25

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Any guesses as to what the number '25' might represent today?

The number of hours in a day Jack Bauer wishes he had?  Surely that extra hour would help him save the world with even more flare.

The number of bags of Starbucks coffee beans I have? Close, but not quite.  Although I am off to Frankfurt next Saturday, so I can stock up... ha ha

The number of times I think every day that the year has already gone by so quickly?  Well, yes, in fact, can you believe it's almost March?  I surely can't.

The age I *wish* I was turning on Wednesday?  Oh yes, definitely.

Well, while all of the above may be true to some extent, the number '25' represents the number of overripe bananas I had in my freezer yesterday.  The sweet, tasty, potassium-rich yellow treats had completely overrun the deep freeze. There was no room for my ice cream maker!  No room for more strawberries!  No room for 'doggie chicken'!  Something *had* to be done.

And therefore I embarked on a banana-bread making marathon. 

I hauled out the beloved pink Kitchenaid mixer and all the appropriate ingredients onto the counter and began mixing, cracking, creaming, measuring and spraying... It was a veritable festival of deliciousness.

Since I, of course, do not actually want to eat banana bread due to its extreme damage to the food diary regimen, I am always looking for ways to make this delightful temptation lower in calories.  My daily 'Hungry Girl' email came through for me in a big way last week with a low-cal recipe that I just had to try.  It used Splenda instead of sugar and applesauce instead of butter.  I really should list out the recipe once I perfect it.  I didn't have applesauce, so I had to make a batch of homemade which was so easy to make, used no sugar at all, and turned out perfectly... and I think my local version of Splenda is doubly sweet as regular Splenda... so next time I'll cut that in half.

Thankful for this recipe, I made one low-cal loaf for me and the family and then 5 more regular 'fully-loaded' loaves to give away.  I think Beena, Binu, Ragland, Manju and Pamela were all thrilled when I presented them with the carefully hand-packed aluminum foil wrapped gift this morning at our morning worship service.  I hope they enjoy the fruits of my marathon labor.  Actually, I'm sure they will.

Today there is a great deal more room in my freezer... and technically, I was able to partake in 'decluttering' it of all those old bananas - an activity which, as you all know, brought me a great amount of personal joy.  I have two nearly too ripe bananas sitting patiently on my counter that I should either eat tomorrow in some form.. or my next frozen banana collection will begin once again.  At least there's space to store them.

Hope your weekend was equally banana bread worthy.  Yum!

~lk

Comments

Kris said…
You missed the opportunity to make a big ol batch of banana ice cream (that is if you had some vanilla yogurt). Just take a frozen banana and mix in 2 tablespoons of vanilla yogurt and you've got banana ice cream.

You might also try cutting your two ripe bananas in half, sticking a stick in each end and freezing for an hour. You can drizzle some chocolate sauce on it too for a nice treat that's not too horrendous on the food diary.
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