The rationale behind the banana bread and bread pudding

In order to carry out a successful pantry raid, the pantry must supply decent ingredients. For today's raid it was baking supplies.

We had too many bananas. Chuck 9the main banana-eater) was ill earlier in the week and not eating much. I added a banana half to my cereal yesterday and my oatmeal today, but we still had four and a half ripe bananas. Banana bread, right? Right. Sort of. Almost.

I also had several bread crusts and a few slices of homemade white bread with flaxseed from earlier in the week. I had enough bread crumbs in the freezer that I didn't want to grind up any more. I could have composted these, but I thought I'd try using them up first.

AND -- if that weren't enough, I had two rogue zucchini that had managed to ripen during the recent warm weeks.

Hence the afternoon baking results:

Hybrid quick-bread: banana/zucchini with chocolate chips.

Bread pudding with bananas

While the oven was working its magic, I worked on updating my gradebook for upcoming parent-teacher conferences. Whether conferences go well or not, I'll know I fed my family some good food and did it with a minimum of waste.

Oh, yes. The recipes? Banana bread is here. I doubled the recipe, cut down on the eggs, added a little extra flour and wheat germ to counteract the moist zucchini, mixed in several Tablespoons of cocoa, and finally used 3 bananas and 1 1/2 cup grated zucchini. As for the bread pudding, I'll post it Tuesday.

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