We are enjoying the first glorious days of spring here in Southern California. Plants are budding and the sweet little birds are singing their sweet little songs. I have a Black Phoebe in my backyard who is entertaining me and Juliet with  swoops and other feats of derring do.  She is looking for nesting material. I hope. I hope.

This, then, is a great day to sit outside with a good book, a pitcher of something and a banana bread all to yourself.

Banana bread?

Bananas, after all, are the most popular fruit in the world. There are at least 1000 varieties of bananas and they are grown in 150 countries. Today, the most popular banana (and the most consumed) is the Cavendish. Daniel Stone, writing on National Geographic.com, wrote of the fruit: “It crosses historical eras, has been responsible for entire governments rising and falling, and has propped up beleaguered economies. If fruits were countries, the banana would be the world’s superpower. If fruits were pop stars, the banana would be Beyoncé.” Funny.

Bananas are also the most popular fruit (actually a berry) in the U.S. where U.S. per capita consumption was 28.54 pounds in 2017. Whoa!

Here, bananas even have their own national day. Actually there are several banana days. National Banana Day is on April 17. National Banana Bread Day is on January 21. National Banana Split Day is on August 25.  You get the picture.

Bananas have intrigued people for centuries. They are represented in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Alexander the Great wrote about them when his armies invaded India in 327 B.C.  In Thailand, there is a wonderful ghost story that a beautiful green-clad spirit named Nam Tani haunts wild banana groves and makes herself visible on full moon nights. She is particularly edgy about men who harm women (You go, Nam Tani!) and some Thais tie a silk cloth around the trunks of banana trees where she is thought to lurk–warning men to be careful in her territory.

This banana bread recipe produces a moist and rich bread stuffed with cream cheese. What could be better than that? It is a superstar!

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This recipe is adapted from one that appears on the Averie Cooks blog. Here is a link to her site: Averie Cooks.

I was reminded of Paul Simon’s iconic hit as I was making banana bread the other day. I’m quickly finding that there are at least fifty ways to make the sweet treat. (If you want to relive a bit of Paul Simon’s performance of Fifty Ways in the Central Park Concert while you make your banana bread, here is a link: Paul Simon. Watch out, though.You’ll be singing it for the rest of the day.)

I know that I recently posted a banana bread recipe.

Bear with me.

There is a new development on the banana bread front that you will definitely want to look at if you are a banana bread diva (or divo).

Believe it or not, King Arthur Flour’s site has posted a template that allows you to fill in the ingredients you want to put into your banana bread and the site then calculates the proper amount you’ll need of each ingredient. You can find the link here. Is that cool or what?

Also, I’ve found a new banana bread recipe I want to share. Actually, it is banana banana bread. (No. That’s not a typo.) It really IS banana banana bread. (This recipe is adapted from one you’ll find on the Genius Kitchen site here .)

I confess that the recipe did pique my interest because of the repetitive title. Grammarians have a term for this type of repetitive use of words. It’s contrastive focus reduplication. (You know grammarians. They have to make things sound hard!) Using this construction, the double mention of banana gives emphasis to the strength of the banana ingredient in the bread. It’s not just banana bread. It’s banana banana bread!  If you want to throw this bit of grammatical trivia around at your next dinner party, be my guest. Really cool cool grammarians us the term CR, by the way.

You don’t need to be coy about making this banana bread recipe.  It’s really good.

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