Banana Crunch Muffins

Hadley wants me to crack and peel her hard-boiled egg, and I am looking at three too-ripe bananas and thinking about banana bread.

“I will if you pull out Ina Garten’s recipe for Banana Crunch Muffins,” I tell her. Banana bread is delicious. I throw in cinnamon and chocolate chips, and I’ve learned from Food 52 that whole fat, plain yogurt instead of milk makes a delicious and satisfying breakfast bread, but if there’s time to make an Ina Garten recipe, I try not to opt out. This morning, I think there’s time.

I crack and peel Hadley’s egg, and she opens up The Barefoot Cantessa to page 212. It’s dusted with flour and probably shredded coconut from the last time I made these – in our townhouse on Town Commons in Germantown – on a morning that we had a two hour delay because of snow.  When I bake, remnants of ingredients are always on the pages of the cookbooks I frequently use. I suppose this is disgusting, but I kind of like it. Here’s where I’ve been, I think as I open the page and run my hand down the center to flatten the book a bit more (I’m so mean to books I love).

“How many bananas do I need?” I ask Hadley, scrapping the egg shell into the garbage.

“Three,” she tells me. “Two for mashing, and one that’s not so ripe to slice and put in the batter.”

“I’m not doing that,” I say. I have three that will get mashed, and that’ll do just fine.

Hadley takes her egg into the dining room and eats it while she figures out her Rubiks Cube. She purchased it a few days ago, and has been attacking it ever since. She’s watching a YouTube video on how to solve it, which I think is cheating, but it’s probably better than what I did when I just pulled the stickers off the tiles and called it good. Anyway, Hadley tells me that each time the puzzle is different. You can’t solve it once and do the steps to solve it the same way again. “But I can get the feel for the solution,” she tells me.

I think about getting the feel for the solution as I pull baking power, baking soda, salt, vanilla, and flour from the cupboard. I am supposed to use a cup of granulated sugar, but I only have brown sugar. I think about running to the grocery store, but why not make the recipe with brown sugar? I decide to do that and see what happens.

Jesse and I bought Ina Garten’s book in 1999 with a William Sonoma gift card, and except for The Joy of Cooking, hers has been the most picked up in our almost 20 years of marriage. Jesse has her guacamole recipe memorized, but I have to look and read carefully at the book as I work. Plus, I like reading the little stories she writes when she introduces each food: some recipes happened by mistake, or on a whim, some are tried and true, and she has an entire page devoted to the perfect cup of coffee.

I feel bad substituting brown sugar for granulated. I don’t have much confidence following my own inclinations. Lots of mess happens, but after stirring all the ingredients together, the batter is sandy and substantial. With the granola, shredded coconut, chocolate chips, and pecans (I didn’t have walnuts like Ina suggested), I start to wonder whether this will be a sort of trail mix muffin. Something that sticks to your ribs a bit more than your typical blueberry muffin.

I clean up while the oven warms up. In most recipes, the first step is to preheat the oven, but that stresses me out because I think I need to have everything ready by the time the oven beeps. I like to see if I can clean up before the heat rises to 425. Usually I can, and it’s satisfying sliding in something to bake when the stovetop and counters are clean. Oh, these banana crunch muffins? These were no trouble at all.

Usually, I’d write while the muffins bake. That’s my go-to trick. Write as much as I can in the 25-35 minutes it takes to bake something. This is to prove to myself that something can happen in a short amount of time. I can write in the margins: in the carpool line, while Harper’s at ballet, while I’m waiting for Hadley to finish with soccer, while something’s being  baked in the oven – the cinnamon and chocolate and coconut and brown sugar melting and combining to send whiffs of inspiration my way. Lately, though, I’ve been grumpy about this marginal time. I can’t get into what it is I think I need to get into in 20 or 30 minutes. Whatever needs to shake loose needs a lot of space. I think I need to make a really big mess that will take a long time to clean up.

So I don’t write today, while the muffins bake. Instead, I read the Ina Garten’s cookbook. I’m looking for a particular story about her leaving a job to start something totally different. I thought it was in the foreword, which was written by Martha Stewart. I thought I remembered reading it there all those years ago in William-Sonoma while I was standing in line with my new husband. I thought I remember it was Martha who said Ina left a hot-shot job in New York City to bake and cook with only the finest ingredients, and I thought it was next to Jesse that I felt an excitement for that ridiculous risk Ina took.

Turns out, that one sentence story is on the inside flap of the cover, under her byline, and the job she left was in the White House, not NYC. She was a budget analyst. How does one go to school to do budget analyzing, get herself all the way to the White House, and decide she’d rather bake and cook? When she was exhausted from her day, was it cooking a meal that brought her back to life? Did she work problems out kneading bread or chopping onions? Did she find satisfaction like no other serving grilled chicken she’d been marinating in lemon, olive oil, salt, and pepper all day? And did that satisfaction fade and grow into frustration when she decided she needed to do more of what she loved and less of what kept her busy? Did she wonder why she didn’t like budget analysis anymore as she did once in college? Or was it that she did love it, but she loved baking and cooking more, and it was baking and cooking that she needed to attend to? Was she afraid when she realized she needed more space to make a really big mess?

I got the location wrong, but I remember the excitement I felt for the risk she took. I wonder if I’m addicted to that feeling of taking a risk. I know I’m happiest when I’m working something out on paper without having a clue how it’ll all turn out. I know I’ve been feeling suffocated lately with all the writing I want to do but can’t, and so I asked for Friday’s off next school year. It’s a risk. We can’t really afford it. We can’t really afford the life we live with the job I’m currently working at five days a week. But the Spring has been difficult for me. What’s in my head and heart needs to come out, and it can’t, and I’m getting sad. Jesse has said repeatedly, “Something needs to be given up,” and I was afraid he meant my writing, and so I said to him, “We wouldn’t have these money problems if I’d have kept the job in Detroit,” and I held my breath for him to tell me I am right – that I should’ve stayed with what I was good at.

“You wouldn’t have written a book if you had stayed. You needed to write that book,” is what he said.

Maybe I’m addicted to the rush of taking a risk, but I think I’m still learning to live with being uncomfortable leaving something else behind. I wonder if Ina was too, all those years ago. I close the book and put it back on the shelf in our kitchen.

I walk to our living room windows and look at the hydrangeas. What a lovely bunch of role models these fellows have become. We lift up from the ground and cut what is no longer living each year, and each year they come back, lusciously green, and full and almost like they’re smiling. See, Callie? We are always blooming. We will always come back. Don’t be afraid for what you hope will bloom.

The muffins are done. “Can we have them for lunch?” Hadley asks when she walks in from the pool, famished.

“Absolutely,” I tell her, and set them on the stovetop. I pull out plates and the girls quickly lift a muffin out of the tin, and walk to the table.

“These are delicious,” they tell me.

“Thank you,” I say, turning the oven off, and taking a muffin for myself.

I think they’re pretty good, but I can’t tell if the brown sugar is any better than the granulated.

It probably doesn’t matter whether Ina is right or I am right in our choices of sugar. I think what matters is I’m beginning to get a feel for the solution.