Thinking About Bananas

Without reason, the term roasted bananas will pop into my head these days. Without a relevant or identifiable prompt. F'rinstance...today I was walking through the ICU waiting room. There were a few family members in there. The volunteer lady with hair that always reminds me of the horns of a bison was at the desk. There was an elderly couple waiting at the elevators. And before I reached the stairwell, there it was: roasted bananas. The thought just arrives.

Now, on the one hand, it's not terribly unusual that I would be thinking about food while at work. I think about food almost all the time. But I'm allergic to bananas (in their raw form) (so is sister Jane, and we both developed the allergy just a few years ago - weird), I have never roasted a banana, and I can't say that I ever remember having eaten a roasted banana. Anyway...because this phrase has been floating freely among my synapses for several weeks now, I succumbed and did buy a bunch o'bananas the other day, and they have been ripening nicely on the counter.

So guess what...I have 5 cups of sliced bananas, 3 Tablespoons of butter, and 4 Tablespoons of brown sugar roasting in a 350 degree oven right now. I'm a sucker for banana bread. I made multiple loaves of it at the restaurant every week. My mother recently gave me a recipe for banana bread that she said was quite good and very easy (easy? oh god, what am I thinking, that not my kind of recipe at all) so I thought instead of just slicing/mashing them there 'nanas I'd try it with these roasted bananas, maybe that will get them out of my head. A culinary exorcism, as it were.