Radio Silence

Sorry for the long stint with no real posts.  I have had a bunch going on but I really don't know how to talk about the most important thing that has been going on.

Just before Christmas my mom had a bit of a health scare, the result of the health scare was a full hysterectomy.  Standard procedure for this type of thing is to check for cancer.  During that check they did find cancer and not just any run of the mill cancer but a really weird, rare, aggressive form.  My mom is currently starting round two of her four rounds of chemo treatment.  More than anything I want to go home and be with her, take care of her, do her grocery shopping and clean her toilet.  But that's not what she wants.  So for now I am here, praying, hoping, wishing that everything will turn out all right. That she will come out of this even healthier than she went in.  That I will have my mom for years and years to come.

But for now I just have to wait.

What I can say is my mom is amazing, brave, strong, and optimistic.  If anyone is going to make it through it will be her.

I love you Mom!

"Healthy" Banana Nut Bread

Woke up to spotted bananas - you know what that means - Banana Nut Bread Day!!!  

Ingredients

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon

1 pinch nutmeg

1/2 cup applesauce

3/4 cup honey

2 eggs, beaten

3 overripe bananas, mashed

1 cup walnuts, chopped

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

2.  Lightly grease and flower a loaf pan.  

{We don't have a loaf pan so we use a cake pan and it still turns out great.}

3.  In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

4.  In a separate bowl, mix together applesauce and honey.

Sir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended.

5. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture; just to moisten.

Add walnuts

6.  Pour batter into prepared pan.

7.  Bake in preheated oven (turn down oven to 170 degrees C when you put the bread in) for 50 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

8. Let bread cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to cool on a wire rack.  

This recipe is so easy and Alessandra can help quite a bit.  I put the bananas in a gallon sized ziploc baggy for her to mash while I mix the dry ingredients.  Then while I'm putting the wet ingredients together I give her the walnuts, in a sandwich baggy, and the ladle so she can bang on those until they are "chopped".  Between those two tasks she stays pretty busy for most of the dry and wet combining.  She then helps to grease and flour the pan and do the final combining of wet and dry ingredients and adding it to the pan.  It's a pretty fun activity for us and the finished product is sooooooo yummy!!!

Charmian