Revival of dessert bread recipe a result of banana blunder
Last year I mentioned reader Evelyn LaHaie in one of my columns and I identified her as the Gary talent producer who the Jackson Family acknowledges as the clever show biz promoter who named their group the Jackson Five.
Throughout the years, LaHaie, who now lives in Hobart and spent the
1960s as the producer of shows at Gary Music Theatre, has been a regular name in newspaper columns, especially her comings and goings as fodder chronicled in what was once called “The Gary Post-Tribune.”
The late Blaine Marz, who long-penned the entertainment column
“On the Go” for The PostTribune until his death at age 73 in 1992, loved to feature photos and tidbits of Gary native LaHaie, such as her spotted in Chicago arm-in-arm in 1969 with baseball great Joe DiMaggio dining at a Chicago steakhouse.
Last week, LaHaie was busy making calls and coordinating to arrange the needed 46 people to work all of the precinct polling places in Hobart for Tuesday’s delayed June 2 Primary election. Despite the added stress the recent months of COVID-19 pandemic that has impacted everyone’s daily life, LaHaie always remains in good spirits and took time to jot me a note about a humorous encounter with what she describes as “a boatful of bananas.”
“Hi Phil and my good wishes to your lovely parents,” LaHaie wrote.
“Because of the pandemic, I’ve been quarantined at home and I’ve been having my groceries delivered to me. I recently asked for ’12 to 14 bananas’ on my grocery list and when I received my delivery left on my step, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. On my front step was a huge box with 15 BUNCHES of bananas and the driver had already pulled away. When my grandson Raymond stopped by later in the day, he saw all of the bananas heaped on the kitchen table and thought it was hysterical. I told him I was GOING BANANAS wondering what to do with all of them. I counted and there were 120 individual bananas.”
LaHaie said she had a great idea to dig out her ages-old favorite recipe for banana nut bread, since the loaves also freeze well. She asked me to share the recipe with readers. She said she also plans to share any leftover bananas, as well as loaves of banana bread with the dedicated workers she gathered for Tuesday’s polling places.
My 2007 published cookbook “More From the Farm” written with the late great Jim Nabors, who died at age 87 in November 2017, included his favorite banana nut bread recipe. His is a much different recipe and includes macadamia nuts as a nod to his nut plantation home in Hawaii. For more than 40 years, Nabors, who was born in Alabama, had the proud tradition of traveling to our Hoosier state ever Memorial Day Weekend to sing “Back Home in Indiana” to signal the start of the Indianapolis 500 race. This May, we were without both Nabors and the race.
Fortunately, memories and recipes remain forever, while the 2020 Indianapolis 500 Race has been rescheduled for Aug. 23. With an annual attendance of 270,000-plus, the Indy 500 ranks as “the world’s largest single-day sporting event.”
Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa@comhs.org or mail your questions: From the Farm, P.O. Box 68, San Pierre, IN 46374.