ANDRE BEGIN

There was a time when I made banana bread fairly regularly.

Not only was it an efficient way to use bananas that were growing increasingly spotty and then brown, but it was also a wholesome snack I could enjoy on the run.

With the help of a recipe I adopted that used almond flour and a smidge (yes, that is the actual measurement!) of gluten-free flour, it was a snack that could “stick to your ribs” given its protein content.

Plus the fact that it was homemade, I knew exactly what went into it which helped make it a guilt-free snack with my mid-morning tea.

I had made it so many times over the years that I barely needed to take out the recipe. The gathering of ingredients, the preparation, the mixing and clean up afterwards were etched indelibly in my mind.

For that reason, I could whip up a batch, faster and faster to the point that it almost became a race with myself.

My moves were so systematic and predictable, you could have documented my steps and programmed a robot to replace me (… I wish!)

That is until we moved.

I’ll never forget that first time… With an overabundance of bananas, naturally, I thought to myself, I would make banana bread.

Little did I realize how the change in dwellings would have negatively impacted my speed.

For every step in the process, I had to go hunting.

Hunting for the mixing bowls, hunting for the electric mixer, hunting for each and every ingredient.

Where I could usually prepare and pop a loaf pan in the oven and under seven minutes, that first time it took me nearly half an hour.

I can laugh about it now, but it was a frustrating exercise that had my brain screaming like a GPS “recalculating” every step along the way.

The layout of the kitchen in our new place was significantly different than it was in my former dwelling. Arranging things in a similar footprint (as I was able to do in some of my earlier cookie-cutter rental apartments) would have been impossible.

But as they say, practice makes perfect, right?

Over time, as the location of the kitchen tools needed for banana bread as well as the individual ingredients became more familiar, I was hunting less.
Naturally, my speed increased, and the time required to prepare a pan of banana bread became progressively shorter.

Just recently, I made a loaf after not having made one in a few months, and the memory of the banana bread choreography as well as the location of the ingredients and the tools were still mapped out in my mind. The effortlessness was back as were the seemingly robotic moves. YAY!

We’re now back to the point where I can prepare a banana bread and have it in the oven in under seven minutes again.

Just the same, it is amazing the degree to which we can take for granted the layout of our kitchen until we set foot in a new dwelling (or in someone else’s kitchen) and the extent to which we can be thrown for a loop when it takes so much longer to prepare our favourite dishes.

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Sincere thanks for reading!
Have a great day,
André