Nana’s Foolproof Banana Bread. The recipe card was written by Nana herself. Photo by Jim Keithley

My grandmother, Priscilla Parisien of Saco, loved to cook for her family. She was one of ten children, and she had four of her own, including my mother. Luckily, Nana lived upstairs from us for more than 50 years — in the good old days families lived close by. There were a lot of aunts and uncles and cousins coming and going all the time. I learned to cook by watching her.

One of my favorite recipes of Nana’s is her old-fashioned banana bread. It’s simple. It has only a few ingredients. It’s a fail-proof recipe that anyone can make. It’s all mixed by hand in one bowl. I still make it often.

When I said foolproof, I meant except for the one time Nana baked a couple of these breads for a ski trip. My cousins and I arrived at Sugarloaf for the weekend. We were all dying to dig into Nana’s Banana Bread. When we opened the bread, which was wrapped in aluminum foil, we discovered it was as hard as a brick. We called to tell her that something went wrong. “I must have forgotten something dammit,” she said.

P.S. She went to church every Saturday. We all laughed and wondered if she added too much flour or forgot the egg. We’ll never know. But the recipe and memories live on.

Nana’s Foolproof Banana Bread

4 small bananas
1 cup sugar
1 egg
½ cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
Dash of salt
2/3 cup chopped nuts

Grease a loaf pan and set aside. Heat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Peel the bananas and place them in a large mixing bowl. Using a potato masher or fork, smash the bananas until all the chunks disappear.

Add the sugar, egg and melted butter to the mashed bananas. Stir with a whisk or wooden spoon. Stir in the vanilla. Add the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda and salt). Mix until combined. Add the nuts.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 1 hour.

Courtesy of Jim Keithley

MEET THE COOK, Jim Keithley

I am a local television reporter living in Portland who has been cooking for family and friends for years. I have no formal culinary training and I’m not a chef. A self-taught cook, with a lot of help from my mother and grandmother. I dislike fancy food, and prefer to cook, and eat comfort food.