The Case of the Moldy Bread

Hello! How are you today? The weather is beautiful in my neck of the woods, so I can’t complain!

I’ve been thinking lately about how much food we waste in our house…it’s a big victory if we actually finish something before it spoils, be it a gallon of milk or a jar of pickles. Sad, right? Since I keep saying that we need to keep better track of our spending, I’ve tried to figure out ways to make food last longer, but it’s a lot harder to do than I thought it would be! Geez, how did my mom do it??

One thing that will ALWAYS go bad around here is banana bread. I use my Gramma’s recipe, and my problem is that I love it so much that I could eat the whole thing right out of the oven (add a knife and some soft butter, and you have the heavenly trifecta), but I don’t want to finish the loaf when we get near the end. I know it’s counter-intuitive, but I can’t help it…I never want it to end, so it gets moldy. D’oh. I mean, look at this bread. Beautiful, right?

I recently made two loaves because I had some bananas going bad on the counter (hmm…anyone else see a pattern here?); one for instant gratification and one for the freezer. The instant gratification loaf was reduced to a butt after just a couple of days, and that’s how it remained until the first spots of mold showed up. Sigh. Then, with high hopes, I pulled out the freezer loaf. Don’t worry, it froze and thawed beautifully – it was like it was fresh out of the oven! Only cold…but you get the idea.

Now here’s the great part: we finished it! I owe it to Ben; he pulled a little prank (I like things just so and he likes to push my buttons) in his rush to leave for work one day, and that little move somehow led to us finishing our first loaf EVER. What did he do, you ask? Well, while we had started slicing off one end of the bread, that morning he decided to lop a big hunk off the other end (the bread was essentially butt-less), so we were left with the lovely moist center part. For some reason, we ended up gobbling up the remainder over the next couple days.

Well, no, I don’t know why that changed anything…I’m just saying it worked, and I’m excited about it. Sheesh! Who knew that his attempt to get under my skin would lead to a banana bread breakthrough? :)

Oh, I wanted you to know that I raided a Borders the other day to take advantage of their going out of business sale, and I picked up three cookbooks. I am VERY excited to try some of these new recipes...it looks like I'll finally be able to get some serious use out of my cast iron skillet! I can't wait to share tales of those adventures!

Take care!