busyThis is an online version, but beware: it is missing 2 key ingredients. It needs 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon cinnamon.
You can tweak banana bread in a lot of ways. This one is dairy-free (using oil and applesauce instead of butter) and includes walnuts (I'm using black walnuts). You can also add raisins, dried apple bits, or other dried fruit; any nut or mix of nuts you like; seeds such as sunflower seeds, pepitas, or pinyon pine nuts; rolled oats, rye flakes, or any multigrain mix; a scoop of muesli, granola, or similar textured mix. Basically you mix up the batter and then put in whatever extras you want. It's kind of kitchen-sink-bread. It will stick to your ribs. While it's not meant as journeybread, we absolutely have shoved foil-wrapped slices in our pockets for hiking. They mashed into flat little patties, but we ate them anyway and they were still delicious.
Also banana bread is in a large family of "fruit and vegetable quick breads" which means you can also swap the applesauce and banana for a huge range of other things such as pumpkin, zucchini, pear, peach, etc. Each will give you slightly different flavors. Same with spices; this one uses cinnamon but you could use ginger, apple pie spice, pumpkin pie spice, or for a little more kick garam masala.
In the magazine, this appeared alongside a recipe for chocolate chip banana bread. :P I am not a fan of chocolate in bread, although I love chocolate in other things. I just generally prefer bread, cookies, etc. to contain large amounts of actual food. I like them with whole grains, nuts, seeds, fruit, etc.
EDIT 4/25/21: The banana bread is done and we have sampled it. :D This is very much like I remember: rich brown with a soft moist texture and a nutty, fruity flavor. Doug likes the flavor but says the texture is a little drier than he would prefer. Next time I can make it with more applesauce, and if I want to add extra dry ingredients, I'll need to add more wet to compensate.
