Banana and pecan nuts bread

I am in the middle of sorting out my allotment pictures, eating some "just hot from the oven" banana bread so I thought I'd post the recipe. This was supposed to be made with walnuts but I didn't have any and I much prefer pecan nuts anyway!

Ingredients:

225g plain flour

100g sugar

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 large or 3 medium bananas mashed

2 tbsp melted butter

1 tbsp milk

1 egg

50-75g pecan nuts roughly chopped (or walnuts)

1tsp lemon rind

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C /350F/GM4.

2. Mix all the ingredients from the first group in one bowl.

3. Mix all the ingredients from the second group in another bowl.

4. Mix the contents of both bowls together.

5. Pour into a loaf tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 1 to 1 and 1/4 hours. When it's ready, an inserted toothpick or fine skewer should come out clean. Cool down on a wire rack and slice before serving.

Should make 8 to 10 slices.

PS. There wasn't much left by the time I got round to taking the picture!

A little bit of an introduction

If you're coming from Il pleut, il mouille! (my other blog), hello again and thanks for visiting here! This blog will be written mostly in English for a number of reasons which I might elaborate on one day. Hope you don't mind too much, it's easier for me and it makes more sense.

So where does this blog come from?

Once upon a time, before I broke my mum's heart and crossed the Channel, I lived in a big-ish house with a big garden in a small country village and my grand dad was growing very tasty vegs in his potager. For the past few years now, I have been taking more and more interest in what I eat, where it comes from, how it has been grown or raised and how far it had travelled before ending up in my plate. I am not quite Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - even though I would dream of leaving the River Cottage lifestyle in my older years! - but I wanted to be able to grow my own vegetables and eat fresher ingredients seasonally. Some might think it's just a pipe dream when you live in a tenement flat in Glasgow with a tiny shared back garden. Well, when we bought our flat, the answer was just staring us in the face. It was there, just across the road.

Kennyhill allotments - run by Glasgow City Council. The website told us there was a waiting list but we still sent an application letter and within 2 weeks, we received a phone call: one of the plots had become free if we were still interested... You bet we were!

We have now been tenents of plot 52 for just over a year.

It's not always fun and giggles, sometimes it breaks your back, you get wet, cold and muddy, or you lose all your crop to the tiniest of flies. But I wouldn't give it up for the world.

I just needed a place to record what we do on the plot, what goes well and what goes wrong so that we can learn from it and do even better the next year. Another thing I enjoy doing is cooking, so I'll probably post a few recipes here too!