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Artwork by Junggeun Yoon

So my mother is an amazing baker. And as I mentioned in a reblog of the Oranges post, my parents now always keep fresh fruit in the house – particularly bananas (my dad likes them with his breakfast). And whenever the bananas go brown, mom makes (really goddamn delicious) banana bread.

My parents are very avid outdoorsy folks and do a lot of hiking. They live in a mountainous region and basically climb a mountain every weekend (most of the mountains here are under 6,000 feet, but rocky), including in the middle of winter. Because cold and exertion eat through your blood sugar, they always pack trail snacks, and they developed a tradition of bringing a mini loaf of mom’s banana bread that they share on the summit.

Now a few years ago my father was having a midlife crisis and decided he was going to hike a REALLY big mountain. So he signed up for an expedition to climb Mt. Denali in Alaska – the tallest peak in North America. The group he was going with had a trip planned where everyone would be responsible for hiking with and carrying their own gear, so you had to be prepared to hike up a big fuckoff mountain in potentially treacherous conditions with a heavy pack.

My mother was not going on this expedition (she has problems with altitude sickness) but dammit, she was not going to let my dad go get himself killed by being unprepared. So in the year leading up to his climb, she kinda became his personal trainer. They hiked the local mountains a lot and in all kinds of weather conditions, practiced rope training and crevasse rescue techniques, and she made sure he practiced climbing with increasingly heavy packs until he was hauling around 65lbs of weights on his back. Sometimes she would even sit in a sled in the snow and make him pull her. 

When the trip finally came, dad was incredibly excited, and amused that his gear pack actually ended up being lighter than his practice pack. A number of other folks in the expedition had practiced going up a stair machines with weight on their backs, but mom had dragged dad through all the really rocky, treacherous trails around here with ice and water crossings, so he had solid balance from really moving with that amount of weight. Over the course of the climb (which took a couple weeks), half of the hikers ended up turning back (for various reasons), but despite being the oldest in the group, dad was one of the few to summit. 

Yes.

Sift together: 

1 ¾ cups flour

1 ½ cups sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

In separate bowl:

2 eggs

½ cup canola oil

3 mashed bananas (overripe)

1 tsp vanilla

¼ cup buttermilk (or 1 Tbsp buttermilk powder & ¼ cup water)

Stir with flour mixture slowly.

Fold in: ½ cup chopped walnuts or chocolate chips, as desired. (my mother likes nuts, I like chocolate)

Crumb topping:

½ stick cold butter cut up into small crumbles

1 – 1 ½ tsp cinnamon

½ cup flour

½ cup brown sugar

Mix thoroughly into small pieces. Get in there with your hands. Get messy.

Preheat oven to 325ºF. 

Grease 4 mini loaf pans and sprinkle with flour.

Spread part of the batter in four mini pans, then layer with half of the topping mixture so there’s a layer in the middle of them all.

Spread rest of batter and top with rest of topping.

Bake for 40-45 minutes!