Chocolate Chip Banana Bread - or - How to wait for a realtor.

So the last post was not about bikes - except possibly the need for a garage to put them in.

This post isn't about bikes either.  Pretty much the same reason.  What can I say?  This house project is driving me bananas.

Closet shelves built into the wrong wall.  Unsodded land and an unguttered roofline ganging up to wash another half ton of dirt into the carefully constructed swale.  Squabbles over the well shared with a neighbor - a neighbor who doesn't want to share.

That was the list for this morning.  God only knows whats happening over there now that I have come back to the townhouse to wait for the realtor.  The realtor who was planning on four but can't come til five.

So what do you do with an extra hour at home?  Clean?  Vac?  Mop floors?  Yeah, maybe you could do that.  But I can't.  Not today.  I have had enough you-know-what for today.

I'm gonna bake something.  

This may be a problem unique to Florida, but in the past few weeks we have had three bunches of bananas come ripe.  And we have one more green one up there to go.  With about 80-90 bananas to a bunch, that's a LOT of bananas.   

See em up there?

Hanging just left of center with a big pink blossom underneath.

Here's what they look like up close (and ripe).

Small. But plentiful.

It's a typical August afternoon on our side of Florida.

I am trying not to think of how much mud there will be

to shovel back up that hill later.

The sod had better come tomorrow.

So, might as well go bananas the old fashioned way.  (As long as the electricity stays on.)

And what the heck?  The place will smell pretty good when the realtor arrives too.

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread 

(Not even enough mental energy left today to experiment.  So this one is straight out of the Hersheys Chocolate Cookbook)

2 cups unsifted all purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup mashed bananas

1/2 cup shortening (I'm not a fan of glucky shortening, so I used butter.)

2 eggs

1 cup Hersheys chocolate chips

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Grease bottom only of a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan.  Set aside.

Combine all ingredients except choc chips and walnuts in a large mixer bowl.  Blend well on medium speed. 

(That's it for batter directions.  Simple, huh?  I creamed butter and sugar first though, then mixed in eggs and bananas, before adding the dry stuff.  I know - such a slave to convention.)

Stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts.

Pour into prepared pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 60-70 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean.  Cool ten minutes, Remove from pan.  Cool completely on wire rack.

Now this is how to wait for a realtor.

And boy am I glad I didn't knock myself out to clean the place. 

She never showed.

Oh well.  Her loss, right?