When Life Gives You Rotten Bananas, Make Banana Bread

Better yet, make Chocolate Banana Bread!

This past week winter has left its cold burn on my heart; with it’s nervy hands feeding me a snowy, wet, and blustery diet of ghostly white monotony, I feel the chill sinking deeper and deeper into my bones. I’ve been hiding at home since Wednesday and my boyfriend Gurpreet fell ill on Friday. Gotta love winter!

The view from my apartment

But rather than spend my hours daydreaming about remote tropical islands and bright green lizards with warmer blood than my own right now, I’ve forced myself to do something, anything to keep my mind engaged in the here and now while I save the dreaming for my pillow.




As I surveyed my kitchen last Friday looking for something to cook, I noticed two chocolate bananas lazily lounging in my fruit bowl. Their peels were a glorious cocoa brown, and their presence was enough to turn even the greenest fruit ripe with envy (or at least with the various gasses emitted from the decaying fruit). Wait, I thought as I took the bruised fruit from the bowl, there is no such thing as a “chocolate banana”, just a rotten one. Then I realized it had been months since I consumed any dessert in the classical sense of the word, my sole source of sweetness coming only in tiny bursts from the occasional Almond Hershey’s kiss. My mind (or my taste buds) had gone berserk and fabricated a food in an effort to inject some palatable color into my otherwise drab, snow globe of a world.

And just in time for Valentine’s Day too (chocolate = love). So I took this surrealist vision as an inspiration, an invitation to sweeten my life, and my love life, by creating a confection that would be sure to remedy my laid-up Love’s heart and resuscitate two brown bananas in the process.

After making a quick trip to the supermarket for sour cream, chocolate chips, and walnuts, I got to work baking what would be a rich and gooey, warm and tropical, soft and sweet indulgence: Chocolate Banana Bread. It was quite simple actually. All I did was take the Bounteous Banana Bread recipe I have listed on this blog, add a cup of organic baking cocoa powder and a sprinkle of chocolate chips.

The result?

A treat that awakened the most remote corners of one’s imagination and, needless to say, excited my own tiresome taste buds; it was the perfect symphony of crunchy walnuts, luxurious dark chocolate chips, tangy-sweet bananas, and the pillow-y soft texture of freshly baked bread.

It felt good to create a new dessert while salvaging old fruit, and sharing sweets with my sweet on Cupid's day. We even baked enough to share the love with friends. The vitamin C and other nutrients in the bread also helped to fight off Gurpreet’s cold and prepare him, and myself, for another week of bleak winter weather (ugh).

But perhaps the most rewarding part of this process was none other than the process itself; by engaging my mind and body in the task of transforming rotten bananas into a delicious dessert, I simultaneously transformed my state of mind, which definitely needed a pick me up.

For two hours or so I thought not of the slushy snow squall swirling beyond my window, nor of a paradise I couldn’t possibly possess; I forgot my own inner lethargy and focused all my senses, the total sum of my energy, on the ingredients within my grasp. And as the kitchen heated up, the wintry doldrums melted away. Soon the only thing left to do was pull out a plate, pour a glass of milk, and indulge in the delicious fruits of my labor.