I haven’t been satisfied with my banana cake recipe. It’s a good cake, mind you, but a bit too thin and—dare I say it?—rubbery.

There. Now I’ve gone and made it sound perfectly despicable, and it’s not. Back in the day when she had curly-wild hair and wore sundresses, my mother made it in the shape of a barn for my brother’s birthday. There was even a silo (cake baked in a tin) and the platter—er, barnyard—was inhabited with plastic animals. It was a great cake.

I taught the women in my Nicaraguan women’s group how to bake that banana cake (minus the silos and plastic animals). They loved the recipe and the cake immediately became their favorite (that and torta simple, a plain white cake similar to basic shortcake).

Banana trees studded their dirt yards and yet they had never made banana cake! Can you imagine? Probably not, and there’s probably a lot of other things that they’ve never done or seen or tasted that you can’t imagine. Think, for instance, vegetable peelers, washing machines, coffee pots, bacon, mozzarella, diaper covers (yes, you read that right), telephones, etc. And they had never baked using flour. Instead, they used ground-up corn to make the regional favorite—rosquía, a dry, crumbly cookie tasting of soured milk and corn. I learned to love them, for real, but many gringos never develop an appreciation for them (and that’s a polite way of putting it).

In any case, the women wanted to learn how to bake with flour and I wanted to teach them. There were no ovens, except for the outdoor kind, so when we gathered to bake, we baked in quantity—thirty or more sheet cakes at a time. It was a huge undertaking, filled with many variables (think no measuring cups or regulated ovens, let alone any thermometers). I had to learn to relax my standards.

Along with the banana cake and torta simple, I taught the women to make carrot cake, almond cookies, braided bread, donuts, frostings and more. The last year I was there, I pulled all the recipes together into a little booklet and gave them each a copy. I doubt they ever make the butter frostings and the yeast breads (the ingredients are scarce and cost prohibitive), but I like to think they still make the banana cake.

That banana cake was a fine recipe even though I no longer make it.

I now make this one—a recipe that calls for yogurt, whole wheat flour, and brown sugar. Simple changes, they are, but the resulting cake is lighter and more flavorful. The yogurt gives it a pleasant tang (sour cream may be substituted but the zip will go missing) and the brown sugar adds a caramely depth that was absent in the white sugar version.

The thing I like best about this recipe? That it’s healthy enough to stand in for a breakfast muffin, but when topped with a luscious peanut butter frosting, it transforms into a decadent cake.

In other words, this recipe meets all my banana cake needs and will be, until one of my daughters (or sons) grows up and teaches me otherwise, my one and only banana cake recipe.

Banana Cake
A family recipe, with inspiration from the April 2010 issue of Bon Appetit

½ cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1½ teaspoons vanilla
½ cup plain yogurt
3 small bananas, mashed (to equal one cup)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat till creamy and smooth. Beat in the yogurt and mashed bananas. Add the dry ingredients and stir to combine.

Grease pans (makes 12 muffins and one small cake) and bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for ten minutes, cut around the edges and invert cakes/muffins onto a cooling rack. When they are completely cool, frost them with the icing of your choice (I recommend the following peanut butter frosting), or freeze them for later.

Creamy Peanut Butter Frosting
From the April 2010 issue of Bon Appetit

This differs from the other peanut butter frosting in that it is less sweet. Also, the measurements are more straightforward.

½ cup butter
8 ounces cream cheese
½ cup smooth peanut butter (not freshly ground or old-fashioned)
1 ½ cups confectioners sugar, sifted

Beat the butter and cream cheese together until they are perfectly creamy (lumps now will be lumps later). Add the peanut butter and beat some more. Beat in the sugar.

About one year ago: In their genes.

Hey you! Quick! Listen up! I’ve got something important to tell you! Your relationship with asparagus depends upon what I’m going to say next.

Nah, forget it. I’m not going to say anything after all. Instead, I’m simply going to tell you what to do. You must obey, no questions asked, okay? Ignore the fact that I go to church with holes in the back of my skirt, stab myself with pitchforks, don’t know the difference between snap and hull peas, and chuck books at the people I love most. You can trust me on this. I promise.

All set? Okay, here’s what I want you to do.

First, obtain some fresh asparagus. Harvest, buy, steal—anything goes here. This is important.

You’ll need about a pound, give or take a handful. The amount isn’t really that crucial, but the freshness is. It must be fresh.

Wash it, cut off the tough bottom ends and chop the spears into pea-sized chunks. Put them in a bowl.

Second, grate enough fresh Parmesan to make about three-fourths cup and add that to the asparagus.

Third, toast one-half cup of roughly chopped walnuts in a skillet. Add them to the asparagus and cheese. It’s fine if they are still so hot that they sizzle and pop. Pay them no mind.

Fourth and final, in a small bowl whisk together 1/3 cup red wine vinegar with 1/4 cup olive oil and some salt and pepper. Add it to the asparagus and stir to combine.

Cover the salad and let it rest in the refrigerator for a couple hours before eating—if you can wait that long. I couldn’t.

I made a valiant effort. Really, I did. But the bowl kept wandering out of the fridge and slipping back onto the counter, and then I’d find myself standing by it with a fork in my hand. When lunch rolled around, more than half of the salad had already disappeared down my gullet.

Which was okay because by then I wasn’t really even hungry anymore.

Asparagus Walnut Salad
Adapted from Sara at Culinerapy

This salad is flexible. I suspect any hard salty cheese would work, or you could use feta. Perhaps you could swap out the walnuts for some toasted pine nuts. Bulk up the salad with some boiled egg or shredded chicken. Raisins might be good here, too.

Whatever you do, serve the salad with some crusty bread so none of the yummy juices go to waste.

1 pound fresh asparagus, washed, tough ends removed, and chopped into pea-sized pieces
3/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
½ cup chopped walnuts, toasted
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4-1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8-1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Put the asparagus, cheese, and walnuts in a bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients and then toss them with the asparagus. Cover and chill the salad for a couple hours before serving.

About one year ago: Asparagus with Lemony Crème Fraîche and Boiled Egg. Tis the season!

Do you ever feel like school work is pointless? I do, and as a homeschooling mom, this is completely unacceptable. I have no one to blame but myself.

I’m not suggesting I should feel guilty that I’m bored with school work. To the contrary, if the school work isn’t interesting me, then it’s not good enough. ‘Cause I’m amazing and demand the best! Humph.

Even though we are reserved in our use of workbooks (and school-ish requirements in general), each child still has one or two that they work through. Most of them are useful, teaching valuable skills. But lately I’ve noticed that Yo-Yo’s workbooks are feeling more like busy work—suffixes, prefixes, vocabulary words, plurals, syllables, etc., over and over and over.

Children learn best by reading. I’ve always known that. But just last week I came across this quote: The number one predictor of good writing skills is reading aloud to children in huge quantity at a high level. ~ Andrew Pudewa

The proverbial light bulb flicked on. Why not scrap the workbooks and just read?

Seriously, why not?

Here’s my idea: I choose a book and Yo-Yo chooses a book. Every day he reads for an hour from each. We talk about them. And … that’s it. After a month, we reevaluate and make adjustments. He would probably still have piano and math, and he might write a story every other day or so; but the bulk of his studies would be reading for fun. Doesn’t that sound like a blast?

I realize my pretty plan ignores one of the key words in the quote: “aloud.” However, I already read aloud to my children—science, history, Bible, novels, etc.—so for our purposes I’m broadening the number one predictor to include reading in general. I’m the teacher so I can do that.

I’m not ready to jump into this new plan just yet. We’re finishing up a few things (er, workbooks [old school marm-y ways die hard]), and we might not even get around to implementing this plan till the fall. And then, when the new school year rolls around, I might decide the whole idea is irrelevant any way. But for now, I think it sounds pretty fun.

Weigh in on the matter, please. Have any of you done this before, in some form or another? Will my children shrivel up and die without their grammar workbooks? What reading material do you recommend? (Yo-Yo loves action-packed drama, though as he matures and his reading ability advances, he’s developing patience and perseverance.) Maybe two hours of quiet reading time (and it wouldn’t include reading that he does in the regular afternoon quiet time) isn’t sufficient. Maybe I should make him read till his eyes fall out.

Maybe I shouldn’t wait till the fall. Maybe we should shelve all the workbooks tonight and start tomorrow fresh. It’s tempting, that’s for sure.

About one year ago: Chocolate-covered peanut butter eggs.