This post is brought to you by the letter "B"

Well, now there's all this pressure to be entertaining. Hmph. Speaking of entertaining, I had my father visiting this weekend. My mother tells me he likes super-ripe bananas, so I went out and bought some. He ate one, leaving me with five. ("Yes, we have no bananas" was a favorite song of my mother's. I still have no idea what it means.) Which means...banana bread! (And maybe banana pudding somewhere down the line, but I don't know how that's going to work out.)
My favorite banana bread recipe is Big Bird's. Yes, that Big Bird. The recipe is from a Sesame Street book, part of a series of...I dunno, 26? I'm pretty sure it's out of print, so I'll post my version of the recipe. I've tried a few other recipes, and none of them are good. Or maybe I was just brought up to prefer a really moist and dark banana bread.

The first step is mashing three ripe bananas to kingdom come. As shown in the lovely image below. It gets better, really. Or at least briefly. Just looking at the pictures alone will show a distinct narrative arc of not pretty, pretty, and not very pretty. Add 1/4 cup melted butter. Mmm. Then add 3/4 cup of honey, 1/2 tsp of baking soda and 1.5 cups of flour. (Big Bird suggests whole wheat flour, but I generally just use white flour and am all the unhealthier for it. I am not a role model like Big Bird.) Having stirred that altogether, pour into an oiled loaf pan and placed in a preheated (you did preheat, right?) oven at 350 degrees. Bake for one hour, although after one hour my loaf feel apart when I took it out of the pan. So use a loooooong toothpick to poke through the whole loaf to check for doneness. Cool briefly in pan, then let finish cooling on wire rack. Let's linger for a while on the pretty picture. Well, apparently the banana bread doesn't want to linger, but wants to get a move on. Or I need steadier hands.
Shoulda baked it longer. I tried cooking it a little longer in a turned-off oven after I got the top half off and then pushed it back in. It didn't really work very well, but was definitely moist and tasty as ever.
In conclusion, children should be allowed to watch television as it leads to things like the best banana bread.