Chocolate Banana Bread – Plain and Simple
Bananas represent a kind of edible security blanket for me. Never a need to feel hungry if there is a bunch of canary yellow bananas sitting on my counter. A quick and nutritious snack is always at hand. And although bananas make a constant and predictable appearance in my market basket, I fade in and out of my love affair with them. I am fickle that way. I will eat a banana religiously every morning for months, and then, just like that, I snub them for days. It’s during those periods that the poor fellows sit forgotten, and ripen past a point of where I would even consider eating one. For me, a banana has about a one day window of optimal appeal before those little brown freckles begin to dot their skin and send them over the hill. Continue reading
There’s no ambivalence when it comes to coconut, either you’re a lover, or a hater. I’m a lover. My love affair with coconut began way back in my childhood, somewhere between my first Mounds Bar and my Dad’s German Chocolate Cake. Now all grown up, I satisfy my taste for coconut in a variety of ways, from sweet to savory, and now with this Triple Coconut Macaroon Cake. 
My Grandma Harrison was one of the best souls I have ever known. She worked hard, gave selflessly, and loved unconditionally. Grandma raised my Dad as a single mother, and later lived together with my parents and helped raise me and my nine siblings. After years of working hard outside the home, she spent many more years working even harder inside our home. So much of what I learned about household arts was learned under her tutelage. Grandma ironed like nobody’s business, was a fabulous cook, beautiful housekeeper, and baked as though she had been professionally trained at a culinary school. 
I awoke early this morning to yet another day of pounding rain and wind. I’m not complaining, as heavy rain days are as close as we Southern Californians get to snow days. It’s Sunday, and as such, the day was planned to be a quiet, ‘catch up on knitting and reading’ kind of day anyway. Throughout the hustle and bustle of the holidays, I had fallen dismally behind in keeping up with all the baking magazines I receive every month. So, as I lit the fireplace and sank deep into my sofa, I reached for the closest magazine at hand, which was an issue of 
We lost our Mom in August of 2015. Mom didn’t leave behind very much, she was a woman of few possessions and content to be that way. What she did leave me and my ten siblings was her collection of recipes, which holds value beyond words. Several months following her passing, I went about the task of organizing her recipes. I had brought them back to California with me following her funeral. It was too soon. Holding her recipes in my hands, three thousand miles from her Kentucky kitchen, felt surreal and empty. I was still deep in the early stages of grieving and struggling to deal with the permanence of her being gone. I gathered together the recipes, mindful of keeping them in the exact order she had left them, and put them away for some future time when I would make another attempt.