way thorugh the baking process. Looking good.

Just out of the oven and piping hot!

Out of the bread pans and onto the rack. Can't wait to eat it!

And eat it we did!  Although I did not  photograph it… we had banana bread for desert after dinner and boy was it good.  It was good enough that I even didn’t mind sharing half a loaf with friends and having them be too critical of my cooking experience.  Wonder what  we’re going to bake tomorrow!

Bagel Widda Shmear!

I grew up in New York City.  That allowed me to have some singular experiences, particularly in the area of ethnic-related incidents.  I have always had a very large appetite for bagels with cream cheese since my early teen years.  Now there are some place that really go heavy on the cream cheese and I don’t care for that!  A nice medium layer will do for me — thank you very much.  But I was reminded of all of this because I am sitting here eating my Bagel with cream cheese (OK, I admit its the second one this week) right now.  Things are so much different now.  Now you walk into the store, buy your bagel, cream cheese, and, if you choose, your beverage ( a pint of Tropicana OJ, Home style with some pulp for me!), you toast it yourself, put on your own cream cheese and off you go.  (Well I do all of my prep at the office, not the store).

I can remember walking into one of the Jewish Deli’s in downtown New York and ordering a bagel with cream cheese.  The person taking your order would turn around and yell (this was before orders were computerized) “Bagel widda shmear!”  I never really knew what it was that they were saying, but I always got what I wanted.   Of course that was when a bagel was a plain old bagel too!  Now you have Onion, Garlic, Cinnamon Raisin, Pumpernickel, Blueberry, Everything (which has some of everything on it!)…. the list goes on and on!  Oh yeah, and if you desire… Plain!

Well, one day I was in one of my favorites Delis with a Jewish friend and when he placed his order he said the same thing as they did:  “Bagel widda shmear!”  So, seeing my opportunity, I asked, “What in the world are you saying?  I understand the Bagel part, but what kind of language is “widda shmear?”  Well, he informed me that it was all in English.  The literal translation is ‘Bagel with a smear of cream cheese.” beccause they take the cream cheese and smear it onto the bagel.  I had just been educated.  Imagine the looks I got when I ( a young black teen ager) walked into my Delis and (accent and all) ordered, “Bagel widda shmear!”

The reactions were priceless!  Well, just something I remembered from my past that I thought I’d share.

Weight Loss

Well, I’m not making any resolutions or anything like that I’m just going to do it. I’ve needed to drop a pound or too (what an understatement) for some time now and I have just decided that I’m going to do it. Wouldn’t hurt my cholesterol problem either. So I have decided to set a goal of losing an avg. of 5 pounds a month (which I am told is very ambitious) for 5 months with the goal of keeping at least 20 of the 25 pounds off permanently! Woe unto you who cook big dinners and invite me over to your houses during the holidays! I have personally exempted any of my wife’s baking and Black and White bakery cookies from the list of things to avoid. I’m sure those things are helpful to my diet.

At some point, with all of the greenery that I will be eating to help accomplish this task, I am sure that I will start feeling like a rabbit. But I will persevere! You can keep track of my progress whenever you check back. I have a widget over on the sidebar —->

that I will continue to update—Both with favorable and unfavorable results. Your encouragement and support will be most helpful. And when I lose the 25 pounds….lets go and pig out to celebrate! 🙂