Herbie Goes Bananas Bread

So I originally started making bread while visiting my much older sister. She was ahead of her time, with a rudimentary, non-electric bread maker that resembled a large golden bucket with a churn that aided in the kneading and rising of the dough. Doing macrame and making bread in 1970s San Francisco was her thing and she can be credited for turning me to Beard on Bread, James beards bread bible as it were and a lifelong love of carbohydrates. And being 12, for my first foray I selected to make banana bread - left to my sisters devices it more assuredly would have been zucchini. Anyway,  fast forward blank number of years and I'm still making it, from Beatd's original recipe. Moist and flavorful, but not overpowered by the bananas - and for the record I'm not nuts - that is say I never add them.

The Herbie movie and TV franchise, started in 1968 with feature film The Love Bug and went on to Go Bananas, Ride Again and Go to Monte Carlo all before winding up as an ill fated 1982 TV show starring Bill Bixby (so sad to see Mister Eddie's father go wrong). Truly  movies made for the drive-in, never has so much been made with so little (a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle that is). By the way, Lindsay Lohan and her spate of blasphemous Disney classic remakes will not be discussed here, ever. Enough said. Anyway, with Dean Jones in the driver's seat (although, Herbie didn't always need him) and Michele Lee (who went on to star in the absolutely most fab show ever - Knots Landing) riding shotgun and some Buddy Hackett for good measure, Herbie, wearing number 53 and living the dream as a race car, was the little engine that could.

The Recipe:

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup mashed, very ripe bananas (2 large or 3 medium), I like my bananas green, so a great use for the nasty ones

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (purely optional)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lavishly butter a 9 x 5 x 3-inch loaf pan.

Cream the butter and gradually add the sugar. Mix well. Add the eggs and mashed bananas and blend thoroughly.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Combine the milk and lemon juice, which will curdle a bit. Slowly and alternately fold in the flour mixture and milk mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients (sing to yourself "some dry, some wet, some dry some wet to the tune of "Sunrise, Sunset". Blend well after each addition. Stir in the nuts. Again, at your own risk.

Pour batter into the pan and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until the bread springs back when lightly touched in the center.