Combining Flavors

Why is it that we always seem to separate our foods? Do we like the organization? Or is it the familiarity of that division? Think about a meal. The traditional meal is a “square” meal, as they say, separated into categories: a meat, a starch, a vegetable, etc. “The American Way of Life” teaches us that for Sunday dinner, we sit around a table, pass our plates, and eat that square meal for obligation’s sake.

But why don’t we have more emotion—some excitement—in our meals? Rid our plates of separation and bring in something mixed, scrambled, and stirred—those one-of-kind, no recipe needed, exotic foods that when asked about the recipe, you can honestly say: “No, I can’t give it to you, it’s only in my head.”

I made banana bread a few days ago. I had a couple very brown bananas and because I can never throw anything out to waste, I decided to make use of them. Banana bread is one of my favorite things to bake; there is something so delightful about turning fruit into bread. (And then when I eat it, I can pass it off as a fruit and not just bread—because I know there are in fact real bananas in it!)

One of the wonderful things about banana bread is that each recipe I find is different and there are so many different ingredients to mix into it: chocolate chips, raisins, coconut, poppy seeds…I have even put coffee in it (thank you Molly Katzan!). And this time, I added peanut butter. It made such perfect sense: I love peanut butter and banana sandwiches—so why not just combine all three in one!

Lesson of the day: Combine the flavors! Choose something you love and add it to something else you love. The chance that you will love the result is high. Use what you have and be creative! Don’t be afraid to take the chance to discover something new and unexpectedly beautiful.