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Pumpkin bread has always been my favorite of the quick bread varieties and I’m sure you can guess why. I can remember my mom making several mini loaves at a time with the intention to freeze some, but few would actually make it that far. I’ve said it here, and I’ll say it again, I LOVE pumpkin. Period. But, enough about pumpkin because I want to show some love to bananas. I have found that people either love bananas or don’t particularly care for them. I’ve met many banana haters and banana lovers. I’ve met people that couldn’t even stand the smell of bananas and those that preferred waiting until they were black and shriveled before they ate them (I might have made some of you gag right there, sorry!). It’s quite the dichotomous world we live in when it comes to this fruit.

I don’t get to bake banana bread as often as I want to because it requires the forethought of buying bananas and letting them basically shrivel up, all the while having my apartment smell like ripening bananas. Sure, I could roast the bananas beforehand to help them soften and release their sugars, but that requires an extra step and more time with my hot oven on. I decided this past weekend it was time to bake some banana bread. I realized I have not been baking much for myself or anything other than the farmers market the past several months (mostly because it’s summer and turning my oven on is a pain) so I designated Sunday as a baking day. Dare I say it was actually sort of fall-ish weather as it was cloudy all morning and only in the 70s. Perfect banana bread baking weather, or at least as perfect as it will get in Texas at the beginning of September.

I’m going to give you the basic recipe for banana bread below and leave the add-ins up to you. This go-around I did a combination of pecans and chai spices but I encourage you to go with whatever suits your fancy. This isn’t a very sweet bread so please taste the batter and adjust it to your liking. Do be mindful though if you add too much more liquid to the batter that you might have to adjust with a bit more flour. I chose to bake 3 mini loaves, but you can also bake the bread in a regular loaf pan as long as you adjust the baking time. I’d say about 45 to 50 minutes would do the trick. Also, in case you haven’t realized by now, I bake in weights as it’s more accurate with gluten free baking so please don’t try to convert it into volume. You might have a banana catastrophe.

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I had no plans whatsoever of posting this recipe. It just happened to be what I fixed for dinner on Sunday evening. I liked it so much that I figured I would share it here in case you might be looking for some green bean inspiration or needing something a little different for dinner.

I actually stumbled across this recipe on Food 52 this weekend right after I had bought a big basket of green beans and some heirloom tomatoes at the farmers market. I knew I needed to cook the green beans sooner rather than later but I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with them. Cue the Masaledar Sem recipe. It’s an Indian spiced green bean dish perfect for late summer/early fall. It starts with chile, spices, and a ginger garlic paste. I’m pretty sure anything that starts with a ginger garlic paste will be awesome. In fact, next time I pick up some garlic, I might make some to keep on hand in my fridge or freezer. The smell alone is so amazing that it might temporarily make you forget what you were doing.

The cooking part of this goes pretty fast as long as you get your mise-en-place together beforehand. That way you are just adding things to the skillet without having to hurriedly chop, measure, etc. This dish actually gave me an idea for a really tasty soup but it will have to wait until the weather is more soup appropriate. Have a lovely holiday weekend friends 🙂

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Banana Bread

Farm to Table: Masaledar Sem (Spicy Green Beans)