Help With My Fruit of Advancing Years

I have a problem.

Well, actually, I have many problems. I have a problem getting to bed at a decent hour like normal people. I have a problem with my current manuscript-in-progress, Project Hermey. I have a problem with ranch dressing. I have a problem with the sheer number of uneaten M&Ms in existence at any given moment in time. I have a problem with the McRib.

But none of these are important problems at the moment.

My bananas, on the other hand, are becoming damn near critical. Yes, my bananas. No, that’s not a euphemism. I’m talking about the fruit. The yellow ones that grow on trees and come in bunches?

Look, here are my bananas.

No, no, these aren’t the problematic bananas. I put the picture of those hideous things in the link before these shiny, new bananas. The others, though? Well, see, they’re old. Like, “dinosaurs make fun of them” old. The sight of them, well, maybe they aren’t for the weak stomached. You shouldn’t let children see them, probably.

Now, if you did look at the link of the Old Bananas, you know what I’m talking about. You could probably tell that they’re hella old because you’re not a toddler, and like most other non-toddlers, you undoubtedly recognized that bananas as brown as these are several decades beyond their prime. In fact, you likely recognized that the bananas in question are even older than your 2nd grade homeroom teacher, Mrs. Watley, whose first name had to have been an old-timey one like Agatha or Eleanor, but no one really knew because lunchroom gossip was that she would unhinge her jaw and consume whole any child who learned her first name, like a snake from ancient legend.

How you survived 2nd grade to recognize old, brown-spotted bananas is still something of a miracle.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I have a cluster of old, brown-tinted bananas. This is especially a problem because at the moment some nefarious government agency is going to use ultra-classified snooping technology to pinpoint the location of my extremely decrepit bananas. At which point we’ll surely get a visit from Men in Dark Suits who have no verifiable credentials because they don’t exist in any system, anywhere, at all. And these Ghost Agent People will confiscate my  geriatric bananas, thus robbing me of their $2 value and pretty much ruining all my hopes of retiring to Bali next year*.

Which brings me to my proposed solution….which, you know, is SO revolutionary it’ll Blow. Your. Freaking. Minds.

Ready?

Better sit down.

Here it Comes…

BANANA BREAD, BABY!

 

*ducks*

*waits for brains to explode all over*

*gets confused by the lack of popping skulls noises*

What’s…what’s going? How come you’re not, you know, head explody? Let’s try it again:

 

BANANA BREAD, BABY!

 

Huh.

So, okay, maybe it’s not a mind-blowing way to deal with nearly fossilized bananas. But it is damn tasty. The only problem with Operation Banana Bread is that, well, we end up making a loaf of it once or twice a year, every year, and while it’s great, it’s always pretty much the same. And you know what they say, variety is the spiders of life. Or something. Whatever.

I just want a different banana bread recipe, is what I’m getting at.

A friend of mine suggested I make this stuff. And it does sound pretty awesome. Like, this a slice of this could be happiness made tangible and baked in a bread pan. But then I got to thinking, maybe there are other banana bread recipes out there that would be even better.  So good, even, it’ll be as if the heavens opened up and angels applied banana bread-y Joys directly to my tongue among a gleaming light and a host of trumpets.

What I’m getting at—slowly—is that if you’ve got that recipe, I want it. Send it my way. Drop it in a comment or twitter it at me. I’ll promise to give you full credit and even get a picture of one of the company of cherubs, if possible.

Send me your recipes, my baker-y puddintopians. Quick, because I can feel the thrum of helicopter blades swirling already. Soon I’ll hear the jackboots of the Men in Dark Suits racing towards my kitchen.

And then it will be too late for my Pleistocene bananas.

Pud’n

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*I’m not retiring anywhere next year, let alone to Bali.