Old-Fashioned Banana Bread

My mom was an amazing fruit bread maker. Banana bread was a constant in our home. We couldn’t wait for mom to deem the bananas no longer “fit for consumption” which meant BANANA BREAD!!

She especially liked to experiment with new fruit breads around the holidays. You just never knew what would be wrapped in the foil packages she always gave us as we left a visit –  cranberry orange, zucchini, pumpkin. You name it, she made it. But our all-time favorite was banana.

When it was just mom and dad left at home, mom discovered that the two of them couldn’t get all the way through a loaf before it started getting fuzzy (can you believe it?!). Cutting it in half and freezing a portion never resulted in the bread tasting as good as within the first couple of days. Leave it to my dad, the “I can fix any problem” guy, who came up with the idea of using tin cans. You see, both my parents grew up through the depression. In both their eyes, there was never really a need to buy something special….. like a smaller loaf pan.

So, between them they figured a vegetable can size was just about right. That meant, dad got to work making a batch of soup in order to get the needed cans. Then, he simply sanded the rough edges of vegetable cans, cleaned really well to be sure all label glue was gone, and they were in business!  From that point on, we always got our fruit breads in the shape of a vegetable can…can ridges and all!

My mom’s Banana Bread recipe has been passed around for decades. She actually got it from an old Watkins cookbook that she bought from “The Watkins Man” who went door to door selling products. I think the only thing she ever bought from him was vanilla….and this cookbook, but I distinctly remember him paying a visit at least once a month. Here’s the coveted Watkin’s Hearthside Cookbook, published in 1952, and sold for $2.50! Clearly the Banana Tea Bread page got a workout!