Character Building Bread (Not With Pictures, Because There's No Such Thing as Instagram in Character Development)

Hello friends! If you're anything like me, you'll understand the feeling of euphoria when you wake up to the smell of freshly baked banana bread, wafting through the house.

There's nothing quite like warm, moist banana bread, especially with chocolate chips, because you and I both know, chocolate makes everything better.

Because I love to bake, and I love Chocolate Chip Banana Bread, and I love blogging, I thought I would share my recipe with you all, so you can enjoy the same treat I am going to in about 40 minutes. (Yay!)

Here's what you'll need.

-All purpose flour
-Baking soda
-Baking powder
-Salt
-Sugar
-1 egg
-Milk
-Unsalted Butter softened
-3 Mashed bananas
-Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips

To start off, take your 5 bananas, (this particular recipe calls for 3, so let's do 5 so that you can't quite double the recipe, you just have to test your math skills.) and mash them.

Next, combine all of your dry ingredients in a bowl, and go shopping. The original recipe tells you to leave the sugar out so you can combine it with the butter later, but those rules are really only guidelines to make things easier, so you don't really need to follow them. Do things the hard way, it's good for you.

When you get back from shopping and you have a very limited time to whip this all together before you have to leave for the evening, it's time to soften the butter. The recipe says unsalted, but are you about to allow a recipe to control your life? No. Just use salted.

Microwaves are no good, DO NOT USE THE MICROWAVE. Instead, use the toaster oven, which will soften the outside of the butter very quickly causing it to run all over, but leave the centre just has firm as before. This is good because it not only strengthens your ability to handle stress under a time crunch, it also improves your arm muscles. If you break a couple utensils in the process, don't worry about it. It's part of life.

While waiting for the butter in the toaster oven, lightly whisk the eggs in a bowl. This doesn't really matter, because in a moment you are going to beat them to death trying to get the butter to mix, but you should try to stick to some rules, so stick to that one.

If your butter WILL NOT mix, feel free to stick it back into the toaster oven, but make sure you watch it like a hawk so the egg doesn't cook overtop of the butter.

When that comes out, you can now add your dry ingredients! Yay, we're getting somewhere!

Feel free to forget about the milk. Again, it builds both character and muscle trying to beat your super thick doughy batter into submission, so use this chance to better yourself. You will need to add it at some point though, and when you do, you may as well toss the spoon aside because only your bare hands will be able to conquer the mass that sits before you. Zero all of your attention on it at this point, flour, egg, and butter on every surface of your kitchen don't matter that much, and you are running out of time.

Spoon the nearly solid batter with little butter chunks throughout into two silicone pans, and put them in the oven at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

And finally, pray. Character building is all about pushing yourself to your limits, and submitting to the fact that only God can strengthen your spirit and make your banana bread edible.

In the end, it should look like this, and no one will be any the wiser. Except you, because wisdom is one of those things that comes with good character.

Let me know how this recipe worked for you!

If you have any negative feedback, feel free to email pleasekeepittoyourself@buildscharacter.com

"The Way to Get a Boyfriend is to Get a Job at McDonalds." -Customer

Hello!

Most of the time when I write on here, it's about the bible and stuff, but since this blog is about counting my blessings, I feel the liberty to also write a bit of other stuff sometimes.

What, you ask?

Well let's begin by saying that this past February, God blessed me with a job! I've been working at McDonalds, which has been great.

My recent theory is that I am now bound to live a long and prosperous life, since I have been blessed by so many people at McDonalds.

No, I don't mean just normally blessed, I mean verbally blessed. It's been interesting.

Anyway, I just thought I would share a few stories which I thought were funny, feel free to laugh, or judge... y'know, whatever. I won't be offended. Especially if you don't tell me you're judging. I would appreciate that.

So story #1! This one day at work, I was on my break, just chatting, while drinking water, life was good, but then all of a sudden, my voice stopped. In the middle of my sentence, words just stopped coming out. I kinda cleared my throat, took another sip, and tried to continue talking. Nope. No voice. 

I laughed and told my coworker, "I'm sorry," (in a very quiet raspy voice) "I don't know what's going on." I took another sip, but still nothing. So I went back out to work, and tried to call out an order number at the counter. 

"Now serving guest with the order number 901!" I croaked. I don't think my coworkers even heard me.

One of my wonderful coworkers then offered to speak for me, so all I had to do was put orders together, which worked well, until one of the regulars showed up at the counter. "Keturah!" He greeted me, enthusiastic as he always is.

(insert frog voice here) "Hello!"

Oh my goodness. Yeah. That was an interesting day.

One time I got offered a piano. That wasn't really a story, but like... Who gets offered a piano at McDonalds?

Recently, there was a guy who, upon giving him a coffee refill, decided to give me some advice and encouragement for how to be successful. He recommended universities, and strongly encouraged me to get a good education.

A few weeks afterward, I gave him another refill, and got a repeat of the speech. This time though, he actually asked what I was planning on doing with my life. I told him I wanted to do ballet, and he looked SO disappointed. After much questioning and passive agressive disapproval, he was still determined to bless me in my efforts, so he gave me a long speech about how to become successful in the arts, which, (he made sure to add) VERY few people are successful in.

That was not the last time I was to see him though! Yesterday I saw him again, and received another speech about how to be successful in ballet. I am getting the feeling he will be wanting regular updates...

Well, I'll leave it at that. I hope that was a fun read, next time I'm sure I'll be back to posting more serious stuff.

To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven:....... A time to weep, And a time to laugh; A time to mourn, And a time to dance; (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4)