A Decade of Changing Perception: Chocolate Heath Banana Bread

This will be a wandering post, but stay with me because I think there are things everyone feels. But if I’m wrong, please don’t let me know.

I went for a hike by myself. This is something I’ve done a lot this summer. I like the solitude. Correction: I have learned to like the solitude because it started because I didn’t have friends here. I still don’t really, but I also don’t actively invite people because it’s my time to think, to talk to myself in the woods, to laugh at silly things that other people wouldn’t find amusing. 

I did a familiar hike. But this time I took the red trail instead of the blue. I wandered around the same Black Rock that I have hiked many times before, but I saw a (literal) different side to it. I saw rocks that made me feel small, without telling me I’m small. I had nature show me that I’m less significant in the world without making me feel insignificant. It was like nature was being a true friend. 

When I got on top of the hill-mountain, I sat there looking at the beauty that New England has to offer in mid-October. The greens, reds, yellows, oranges, browns. I feel like no other place in the world can look like this, though I know I’m wrong. But I do know no other place in the world can make me feel at peace the way this one can. 

I looked down at the park that my high school cross country team runs at and saw flags. I realized NINE years ago, I was falling in love at the Berkshire League Tournament in Cross Country and changing my life. It was the first time in my life that I said, “I want this” and went after it (spoiler alert: it was a boy). I put my heart out and said I liked him and wanted to go to Homecoming with him. He displayed passion and focus in ways I was enthralled by, he showed his feelings in a way I didn’t know a man could. He said he wanted to go. We fell in love. We dated and kissed and went through firsts and lasts and made my senior year something of a fairy tale.  

This is also the period in my life that I realized that you aren’t the same to people as they are to you. I consider him my first love. My first awful, soul crushing heart break. Eight years ago, I tried to end it (badly, horribly, terribly), and he had to break it off and I cried and the world spun and it was awful. But when I think of my first love, it’s him. Not the two and a half year relationship before him. It’s him because I wanted to spend forever with him. I wanted to travel to South Korea with him. I wanted to have mixed-race babies and hold his hand forever. And that changed, obviously.

Things change. And your perception of things is different than other peoples. The way you feel about Connecticut, “home,” your first “real” relationship, Heath Bars, bananas… these feelings can change. 

And that’s my segue to my recipe.  I made a Heath Bar Chocolate Chip Banana Bread.  I’m sure there’s a more concise way to say it, but those are the major flavors, man. And you don’t want to leave any of them out, I don’t think. My feelings about bananas still haven’t changed, so I didn’t eat this. But I really like Heath Bars and toffee now, unlike 9 years ago. And I make baked goods because I want other people to enjoy them, instead of eating as many as I can, unlike 9 years ago.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup mini semisweet chocolate chips *
• 3/4 cup crushed heath bars *
• 1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 large mashed ripe bananas
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

*obviously over-measure these, guys. Who doesn’t want their healthy bananas to be delicious?!

Cooking Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.  Butter and line your loaf pan. Mix dry ingredients in medium bowl to blend.
2. Beat butter in large bowl until fluffy. Add sugar, beating until well blended. Beat in eggs 1 at a time. Beat in mashed bananas, and vanilla extract. Beat in flour mixture until mixed. Stir in the chocolate chips and heath bar. Pour into pan.
3. Bake bread about 1 hour 5 minutes.   When an inserted tooth pick comes out clean, turn bread out onto rack and cool.