I have a confession: I’ve been planning and organizing my Christmas cookie list since July. What’s even worse is that I’ve been actually eating Christmas cookies at work since May. Call it an occupational hazard. You’d think I’d be burnt out by now, but let’s be real: there is no such thing as cookie burnout. All of the recipes on my cookie list are filed away on my secret Pinterest board and yesterday I went through them all and organized by must-make, would-love-to-try and could-do-without. Before your judgment, I’d like you to consider that there are millions of cookie recipes existing out there in the world and I have an extreme case of F.O.M.O. I can’t afford to choose wrong and since you really only get to make them once a year, it’s high stakes, people.
So considering it’s taken me months to prioritize my Christmas cookie list, I imagine you are in a similar high state of stress, and I wouldn’t dream of tempting you with another recipe to force you shuffle things around. And that’s why I’m talking banana bread today—and a book all about grace, because if you’re anything like me, you’re going to need both this holiday season.
THE RECIPE
There are few things that I have a really strong opinion about, but banana bread ranks high on the list. I talk about banana bread a lot, but it really is a comfort food for me; one that I’ve made so many times, I don’t even need to glance at the recipe any more. Nothing quiets the voices in my head and pulls me to the present like measuring out flour, cracking eggs and whisking batter. Plus, there’s really something special about taking old, brown fruit and turning it into one of the most amazing foods on the planet.
My favorite ways to better banana bread is to add a cinnamon streusel topping, swirl Nutella into the batter, or sprinkle chocolate chips or blueberries inside. I’ve tried it all, you guys. But I still have a place in my heart for the tried-and-true traditional recipes, so here’s my go-to recipe when I need a quick fix for the classic. The recipe is from a charming, French-inspired blog run by one of my former co-workers; she was a food editor so you know this recipe is the real deal. I always omit the chocolate chips, but follow the recipe otherwise.
The game changer in this recipe is that it doesn’t call for butter, but uses oil instead. By using oil rather than butter, the banana bread is deliciously moist (I wish I didn’t say those two words together either, but the alternative synonyms from thesaurus.com were “damp” and “humid”). I won’t even look at a recipe that uses butter in banana bread ever since trying this version.
So when you need to take a step back from the chaos that is Christmas, bake this banana bread. It goes really well with coffee, blankets, candles and Christmas movies—ask me how I know.
THE BOOK
For a girl who runs a blog called Grace Under Fire, I still have difficulty wrapping my head around what grace is. Every time I think that I can pinpoint the definition or meaning of it, it surfaces into my life in the most unexpected ways. For the longest time and even still, I have been guilty of shoving that grace thing into a box that I pull out only when I need to forgive someone. For the longest time and even still, grace has been synonymous with forgiveness…something that’s given to others, especially when they are least deserving. But the more I accept and admit that I’m tired and limited, the more I’m beginning to understand that grace is also for me and especially for me. It turns out that forgiveness is actually a product of grace—a symptom, a result, an outcome. Grace, in its truest form, is the undeserved, unearned and unending hand of God in your life.
A friend recommended that I read Grace is Greater: God’s Plan to Overcome Your Past, Redeem Your Pain and Rewrite Your Story by Kyle Idleman and truthfully, I wasn’t really all that intrigued at first glance. When I think of a book about grace, I think of a book about forgiveness, and I’ve read about 20 of those—all of them have been necessary companions on the upward climb toward healing, but I’ve been restless to rumble with a new topic. But this book, written so openly and honestly, has changed so much of what I thought I knew to be true about grace. The author makes it clear in the very beginning that this is not a book about how to define grace, but how to experience grace. And that makes sense to me now. It cannot be explained until it’s experienced.
I worked my way slowly and deliberately through the pages of Grace is Greater, re-reading some paragraphs over and over again until I felt a reluctant surrender of a few things that I hadn’t known I was holding on to. And more importantly, somewhere in the middle of this book, I realized something: I believe that grace is for everyone else, but not really for me. I have this crippling inability to accept anything given freely; I have a really hard time feeling any sort of joy over something that I haven’t worked for or deserved. I live life like a transaction on repeat: I work. I receive. I do. I deserve. I prove. I earn. That’s what I wrestle with—if there’s anything that’s true about grace, it’s that it’s for free and cannot be earned, so reading this book that I thought was about showing grace to other people, made me realize that I’m struggling to accept this perfect gift that was very much created with me in mind. Maybe you, too? If you’re where I’m at, or you’re feeling stuck in a mistake that you’ve made, or you’re tired from trying to out run your past, put this book on your Christmas list. It is so, so good, you guys. Like best-ever banana bread good.