Last Sunday when I went to the market, I grabbed a bunch of bananas … as I always do. Maybe it’s because I used to work for Dole Food Co.  Whatever the case, we are never without bananas at our house.  Well, this week, I have way more bananas than I need.  As I was at Trader Joe’s getting the bulk of my grocery shopping done, Dennis and Kylie ran to Vons to pick up the few items I needed there.  When I got home, Kylie says to me “Mom, I got you bananas, I noticed we were out.”  “Thank you, Kylie!”  Oh no, I thought to myself, we have way more bananas than we’ll ever use in one week.  For most of the summer, however, Kylie has been making herself a smoothie for breakfast and we were going through the bananas quicker than normal.  I figured, we’d go through them.  Well, the darn blender broke.  I bought a new one, but I guess it wasn’t very good because it had a hard time pureéing the banana. I need to return it to the store and pick up another one quickly so Kylie can continue making her smoothies for breakfast for the school year.

As I was cleaning up the kitchen after lunch today, I came upon all the bananas I forgot about.  I decided to make a banana bread.  Then, I remembered all the strawberries that were going to go bad if we didn’t finish them, so added them to my bread to make it a Strawberry Banana Bread with walnuts.  I was buying a lot of strawberries as well for Kylie to put in her breakfast smoothie.  The recipe I used for this quick bread is from the Pillsbury cookbook.  I only changed a couple things … I added a cup of chopped strawberries, 3/4 cup of walnuts vs. 1/2 cup, 1 teaspoon of kosher salt instead of 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons vanilla instead of 1 teaspoon.

I must be missing my mom, sister and family in Wisconsin.  My Mom used to make banana bread all the time.  It was so nice to have a slice of banana bread for breakfast growing up. I can picture the banana bread in the pan on top of the stove when I’d come home from school.  Banana bread is a real comfort food to me because it takes me back home to wonderful memories.

Tomorrow morning, I’m going to get up, make a cup of coffee, slice a piece of that strawberry banana bread and head out to the patio to enjoy my surroundings with a simple, carefree breakfast.  Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Ingredients 

• 3/4 cup sugar

• 1/2 cup butter, softened

• 2 eggs

• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas (this is 2-3 medium size bananas)

• 1/2 cup milk

• 2 teaspoons vanilla

• 2 cups, plus 1 tablespoon all purpose flour

• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease bottom only of 9×5 or 8×4 inch loaf pan.  In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.  Beat in the eggs.  Add the bananas, milk and vanilla and continue to mix.  In another smaller bowl, combine the 2 cups of flour, baking soda, salt and nuts.  Mix together and add to the wet mixture. Mix together until the dry ingredients and wet ingredients are well combined. Cut up 1 cup of strawberries in small pieces.  Add 1 tablespoon of flour to the strawberries and toss.  This will prevent your strawberries from sinking in the mix.  Add the strawberries into the mixture, folding in gently.  Pour into your prepared loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean.  Cool in pan for about 5 minutes, remove.  Cool completely on a wire rack. Wrap the bread and store in the refrigerator.

Until next time, Kris