Low sugar banana bread

I'm ALWAYS on the hunt for a quick, easy, healthy banana bread recipe. I want a bread, not a cake, which means that it's something that's less sweet, toast-able, able to be smothered in butter, or spread over with a bit of ricotta and a drizzle of honey or maple syrup.

I also need something that's TASTY and that's where my test panel  comes in - a hungry, 9 year old, starving after school.

So here's the recipe. The other great thing about this is that it's so easy, no prior baking skills required. 

Banana bread (low sugar) 

This recipe has 14 carb exchanges. 

Ingredients

1 cup mashed banana (approx 2 large or 3 med bananas)

1/4 cup sugar

2 eggs lightly beaten

50 ml light olive oil

1/4 cup (60ml) milk

200g self raising flour (or 100g wholemeal, 100g SRF)

1 tsp baking powder (optional)

2 tsp cinnamon

Method

1 Preheat oven to 180*C. Grease loaf pan and line with baking paper.

2 Combine banana and sugar in a bowl. Stir in egg, oil and milk. Add remaining ingredients. Stir until just combined. Do not overwork or it becomes a bit gluggy.

3 Pour into the lined tin. Spread so it's even. [Tip: Give the loaf pan a few sharp taps on the benchtop so the mixture settles evenly.] 

4 Bake uncovered about 1hr (keep your nose out to smell when it's done. I often find mine is done in about 50 mins in my oven)

5  Stand bread 5 mins then turn onto wire rack. Turn bread top-side to cool.

And now the curveball - a diagnosis from out of nowhere

My last post was about fastballs. This post is about the curveball. At this rate, I'm going to become an expert at baseball... or certainly baseball analogies! This may be helpful with our pending move to the US.


Callum was admitted to hospital over the weekend. He had been 'off' for a few days and I just knew that something wasn't right by the third day when he was the colour of ash and was curled into a ball on the bathroom floor, intermittently clinging to the toilet bowl. As life would have it, Marcus had had his work send off the night before so he was a little worse for wear and I wasn't certain if the hospital would end up admitting both son and father. So I left the father at home to fend for himself.

It turns out that Callum has type 1 diabetes. In this past week our lives have been overturned as we recover from the shock of this diagnosis. There is no history on either side, there were no symptoms other than that he'd been drinking lots of water and peeing a lot, and in hindsight, he'd lost a lot of weight. But it had been Christmas and he'd been mucking around non-stop with his cousins and friends. Callum will be dependent on insulin for the rest of his life, until someone can find a cure for it. 

I am a basket case. It breaks my heart that my little boy has to face this. No 9 year old should be dealing with their mortality. 

Callum is the champion. He is extraordinary. 

He is a super, resilient kid. 

The great thing is that he can still eat whatever he wants but he has to time when he eats it and how much of it he eats. He can still go to birthday parties and eat sausage rolls and cake. He can still keep doing all the sport that he wants. He can still become a Supreme Court Judge or play soccer for Liverpool. It's all a matter of management and for him to learn how to manage it himself. Already he is doing his own blood glucose tests. 

School hasn't started yet and Marcus is still around for a few weeks as he continues to wait for his visa to get the US. Little blessings that I'm happy to take at the moment. 

I'm not going to spruik. But here is the link to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation jdrf.org.

HUGE SHOUTS OUTS TO:

• Box Hill Hospital Paediatric ED team particularly Dr Archie and Nurse Bon who managed to unravel my garble and pick up on the T1D.
  
• the ICU and DACS teams at Monash Children's Hospital - Meagan, Renata, Tracy and Jacky and all the other extremely calm nurses who helped me hold my shit together in the first 72 hours

Fastballs, What-ifs and Laura Ingalls Wilder

I haven't written a post for a while, but not because life has been dull. The reality is that life threw us a fastball. It wasn't unexpected - we'd been training for days, years, for this moment. I've been trying to catch my breath ever since. 

On a spontaneous, long weekend in Hong Kong a couple of years ago, Marcus and I relived the days of B.C. (before Callum). Trawling through the windy, hilly streets of Lan Kwai Fong with one of our best friends (who is an expat but knows Honkers like he knows smoking is bad for you) we realised in a cocktail whirlwind that an overseas stint was what our next move in life was going to be. I even started looking at job opportunities and international schools in HK. 

Marcus and I are not known as fence-sitters. We jump in with both feet. We'd had the What-if discussion. What-if you were offered a job in Hong Kong. What-if we took off and had a sabbatical for 6 months. What-if we had taken that chance when we were given it. And so, when the fastball was thrown - a call from head office to work in the mighty land of the Stars and Stripes - striking out/hitting a foul ball/bunting were not options. The only option was to hit it out of the park. 

We're moving to Wisconsin. Land of cheese, beers and Harley Davidson, Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley. Home to the Packers, the Bucks and the Brewers. Milwaukee will be home for the next couple of years. And it certainly will be different. But isn't that what you want out of an expat experience? We've found a cute ranch house to rent with an attached garage. (I see this as an Essential. You're not going to find me shovelling snow off my driveway to get the car out.) Callum will get the yellow school bus. We will deal with the snow and the cold, rationing Vegemite and Tim Tams...and Trump. Maybe I'll even get a snow plow licence. 

Sure it'd be nice to say that we're moving to NYC or Chicago or San Fran. But there is plenty to do in WI and some beautiful camping spots we are ready to try out. A quick sledding session in local Wirth Park with other families. Breakfast at the Original Pancake House on a Sunday. We aren't moving to some random settlement in the midwest wilderness. This is where Laura Ingalls Wilder was born. Tell me honestly who didn't love a bit of 'Little House on the Prairie'? 

I'm packing and organising and making lists of lists of lists. Each passing day gets struck off the calendar. More drop offs are made to the Salvation Army. Appliances are being redistributed to refugee families. Goodbyes have been said.  

To quote Laura Ingalls Wilder - Home is the nicest word there is. We will come home one day, but for now, our next adventure is about to begin.