It's an old... family tradition

Thankfully, I put my prized cookbook in our quick ship things. Prized meaning it's the one with all the family recipes that my mom put together for my sister and I for Christmas back a few years ago. Truth be told, she was probably sick of us asking her how to make cornbread dressing, or banana pudding, or how to cook a turkey (that's another post). These aren't recipes that one can find in one of the family bibles, they are only the ones that you learn by the side of a great cook cause they sure aren't written down anywhere. Luckily and thanks to my mom, they are now in a cookbook and in electronic form on my harddrive (that's somewhere in this mess). I broke into the family recipes today and started my holiday cooking with one of my favorite memories - Grandma Carter's banana bread.

Grandma Carter is my great-grandmother on my mom's side of the family. When I was growing up, we would go and visit that side of the family almost every summer. As soon as my sister and I got off the plane, my grandparents would head straight over to my great-grandparents house, as they had the good fortune of living 15 minutes from the airport in Seattle. When we would get there, my grandma was in the kitchen whipping up a snack for us while my Grandpa Homer would give us all sorts of grief and really bad Homer jokes.

Once the bread went in the oven, we sat down for a game of Cribbage and my sister and I did our level best to beat my Grandpa Homer. He cheated, bad - even worse than I do, cause at least my "cheating" is merely loopholes in the rules. Then the bread would be done, and we would have to convince my grandma to cut it early. The aroma was too much to bear to wait for it to cool properly! We would get a slice, then take a loaf over to my grandparents' house for later.

So, I broke into the family cookbook and this time, I even had helpers! Holly and Sarah donned their aprons and together we mashed the bananas, sifted flour, and mixed the batter until done, but not overly mixed. The girls decided that they wanted to add chocolate chips (for some reason, I think Bill was here egging them on......) Then had to wait the excruciating long bake time until the timer went ding. Guess I don't need to tell you what we had for dessert tonight.

The other family tradition - Daddy licks the bowl

Our banana bread!