Dried fruit truffles (a healthy, vegan, sugar free, slow carb snack that is much more delicious than it sounds!)

 

 

Girls are girls from the minute they enter this world, I don't care what they say about nature vs. nurture.

I never brought up my daughter as a girly girl and went as far as putting a ban on pink during my pregnancy and the first half year of her life. Admittedly, a phase that did not last very long, thanks to overeager relatives (she was and still is the only female in a pretty large group of cousins) and that unstoppable process that makes parents do a string of things they swore smugly they would never do before actually becoming one.

Nevertheless, my daughter has grown up wearing pants more than dresses and "sensible" colors so that certain clothing items can be passed down to her little brother when she grows out of them. When it comes to toys, we have never denied her Barbie dolls or princess accessories, but we try to keep a pretty gender neutral approach in general.
 

 

 

 

This has not mitigated the traits in her that are so often ascribed to the female population in the least. She is a real chatterbox, extremely curious, very observant (as in nothing goes unnoticed) and loves clothes, hair, make up and jewelry.  She has been known to make earrings out of stickers, paperclips, fruit and flowers and is always excited to receive the sparkly Disney merchandising I so abhor as presents. She is undeniably a girl. A jeans-clad, sneaker-wearing girl with a glittery soul.

If I wear an old sweater I haven't worn for a while I immediately get asked "Did you go shopping?". If she is in the kitchen doing her homework and I tell her brother off in the bedroom, you can bet your bottom dollar that her head will be sticking through the doorway, neck craning, to see what is happening. She can hear you say something from the other end of the apartment even if you think she is busy dancing and singing, and will come up and enquire about it with insistence. Discreet she is not.

She ooohs and aaaahs on the rare occasions I wear heels.

The other day, the minute I walked into the kitchen after getting ready, she looked up at the very thin stripe of eyeliner I had applied and exclaimed: "Mommy, that black line on your eyes is sooo pretty!". My son is still trying to find it.

School project and banana bread

 

We are back home from our Easter holiday, which was filled with snow, skiing, friends, laughter and more eggs (in all forms and shapes) than I care to discuss. There was also a fair share of homework to be dealt with between one ski lesson and the next, but now we just have one more project to complete for Monday and then we are done.  

 

We have been asked to make and write out a recipe and background story of our child's/family's favorite recipe, one we possibly normally make together. We then must proceed to take pictures and/or the children must draw the end result or the recipe step by step. All the recipes will be published in a book that will be sold to raise funds for our school. A great idea, we can all agree on that. And I am a food blogger, so easy peasy right?

Not exactly.



This is a random picture of a banana bread past that I made using chocolate chips.

 

My daughter's first suggestion was roast chicken, which we do all love, but handing in a paper that reads we-all-love-roast-chicken-because-roast-chicken-is-delicious-and-what-we-do-is-preheat-the-oven-season-the-chicken-and-stick-it-in-said-oven-for-xyz-minutes-and-then-take-it-out-and-devour-it seemed sort of pointless, given she does not ever help me roast the chicken in the first place. Plus, pretty much everbody has their own way to roast a chicken. I know I do.

 

Eyeing the brown and spotted bananas in our fruit bowl I counter-proposed banana bread. After all, it is a simple recipe, beloved by most kids, that I make quite often and that a child can easily help with. Also, I needed to get rid of those bananas. And some of that Easter chocolate lying around.

You may, if you knew us intimately, retort that my daughter doesn't help  me bake that either (her initial objection by the way). But to be honest, she is usually too busy drawing, coloring, cutting out or gluing something at the kitchen table while I cook, to help me with any of my cooking. Granted, she is a good eater, she thinks about food during her day more than most kids do and enjoys the finer pleasures of life like crisp chicken skin and briny olives but she never helps me in the kitchen for more than a handful of minutes. She is enthusiastic for about 60 seconds and then gets sidetracked by all the more fun things her immagination is willing her to do. She can wax lyrical about the pleasant contrast of warm cocoa and cold butter and jam on bread she has for breakfast or about caramelized onions or the smell of toasting spices and gnaw nibble on bones just like her mama, but we are not really a cooking team.

This banana bread was made with 1 cup wholewheat flour and 1/2 cup oat flour
 

Her second objection was that she didn't know what to call it in Italian. Ok kid, you have a point: pane alle banane does not sound particularly enticing. But the humble loaf makes a good background story about our heritage and how "us Americans" make it to use up those overripe bananas that families with kids seem to be plagued with. And it would certainly be unique in a book filled with roast chicken, tiramisù and various lasagna recipes. We might even start a fad. And hey, we can just call it... banana bread!

So banana bread it was. And the cool part is that half the work is already done: I just have to copy the recipe and pictures off of my blog!

Except...

...I do not have a recipe for banana bread on my blog.
 

Sure, I have written about wholewheat, oat and banana muffins, chocolate chip banana bread muffins and sour cream and olive oil banana muffins (enough with all these banana muffins already!) but there is not ONE. SINGLE. RECIPE. FOR. BANANA. BREAD. An American blogger without a recipe for banana bread... shame on me. And barely a picture I can recycle for my daughter's school project because all the banana concoctions I ever used for my blog are friggin' muffin shaped!

So here, at long last, is my recipe for banana bread, adapted from the Joy of Cooking.