Banana bread — just let it be

Re “Banana bread doesn’t measure up,” Opinion, May 18

Why is Karen Stabiner so angry about banana bread? Surely there are better targets for her scorn amid a raging pandemic.

Hers is an indefensible argument that relies on false equivalences. Nobody says, “Should I make strawberry shortcake or should I bake banana bread?” That’s like saying, “Do I wait in line at Harry’s Berries and spend $14 on two pints of Graviota berries, or do I get this rotting fruit off my counter?”

The point of banana bread is not only ease and near-immediate gratification, but thrift.

And not everyone, in these months of sequestration, is looking for a “challenge,” a concept that has given birth to many wrongheaded additions to the basic loaf (chocolate chips, candied pecans, coconut flakes and miso, to name a few).

More than anything, banana bread (eight ingredients, tops, including salt, baking soda and baking powder) evokes a simpler, quieter time — like the one we are learning to live in now, but without the anxiety. Laurie Lew

Los Angeles

According to Stabiner, “Banana bread doesn’t measure up.”

As another quarantine baker, I protest that there is no one measure that fits all here.

Living alone, with no one else to bake for except a couple of neighbors who are probably just being nice by accepting my offerings, I found myself hankering after banana bread when I came upon some perfectly ripe bananas recently at my local store.

I hadn’t made one in a long time, but I found a nice-sounding recipe on the web, using butter, eggs and brown sugar (yum!). After adding some walnuts, which are de rigueur by my measure, I must say that the resulting loaf is totally scrumptious.

This is what I mean by comfort food. By definition, everyone has their own. Peggy Kamuf

Los Angeles