Mennonite Monday started because I wanted to make recipes from the Bethesda Mennonite Church Cookbooks (both the yellow and the white cookbook for those of you who own them). I also wanted to take pictures of each recipe that I made, so I would know for future reference what the recipe should look like. I am by no means a great cook, but I think it will be fun to try new and different recipes each week. Not all of these recipes are for ethnic Mennonite food, but the women from Henderson know how to cook, so I can safely say that these recipes will be good. Check back each Monday for a new recipe and feel free to leave a comment if you have a favorite recipe from these cookbooks, or if you have some tips on what I should make and how I should make it.

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With Mike training for a half marathon, I have kept a large number of bananas on hand, but the problem is that once in a while you can't eat them fast enough before they go bad.  I decided to use the opportunity to make Banana Bread (pg 28W).  This was a great quick recipe that created three small loaves of bread. 

Banana Bread

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

2 cup flour

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup milk

1 cup chopped nuts

3 bananas, mashed

Cream together shortening and sugar.  Add eggs on at a time.  Add flour, baking powder, salt, vanilla and milk.  Mix thoroughly.  Add nuts and bananas.  Pour into 3 small prepared bread pans.  Bake at 350* for 30 minutes.  

 Unfortunately these pictures aren't very exciting because all the ingredients are about the same color, but you can at least see the texture change.  This is the shortening and sugar. 

 After adding the egg. 

 Adding the flour. 

 Adding the powder, salt and vanilla. 

 Milk. 

 My mashed bananas.  I did not put nuts in my bread because I didn't have any on hand, but I was thinking it would have been nice to add nuts to one or two of the loaves. 

 Mixed and in the pans.  I only had two pans so I had to wait to make the third loaf until these were done. 

The final product. It was amazing how fast these loaves disappeared.   One we gave as a thank you to someone for tilling our garden, and the other two went to coffee with Mike.