The Taste of Love and Courage

March 5, 2024

Beloved:  
          The recipe card is at least 30 years old and so faded and stained I can barely read it.  My friend Cathy found the recipe somewhere when our kids were babies and we made them all the time.  We called them nursing mama muffins, although I don’t think they are specifically nursing nutritious, just extra comforting and edible one handed.  Needing freezer real estate, I got out the bag of brown bananas and made a double batch.  Here are my extended notes: 
          I can’t have a compost pile so I’m always looking for ways to keep my food refuse out of the trash.  I put banana peels in a gallon pitcher of water to water houseplants; half tap water, half banana syrup.  The Christmas cactus, purple wandering Jew, and peace lily seem especially improved by the potassium.  I refill the pitcher and add peels until they turn into slime which I then pour on my flowerbeds outside.  (As I’ve said before, I watch tiktok so you don’t have to!) 
          Measuring flour vexed me for years; stirring air into the flour so as not to use too much, but how much air is enough air??  Then Jeremy P. , who makes the most amazing bread, told me he only ever weighs his flour.  120 grams = 1 cup, no guessing required.  I feel practically European every time I bake.
          Once upon a time I needed the recipe card.  Then for years and years I didn’t.  I made those muffins from memory – dozens upon dozens.  I toted shopping bags of double-size muffins packed with protein powder to the high school swim team fridge, then suddenly, all my muffin eaters were gone.  The recipe card sat in its box and I sort of forgot about them until I started to live alone – and couldn’t eat my bananas fast enough.  So I dug it out again, faded and stained with such precious memories of mine and Cathy’s, and so many, many more mamas and babies in those early hard days of nursing, when a muffin tasted like love and courage.  The memories of all those babies, tiny, with that slightly sour milk smell, then huge with that powerfully sour smell of wet towels, men feet and chlorine.
          It might be the only food I’ve ever made about which no one ever said, “No thanks,” and yet there is literally nothing special about the recipe.  Butter, salt, sugar and chocolate – a dopamine hit in any combination.  And yet, all love when I visit their place in my heart and mind.  Like most any other beauty one may come upon in the world, some feature of creation that feeds more than just our bellies.  A bird, a cloud, a tree, an ocean.  A leaf bug or combination of the elements where life connects to life and we gain a glimpse of how we fit this network of giving and receiving the love and effort and kindness that sustains it all.  For our time, and in our place, and with our self.  I can’t plainly tell, with right effect, how a muffin gets us there, only that with a certain quality of attention, it can.*
          I pray this gorgeous rumbly, rainy day treats you kindly and you accept the invitation to treat it kindly in return.

~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette

*Quality of attention is a phrase Marilynne Robinson used in an interview with Ezra Klein on his podcast released today.  I access it through the New York Times but you can also listen to it here.  Robinson’s newest book is about Genesis, and the gracious, forgiving God at work in the stories there.  The interview is really, really wonderful.

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

• 2 overripe bananas
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ½ cup melted butter
• 1 cup (or less) brown sugar ( I use less because bananas are so sweet)
• 270 grams (2 ¼ cups) all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder 
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• Additional add-ins: ½ cup walnuts, 1 cup dried cranberries, whatever you like

          Mix dry ingredients together.  I blend wet ingredients with my immersion blender and pour into the dry and stir until everything is combined but no more.  Scoop into 12-15 greased or paper lined muffin tins, depending on scoop size and bake for 22-25 minutes at 350°, until barely brown on top.  Cool on a cooling rack.  Store in an airtight container or ziplock in the freezer.  Frozen muffin to yummy warm one in about 20 microwave seconds.

---