Banana Bread!

This last week has been hard. I warned you, I'll be writing about the good and the bad...well, this week has been bad.
Last week a snow storm hit our city and covered us with a blanket of heavy snow. It snowed for days and, though the kids were so excited to see the white stuff that they really hadn't had a lot of this winter, I did not share in their enthusiasm.
Now, I can't blame the snow for my troubles, but it certainly didn't help being stuck in the house. I couldn't drive on the roads myself so I mostly stayed in. Kids' activities were cancelled so there were some restless kids with cabin fever as well since they weren't able to get out and play in the snow until the weather permitted.
But after the storm had passed and I thought my spirits would lift, I was hit. This Lyme thing is no fun, illness often comes without a warning. I've been fighting insomnia since last week, and it has done a lot of damage to my body. I'm tired. I'm weak. I'm just plain exhausted.
Our daughter had ballet tonight and my wonderful hubby drove her to class before heading to his men's group at the church. My mom picks her up after class which is such a blessing to me. I usually stay in with the two boys until grandma returns with my daughter and I get everyone to bed. Grandma stopped by tonight before heading to ballet and saw me struggling to keep the boys occupied while cleaning up supper and making coconut milk for tomorrow. So, she graciously offered to take the boys along for the ride. So, I'm sitting in a peaceful house blogging!! These moments are rare but when they happen, I really just need to be still.
Being this tired is very difficult. My work doesn't stop just because I'm not feeling well. Each week I try to spend a day baking our breakfasts for the freezer so that I'm not baking all the time. I try to do 6-7 breakfasts in one day and it is quite tiresome. But I do it so I'm not baking daily. Though we can't eat processed foods like cereal, I still try my best to keep it simple. We are grain free so even oatmeal is out. We do a lot of eggs for lunch, so those are out for breakfast as well. So, I've found that the best thing for us is to have some yummy paleo baked goods, like muffins and loaves, in the freezer and I just grab something from the freezer each evening and it's ready for the morning! Well, tomorrow is baking day... ugh. I'm praying for rest tonight so I have the energy and strength to bake in the morning.
I push myself too hard a lot of the time. In fact, it was baking day last week that set me off. After spending the day in the kitchen I started to not feel well, and it was a tail spin after that. So, perhaps I need a new game plan. I often forget that I can't push myself like I used to and that's tough. How do you go from being the kind of person who just goes all the time, to someone who just can't? I don't know. But, what I do know is I need to learn when I need to stop.
Anyway, enough of the "bad", let's get to something good!! Because I need to be prepared and plan ahead for breakfast, I like to have easy recipes that I can make lots of. One of our favorites is this paleo banana bread. it's super yummy, and its grain, dairy, and refined sugar free! How great is that?! It's super moist and tastes great with a ton of butter.


Ok, so just to make you come back for more, I'm not just giving you a picture of the banana bread. I'm giving you a picture of some other goodies as well ;)  you'll have to stay tuned for more recipes!

Ok, onto the recipe...

Paleo Banana Bread

Ingredients:

3 ripe bananas

3 eggs

1/2 cup of almond butter

1/4 cup of melted coconut oil

*optional 1 tsp vanilla

* optional 1T raw honey (tastes great even without any sweetener!!)

1/2 cup of almond flour

1/2 cup of coconut flour

2 tsp of cinnamon

1 tsp of baking soda

1/4 tsp of salt

The how to:

Preheat the oven to 350 F and line your loaf pan with parchment paper or grease it with coconut oil.

Ok, this is great. Take those wet ingredients and put them all in your food processor or blender and mix it up. Easy, right? Mix together your dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then pour the wet into the dry and combine. I've also mixed the wet first in the processor and then added the dry to the processor as well and combined it in there and it works too. But, I always double the recipe to make two loaves at a time and I cannot fit it all in the processor at the same time.

Pour into your prepared loaf pan and bake for 1 hour (if you double the recipe and bake the loaves together, bake for an extra 15 minutes or so, but check to see if they need more time after that).

Make sure to cool completely before slicing or putting in the freezer. So, easy and so good!! I DO NOT recommend mixing it and not baking it right away as the coconut flour will absorb the liquid as it sits so its best to bake it right away.

Ok, the kids are back! I better get back to reality. If you try this recipe let me know what you think!