Banana Bread and a Reflection on Family

This season is ripe with family time. We just returned from our third trip to Kansas City yesterday, and are settling back into the quiet that is our little apartment.
Banana bread helped us set the tone again for lazy, peaceful mornings, reading and staying in. Ryan is enjoying his last week of vacation, and I am getting ready to return this afternoon.

Being in Kansas City reminds me of how much I miss my family when I am home, though I love being here at the same time. The way the kitchen became right away the easiest place for me to cook, the way the apartment really feels like home, the person I get to share it with.

Going home this week was just what I needed, I got to hold my baby cousin, tie-dye, celebrate my moms birthday with a giant picnic. A wonderful lunch at a fancy restaurant, time at the Bier Garden, my favorite pizza restaurant at dusk. And many more adventures.

This week was good for me, thank you to everyone for making this week about family and making me feel loved.

I am so lucky to have such a wonderful extended family. It makes me very reflective of the family I want to build. I think about it sometimes, about how Ryan and I are the smallest unit right now, but the choices we make and the way we treat each other is reflective of the family we will become, and the way we treat others. About how we choose the let others in, and distance ourselves from others reflects the way we will build ourselves later too. Coming around to the idea of family as a couple is something that has really struck me lately. I like remembering that the couple needs to be the strongest unit. We have some expanding to eventually do, but I love our little 2 unit family.

Chocolate Chip+ Raspberry Banana Bread Muffins:

Ryan loves to share a story of me promising him his favorite chocolate chip banana bread, and then telling after the fact that we didn’t have any chocolate so there was nuts and other things added instead.

I really like making the Banana Bread into muffins so that I can add some raspberries to my half.

-3 ripe bananas
-1 tablespoon vanilla
-1/2 cup oil
-1/4 cup sugar+ 1/4 cup brown sugar
-1 egg
-2 cups flour
-1 +1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Mash the bananas into a large bowl and add the vanilla. Slowly mix in the oil and the sugar to the banana mixture. whisk in the egg, then slowly add the flour. Before mixing the flour into the dough, add the baking powder and mix all at once.

Add ins: At this point add any add ins that you will want in all the the muffins, like 1/2 cup of chocolate chips. Spoon some muffins into your tins, and then add any extra add ins like Raspberries, about 1/4 of a cup is good. Frozen berries work well here.

Bake your muffins at 350degrees for 20 minutes , until a knife runs clean through the center.