Thoughts And Recollections Of A Tree Spirit

Banana Bread

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

I’m not sure of the origin of banana bread but it is certainly very Australian in that where I might go to a coffee shop in the UK and have scones or a toasted tea cake, here I would choose hot buttered banana bead as the accompaniment to my beverage.

Mat recently procured a recipe from a friend and we tested it out at the weekend. We have both been enjoying it for breakfast since and I thought I would share it:

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups self-raising flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon/mixed spice
1 tbs margarine/butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg lightly beaten
1/4 cup milk
2 bananas mashed

Method:
1. Coat a loaf pan with cooking spray and pre-heat oven to 200°C.
2. Combine flour and cinnamon in a bowl and rub in marg with fingertips.
3. Stir in sugar, egg, milk and banana.
4. Put mixture in the tin and bake until golden.
NB. Add anything you like to the mix, e.g. nuts.

The measurement in cups is becoming ever popular versus good old pounds and ounces, even grams, but we just threw the ingredients together in a fair approximation, doubling everything for a larger loaf, and it worked. We added some chopped pecans for a little extra something and didn’t even have a loaf tin so improvised with a large soufflé dish.

I can’t remember how long we left it in the oven but when it started to look cooked on top we stuck a skewer in it and the middle was still very sticky. We had to put it back in the bottom of the oven on a very low heat and cook for quite a while longer. The end result was delicious; in fact I would go as far to say as it was as good as any I have tried in a café. Mat seemed to think it wasn’t sweet enough and needed either more sugar or more bananas. Apparently it was supposedly a low calorie recipe but personally I would have found it too sweet with more sugar. It obviously just depends on your palate so it may take a few tries to get it just right for you.

18.06.2009 Aussie places/info of interest, Personal 4 Comments

Mat hospitalised in vicious Phoenix Palm attack!

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Ok, so before you panic and worry about how serious it was, Mat is fine and well. I just thought I’d sensationalise the heading a wee bit :-)

Yesterday Mat was pruning a large Blue Gum. On finishing the job he made his usual rapid descent out of the tree and landed straight on top of a perfectly positioned bit of pheonix palm throng. Someone must have been previously pruning the palm nearby and done a bad clean up job, leaving a big chunk with the nasty spine end sticking up at the perfect level for piercing Mat’s calf.

For those of you who haven’t had the delightful experience of a Pheonix Palm they have these long palm fronds (or throngs) with pinnate leaves which metamorphose into long viscious spines near the base. They are pretty easy to spike yourself with when handling, snapping off and leaving bits embedded in your skin. Mat has had a fair few spikings whilst doing tree work in Australia but luckily they have only been small bits and haven’t festered too much, gradually working their own way out after a few weeks. If you’re unlucky the wound can go septic or cause blood poisoning, supposedly because possums like to live in the palms causing the spikes to get coated with possum piss and other nasty bacteria.

Pheonix at Randwick
This is a picture of a pheonix palm that Mat felled a while ago at Randwick Racecourse. Normally they would have to be climbed, the throngs all cut off (for some poor groundy to carefully get rid of) and then chogged down in bits. However, the size of the racecourse meant they could be felled in one for the excavator to come and take away and dump straight into the tub grinder. You can guage the size of this palm from Mat’s ute on the right!
They are fairly harmless at this size (unless you are the unfortunate one having to climb it for dead throng removal etc). However (more…)

11.06.2009 Personal, Pictures, Trees & Tree Work 5 Comments