Evelyn, Banana Bread, Scotties and Quilts
Evelyn, Banana Bread, Scotties and Quilts
The excerpt is from:
http://70.97.123.22/vb/showthread.php?t=122180
"Excerpt:This recipe was given to me by my best friend who died in 2001. She lived up the street from me and her little Scotty dragged her over to me one day while I was working in the flowers along my driveway. Evelyn was a little old lady who grew up Mennonite. I am proud to say that she is responsible for my passion: quilting. She was a docent at the Rocky Mountain Quilt museum, and made hundreds of quilts over her lifetime. Her life of service to others, and her faith, despite crippling arthritis in her hands, feet and back changed my life forever. Evelyn’s family was very gracious in allowing me to have her little Scotty, I am honored to now own the little dog that started it all, Baby."
To continue the story of Evelyn, I have to add that until the time of my life when I met Evelyn, I had never really had a passion in my life. She was present when I made my first quilt in my first post above and encouraged me greatly. There is just something about quilting that I never found in all the other things I have tried my hand at. Knitting-I'm a TIGHT knitter and can't seem to loosen it up-its hard for me so I dropped that. Crocheting-I'm a loose crocheter, but I kept with it for years until the hands just don't allow it anymore. I made doilies, sofa throws, tableclothes. They were beautiful but it was still lacking something.
I airbrushed, even had two of my paintings juried into art shows. This was getting a lot closer. The mere fact of getting my work juried into an art show meant to me that I COULD touch anothers heart with what I was seeing in my head that I put onto that paper.
The fact that a "painting" in one of those shows (I use the term "painting" loosely here) that was in fact "finger painting" on blank newspaper and wasn't even framed could win best in show, first place and all the ribbons told me that people ooh and ahh over what they THINK they are supposed to ooh and ahh over and has NO relationship to something so intensely quietly beatiful that you just stand there awed. One of my paintings that were in the art show was given to a friend who was a psychologist who hung it in his office. He told me that he got more stuff out of his patients when he put that up than he had ever had before. What a compliment!That was an ooh and ahh that I can relate to.
So, I started quilting. Never looked back....That was it.
Evelyn and I would sit on her front porch and swing and pet fabric or quietly sew on our projects. We always would sit out to view the 4th of July fireworks that were right over our heads in Golden. We would either sit in lawn chairs behind my trailer or sit on her porch for the viewing. One year shortly before full dark, some kids started a fire from fireworks in the weeds on the small cliff her trailer was against- we raced around in the near dark, bumping into each other and trying to find the end of the hose, Evelyn finally turned it on and we were showered, but we got the fire out. One very hot summer day, I called her up and said "come down and have some iced tea by the pool!".
I knew she would be mystified by the pool part-there was no pool in the trailer park and no room for one in our little yards. She came right down and we laughed ourselves silly when she discovered I had my grandsons baby pool set up in the postage stamp patio with glasses of iced tea sweating in the August heat and waiting for us to drink.
She told me secrets that will never be told to any other living person on this earth. We went to the quilt magazine place we could see from our trailers-it was right across the road from the trailer park, they had new quilts up every month. She volunteered at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, I was regaled with her stories of the museum goings on. You wouldn't think a humble art like quilting would cause such political manuevering as what went on there, but it did. The people tried to one up each other and plotted against each other, but Evelyn just went because she loved quilts.
I still miss her, she was the best friend I ever had. Baby died a couple years ago, we were delighted to have given her last days something other than being tied to a clothesline by Evelyns kids, who didn't understand. I made a memorial quilt when Evelyn died, it has everything in there that we did and shared, the fireworks at Heritage Square and the School of Mines M on the mountain, the hose that squirted us, her yard that was so peaceful with the rustling cottonwood leaves, Baby's collar tag, the plants in her little garden, even a pool of lovely water that we once drank iced tea by. the middle fabric was a piece she had given me long ago that I could never bring myself to cut into, but I could for her. The big cottonwood leaves I found on some outdoor fabric and were perfect. The backing was some fabric that she was enamored with, some might remember it. It was a whole series of music fabric and was wonderfully soft to the hand, Evelyn bought yards of it and gave me some. Her memorial quilt was juried into the Western Heritage quilt show here in Billings a few years ago, I sent it to her daughter after Baby died. Thats the 2nd pic. The first is the one I made for Evelyn 2 years before she died -thats her in the pic holding it up.
Heres her recipe:
Evelyn’s Banana Bread
5 large bananas
4 eggs, well beaten
1 cup melted butter
(may use oil instead of butter, but it just doesn’t taste the same)
2 cups sugar
3 ½ cup flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup broken walnuts(optional)
Mash and beat bananas to a liquidy state.
Add the eggs, butter, and sugar in that order, beating well between each.
Combine flour, baking soda and salt and blend into batter. Stir in nuts(if wanted)
Bake in 2 greased and floured loaf pans at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, then at 300 degrees for 60 to 70 minutes. This time needs to be adjusted for your oven and moisture level of the batter-sometimes I’ve had to bake it (at the 300 temp)for 90 minutes and sometimes only the 60 minutes. The toothpick test will have to be used to see when the interior of the loaves are done.
You have some leeway in how many bananas you can use, I have put 6 LARGE ones in with no ill effect. I dont buy small bananas so use them at your discretion as to how many.