Wild Animals DO Get Cavities + "Food as Pleasure Challenge" #2--"B" is for "Banana Bread"

I hadn't intended to continue my "food as pleasure" challenge so soon after getting back. In fact, as I hinted before, I'm not even clear where I'm going with this blog. I also hadn't ever intended to do the 'food as pleasure' challenge in alphabetical order. But despite all that, I made some Ela-friendly banana bread yesterday--a recipe that doesn't involve any eggs or dairy in the first place and could so easily be made to fit but that I'd never tasted before in all the dozens of times I'd made it--so it seems right to share.

First, though, I wanted to show you what I found on the beach last night.

The rain finally abated yesterday evening, and Phil and I hiked the beach from 7.30pm until almost 10 and were home with just a vestige of daylight left. The crazy-long days are definitely on the wane, and as I look around at all the baroque green lushness, I have a wistful awareness around my extremities that it's only six weeks or so until we start to freeze here again. Probably not more than two months 'til the snow flies.

So, that above is a sea otter jaw. Not a very big sea otter, but quite an old one, judging by the state of its teeth! The back molar is missing entirely, and check out the holes in that second molar! Three big ones--wonder how that must have felt.

Now of course, sea otters have the habit of crunching down on clam and mussel shells their whole lives. It seems a bit surprising, considering that their paws appear so dexterous and delicate, that they haven't figured out a more tooth-friendly approach. But crunching on something that hard day in and day out must shiver their timbers pretty good. Those are some beautiful teeth, however--pearlescent and purplish.

It bugs me when raw food advocates spout that wild animals never get sick, never get tooth decay. Mostly, though, I feel grateful to live close enough to wild animals that I get to see how things really are with them. No global warming? Then how come so many sea otters around here are dying of canine distemper, which formerly only affected Atlantic seals, and only showed up in the subArctic when the Polar ice melted enough for infected Atlantic animals to pass through into the Pacific?

OK--off my soapboxes... Banana bread...

(gluten free, vegan, all that good stuff...)

This version of banana bread is super-easy, as the role usually played by milk and eggs is played by, well, bananas! Which also means that it's your recipe for when you have a lot of ripe bananas, not just the usual two.
Preheat oven to 350, prepare a 9x5 loaf pan.
Mix together:
2 cups flour (if using a gluten free mix, as I did, add a teaspoon of xanthan or guar gum)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon (if you like)
Mix together separately:
6 mashed bananas
1/2 cup sugar (or xylitol, or a mixture of the two)
3 tablespoons oil (I used to always make this with butter just so there was a reason I couldn't eat it!)
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
Mix wet and dry together and, if you like, stir in a half cup each of nuts and dried fruit. (I just added a half cup of raisins: I really don't like nuts in baked goods.)
Pour out into the loaf pan and bake for around 50 minutes.

Enjoy!
What lesson have you learned from an animal recently?