I am tired of throwing away bananas.

I usually get a few bananas in with my weekly produce box that comes to my house. Often we eat them. Just as often I end up throwing them away because they’ve gone brown, waiting for me to finish all my other fabulous summer produce. I decided yesterday that I was tired of throwing them away and that I would make banana bread instead.

Now, this is really a rather revolutionary idea for me. I don’t really like bananas. I know, that is a crazy thing to say, but it is true. I like bananas when they are still a little green and don’t taste very banana like. When I was a kid (and even now), banana flavored candy was always my least favorite. There isn’t much that is grosser to me than artificial banana flavoring.

However, I’ve had a few banana breads over the years that I’ve liked. One time, Phylicia Rashad offered me a piece of banana bread, and even though I wasn’t a big fan, how can you say no to Mrs. Huxtable!? More recently, a friend of mine brought me a piece that had carrots in it, and I quite liked it. So, when searching for a recipe to use my sad bananas for, I chose one with carrots.

This is the beautiful loaf that I ended up with.

Smelled even better than this looks.

I found this on Allrecipes.com and the only change I made was using walnuts instead of pecans. I ended up cooking it for the full length recommended, and if anything, I overcooked it a bit. I don’t think you should wait quite until a toothpick in the middle comes out clean. Maybe a toothpick 1/3 of the way from the edge. But, I was the only one who thought it was a little dry, so maybe it was just perfect.

I like that this banana bread was a) not too banana-y and b) not too sweet. It is simple and rich and lovely. Not to mention, I had it in the oven and everything cleaned up in about 20 minutes.

Carrot Banana Bread