My Grumpy Neighbor's Best Banana Bread Recipe Ever

If you've moved around the country a bit, and lived in more than one house or community, chances are you've lived next door to a grumpy neighbor. Chances are you've also developed a cookbook of favorite recipes gathered from your travels. What do the two of these have in common? Well, for me, my favorite Banana Bread Recipe comes from the grumpiest old woman and neighbor we ever had.

I feel badly as I read that statement, so let me explain briefly before I share with you the Best Banana Bread Recipe you will ever eat!

At age 30, my husband started work as an Electrical Engineer for a public utility in central Indiana. The job required that we move from the part of Indiana we had settled in after college to central Indiana.

We found a house, a rambling three story farmhouse that had been built in the mid 1800's. It was cool and old and airy and just in need of enough remodeling we would make money, and not enough that it looked or felt like a dump. And we could afford it on one income with four small Malone children ages, 1-7. I know..crazy!

It sat on a big city double lot with a sweet little old lady across the street who loved our boys and girl; and another sweet retired couple on the left who thought our children were angels, and on the right side of our house lived a woman who hated children. Oh, she smiled through clenched teeth at them, and even tried to remember their names, but all in all, she really had little use for children. They disturbed her and you could see she was in great pain if she had to spend any amount of time around them. We complied by seeking to avoid her presence at all cost.

But, it was a neighborhood and the problem was complicated by the fact, that her husband loved children as much as she hated them. He would call our boys over to their front porch while they were riding their bicycles up and down the sidewalk in front of the house and give them candy and check their tires and air them up and ask them all sorts of serious and fun questions. Our children loved him as much as they feared his wife.

As new neighbors, she brought to our house the first week or so we lived there a carefully wrapped loaf of banana bread. That's back when neighbors still did that, brought house warming food to welcome you to the neighborhood.

It was the most amazing banana bread I have ever tasted. I know, you're thinking, "What, banana bread is banana bread." No! That's not so. This was moist, and dark, flecked with specks of banana and encased nuts with creamy vanilla banana flavor permeating throughout the entire loaf. It was heavenly banana bread.

I determined to get the recipe and so the next time I saw our grumpy neighbor outdoors, I complimented her and asked her for the recipe. She thanked me and said, "Oh, well..yes I guess I could share that.." But she didn't sound too happy about the idea. I waited. The recipe never showed up on my doorstep. I resolved myself to never tasting that delicious bread again. Visions of moist delectable banana bread danced in my head while I chewed on plain, boring often dry banana bread.

Our oldest son was a chatterbox and a good thing too! One day he walked in the house and he handed me a piece of paper with the recipe for Grumpy Neighbor's Banana Bread. When I asked him how he got it, he said very sweetly, "Oh, I asked Mr. (Grumpy Neighbor's husband) for it and told him how much we liked it and that you wanted to make some for us." Never send a grown woman to do a child's work.

And so with great aplomb I willingly share my Grumpy Neighbor's Banana Bread. Enjoy and share it! I do not know if this recipe exists somewhere else on the internet..Perhaps it does. I never bother to look because I already have what I consider to be the best banana bread recipe ever invented.

And in defense of my stereotyping of my ex neighbor, who would now be...108, I would say that my children were not angels, or even close. and that it must have been frightfully annoying to have to tolerate them for the 10 years we lived there and that never once, did she complain to me about them or their wild antics. Those wild antics make great story fodder for another day.

Now that I am much older, I wonder if my neighbors children think I am a grumpy old woman.....

Ingredients:

3 and ½ cups of all purpose flour

3 c. of sugar

2 t. baking soda

4 eggs

1 t. salt

2 c. mashed ripe bananas (bananas must be over ripe, ready to toss away, full of brown or even black spots)

1 c. of vegetable oil

¾ c. of sour cream

2 c. of chopped walnuts (you can leave out nuts if you don't like them or use pecans)

2 t. of vanilla

Procedure:

Stir together flour, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, bananas, oil, sour cream, vanilla and sugar.

Add to flour mixture, stirring just until combined. Fold in nuts and pour into 2 9 x 5 baking bread pans or small loaf pans (will make about 5 or 6) Fill to about 2//3 full.

Bake at 325 for 1 hour and 20 minutes for large pans. Less time needed for small. I just insert a wooden toothpick in the very center and when the very center is just done, remove from oven. Don't overcook! It will get dry. Don't turn the heat up, it will get to brown around the edges! Just wait for the perfect loaf of banana bread to emerge from your oven.