Banana Karma

(and pancakes too)

Hi! By some stroke of luck you’re reading, “Yes, I Am A Hungry Woman.” Have you subscribed?

I do not believe in the idea of karma; certainly not the actual definition of it. But if you happen to use karma in the flippant, modern, “your own actions coming back to haunt you” way, then I do believe in that.

I, Rachel Lauto, am the sometime-victim of self-inflicted nonsense, and this week it came for me in the form of a half-eaten banana.

Ordinarily you will find me throwing apple cores out the window of my car at top speed. Not that I’m constantly eating apples, but when I do eat an apple and I am also driving and I reach the deep core of my snack, it’s time. This isn’t a personality trait, it’s a matter of convenience. Following my logic, while I personally do not want to eat this apple core, perhaps a small Creature Of The Woods would like to gnosh on it. And who am I to deprive them?

“Oh, a Pink Lady,” an appreciative possum might say, along about midnight when the traffic has dimmed down and he slinks to the roadside, “All we’ve had for weeks are Red Delicious and they’re always so mealy. Truly, a good bite.”

When Andrew and I were first dating and he discovered this food-throwing fact about me, it alarmed him. “You’re going to get us arrested!” he worried. “You can’t just throw food all over the highway!”

I protested. I felt like this made me out to be some giant, scary clown having a 1990’s-style cafeteria food fight with other cars whose windshield wipers are fielding ketchup and mustard and whipping cream all at once. But the thing is, I’m not “just throwing food all over the highway.” I have a very high personal code of ethics surrounding which foods I will or will not donate to local wildlife (and where) and it goes as follows:

WILL THROW:

• Apple cores

• A child’s PB&J crusts

• My own PB&J crusts

• The contents of my coffee cup

• A mealy segment of clementine

• A piece of gum (but only on busy highways where animals are unlikely to acquire it and humans do not walk about getting gum stuck to their shoes)

• The pits of olives or cherries

• Cherry stems

• Shells of pistachios (but only a couple)

• One of those weird Chick-Fil-A fries with the hunched backs

WILL NOT THROW:

• Any form of litter

• Candy

• Tea bags

• Orange or clementine peels (Too bright! Too obvious!)

• Pickles

• Animal crackers or chips

• Bananas or banana peels (Too bright! Too obvious! Too sticky! Too stinky!)

Notice, if you will, my very brief list of eligible foods to throw on the highway; there is only one: (chewing gum). I have this insane idea that when we are on the highway, we are going much too fast to launch projectile apple cores and that if I did, one might end up shattering another driver’s windshield and I don’t have the right kind of insurance for all that. Furthermore, we don’t live in bear country, I will never entice a creature closer to the road than they already go (looking at you, deer), I will never disturb the landscaping of any public or private park with brightly-colored leftovers, I will never feed a creature something that isn’t good for creatures to eat (I feed only grapes and clementines to the turtles at the botanical gardens, not Goldfish or animal crackers like every other nanny), I am a very model citizen, and a very safe driver. I wait till a nice, grassy median strip or a hedge that may be softly edging the side of the road, and then I make my offering to the Creatures Of The Woods.

Snack for them, free up my own hands, bing-bang-boom. I don’t know - to me, this makes sense. 

And then it was Friday. At the start of our outing, my nanny kid abandoned a perfectly good banana after taking only a few bites. She isn’t a great one for breakfast; it slows down her roll. I stuffed the banana in the jogging stroller and we continued our morning at the botanical gardens. We hunted turkey tail mushrooms, spied on egrets and ducks in the backwater of a cypress lake, listened to a blue jay imitate a hawk’s cry, and crept up on a junco sitting quietly in a bare fig tree. We had a picnic on a stone-cold bench. We cheered for early daffodils, picked up fat, black acorns, nearly sunk a floating bridge, and warmed our hands in scattered patches of sunlight that beamed in and out like a faulty radio signal. It was a busy morning.

With so much to do and such frigid weather in which to do it, I did not remember to throw the banana away. We must have passed a few places to offload the banana, but I never thought about it. By the time we got back to our car, we’d been adventuring for several hours. Neither one of us was going to eat this banana, and you know that strong, iconic smell? The overripe, arresting-in-the-nose, “I’m about to hatch fruit flies” smell of a banana in distress? We were there. I’m sorry. Despite my rigid rules about not throwing bright yellow banana peels into the landscaping of a public place (especially a public place known for its immaculate landscaping), there was no way that I was going to bring this troubled banana into my car. It simply wasn’t going to happen.

I loaded the kid into the car, then our multiple coats...our picnic blanket...our lunch bag...the fat, glossy acorns...the stroller. And still that banana haunted me. I looked about. Several workmen occupied one corner of the parking lot not far from me. Dared I, with a brazen arm, throw this banana into the woodline beyond them? I knew from experience that racoons frequent this parking lot. They’d probably savor a nice, redolent banana. Then I saw the workers’ reflective construction jackets. This banana was just as bright. It would not go unnoticed.

Furtively, I slipped the banana onto my car’s bumper, just to the right of the license plate, and rubbed my hands on my jeans. I could just....forget I left it there. I glanced to the right, then left, then over at my nanny kid in her car seat. She wasn’t watching...was ignorant of my shameful actions. I slid the banana closer to the edge of the bumper so it would easily topple onto the road, and with the sudden movement of all perpetrators, climbed into my car and drove away.

What if some aged garden employee whirred up to me on a golf-cart and demanded I stop? 

I rehearsed my defense:

“What do you mean a banana fell off my car into the road? A banana? What? I guess I forgot it was there. Silly me.”

But no employees pursued us down the wooded avenue. No golf carts, no sirens, no megaphones wielded by glowering retirees; a perfect crime. By the time we got to the main road I felt entirely sanguine. I drove the twenty-five minutes back to work in high spirits, singing Winnie-The-Pooh with my nanny kid, high on a successful escape. We arrived at the house. I unbuckled her car seat, then went to the back to unload the stroller.

And there, my friends, was the banana.

Clinging, simpering, adhering to my car’s bumper in exactly the same position as I’d left it to begin with. Through on-ramps, off-ramps, miles of construction zones, twenty minutes of high speeds, wind, a lofty, elevated bridge over the Elizabeth River, sharp left turns, bumpy right turns, and yet here it was: shockingly undisturbed by its recent journey.

That damn banana. 

An outrageous belief that it was...alive...sort of floated up inside me after all of this defying-of-physics. I sneaked up on it in silence and caught hold around its neck as if it were a monitor lizard and I, a young Steve Irwin. With a firm grasp on the banana in one hand, I grabbed the rest of our things with the other and frog-marched that banana into the house, depositing it once and for all in the lidded trash can.

I was startled, amused, delighted by the absurdity even.

And then I began to think about what had just transpired. Because this was not only an unlikely survival story...this banana was a yellow flag waving evidence of my cowardice to other drivers on our half-hour commute home. This banana told the world, in no uncertain terms, that I was too cheap to find a trash can and too proud to lob it into the rose bushes. Instead, I had trusted probability. And probability - the little devil -  had failed me.

There is no moral to this story. I am not reformed. I will definitely continue throwing permissible food items to wildlife when occasion arises. But the next time I think I can trust the physics of a bumpy highway to lie for me…well, I guess I just don’t trust physics anymore.

Today is MLK day and I have a rare span of days off work. I plan to luxuriate in not being on the clock, take myself to a sumptuous place and read till my eyes are crossed, and otherwise deny my usual reality. To celebrate both this occasion and the banana story, it only seems fitting that we end in a recipe for my favorite “day off work” breakfast recipe: banana pancakes. Cue the Jack Johnson song, make a pot of French press, don’t leave your fortunes in the hands of a half-eaten banana. You know, the usual advice.

(the offending object, intact after its arduous ride)

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Banana Pancakes

serves four

1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons raw cane sugar

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1 small, overripe banana (riper the better)

1 cup, plus two tablespoons whole milk

2 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 tablespoons butter, melted

oil or butter for greasing pan

1. Mix together flour, cane sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and ginger in a small bowl and set aside.

2. In a large bowl, mash the banana and to this add the eggs, vanilla, butter, and milk.

3. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and beat quickly till most lumps are gone. It's okay if it's a little lumpy - better to under-mix than overmix which will let all the rising bubbles escape.

4. Heat your pan over medium heat and grease lightly. Spoon batter onto the pan and cook each pancake till golden brown, flipping once. I like to make mine on the small side and serve in a stack.

5. Top with butter, maple syrup, and slivered almonds or other desired toppings.

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