Joan's PERFECT Banana Bread Recipe

We were talking LUNCH on Between You and Me last week...Deb called in and remembered her elementary school lunch in Park Rapids and the perfect banana bread they served.  She's been trying to replicate it ever since!  Joan Downham was pretty sure SHE could help, and sent in this recipe:

Here is the recipe of Shelly's superior banana bread. I think it is similar to the type that the gal described on Between You and Me today.

Cream 3/4 cup butter
Add and blend in 1 1/2 cup sugar and 3-4 mashed bananas (3-4), 2 eggs , 1tsp vanilla
sift 2 cups flour and add 1 tsp soda and 1tsp salt.
...Alernate adding the flour mixture and 1/2 cup buttermilk(I use the powdered butterilk in a can) to the butter/sugar mixture just until well combined.
fold in 1/2 walnuts.
pour in 9x5" greased and parchment lined bottom bread pan and bake 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hour. You can put it in two smaller bread pans and bake for 1 hour
ENJOY!

A Muse Not Amused

by Robert Jevne

   Having nothing more to say about my most neglected meal of the day than “Mmm…peanut butter,” I decided it was time to call upon my muse and invite him out to lunch. Yes - him. While for some, their muse might be youth or beauty, music, politics or philosophy, me? - I have Randy. It’s a long story. Nothing I ever do is good enough for Randy including the place I chose to eat. He had pink grapefruit and ice-water claiming a weight issue though he’s skinny as a rail. I had the usual thing I get on the rare occasion when I do go out for lunch. A patty melt. A patty melt is the classic “its so good because its so bad for you” sandwich. At its best a patty melt consists of fatty hamburger, oily Swiss cheese, greasy fried onions, on two pieces of rye bread the whole of which is then fried. Again. And don’t forget the side of Thousand Island dressing for dipping. Nothing lo-cal about that. In my book it’s a slam-dunk - in the best and worst sense of that phrase. I once went to a restaurant in northern Minnesota (I won’t even mention the town) where-upon ordering a patty melt, I received what looked like a plain old hamburger on a bun. When I complained to the waitress I was assured that, and I quote, “Everything was inside” unquote. And when I took my first bite something indeed was inside and came oozing out of the half moon declivity in my sandwich but which to this day I insist wasn’t everything. In fact it was an insult to connoisseurs of patty melts everywhere and frankly, as they say - “There ought to be a law.”

   Wiping my mouth and chin, I explained my inspiration problem to Randy. He was swirling an ice cube in his mouth and the look of disgust he had aimed at my plate turned to me. “You have a shelf full of poetry. Did you ever think of cracking one of those books open? Or is Google your preferred muse now?” He swirled the ice cube in a way which I suppose was meant to be meaningful. I knew he would be jealous, but for crying out loud, Google is so easy. Have you ever tried to research a poetic topic without it? I vaguely remembered something from William Carlos Williams about him eating all the plums in the refrigerator and how delicious they were but I couldn’t remember the title or first line so in the three volume collection I found nothing but an empty bowl where the plums used to be. But just Google “plums and Williams” and voila. And I’m not supposed to use a tool like that? But still I felt cheap and besides the poem mentions breakfast, not lunch. Randy kept eyeing me coldly and swirling that damn cube menacingly. I knew he was circling in for the kill. Why did I ever think this was going to work. “Well, I guess if you’re desperate,” he continued, “you could write about me. I’m interesting.” And he bit down so hard on the cube it sounded as if he were crushing his own teeth. Then he smiled icily.

State Shutdown

Due to a budget deadlock, as of July 1st there could be a Minnesota state government shutdown.  This affects a huge number of state employees who live in the KAXE listening area, and may affect you.  We want to know what you know, how you are feeling and if you are preparing for the government shutdown.  Email us or send us a comment here or on Facebook.  

There's a website that gets into some depth on the shutdown issues, check here for more information.

If you are planning to hunt or fish in Minnesota in the next couple of months and haven't gotten a license, it's probably a good idea to get that now.  Same with license registrations on boats, cars and other vehicles.  If you were planning to camp at a MN state park in July, you may have to make alternative plans.

What else should we be thinking of? 

Check out some of the articles on MinnPost for more information.

Van Lingle Mungo Centennial

by Scott Hall

Special events are often planned around the 100th birthday of famous people, but there probably aren't many big celebrations today of the life of Van Lingle Mungo (right).  He was born on June 8, 1911, in Pageland, South Carolina and died there in 1985.  He was briefly famous as a pretty good major league pitcher, most notably with the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1930s.  In 1942 he won 11 games for the Minneapolis Millers. Along the way he met the late Otey Clark (below).  Otey was a frequent guest on KAXE's "Sports Page" in the 1980s and '90s.  He said Mungo was a spitballer and and an ornery character.  The following entry from the Wikipedia account of Mungo seems to confirm that:

"Stories and anecdotes about Mungo tend to emphasize his reputation for combativeness, including episodes of drinking and fighting. The most widely told story concerns a visit to Cuba where, supposedly, Mungo was caught in a compromising position with a married woman by her husband. Mungo punched the husband in the eye, leading him to attack Mungo with a butcher knife or machete, requiring Dodgers executive Babe Hamberger to smuggle Mungo in a laundry cart to a seaplane waiting off a wharf in order to escape the country."

Jazz pianist, Dave Frishberg, grew up in St. Paul in the 1930s and '40s.  He remembers Mungo and many other big league players from those days, and used some of their names for all the lyrics of one of the greatest baseball songs of all time, "Van Lingo Mungo".  Dave also wrote "The Sports Page", the title song for our sports show on Thursday mornings.

Puffing Away

   Mr Rankin smoked filterless cigarettes. I know that, but there are a lot of things I don’t know about Mr Rankin. Like: His first name, how old he was when I knew him, whether he and his wife had had children, and what he did for a living ( although I believe he worked at the Chicago Board of Trade where he might have been a trader, but just as easily he could have been a janitor). Those didn’t matter to me when I was a child. He was Mr Rankin the old man two doors down who held court with the neighborhood kids on the concrete steps of his front stoop in neatly pressed pants which rode high enough above black sox to show a little shin and always in a white silk, or at least silky, shirt which evidently I liked to touch when I was really small. Sometimes there would be five or six of us. Sometimes just me. Occasionally he would call out to his wife Meg ( I remember her name because he spoke it often) and ask her to make us all a glass of chocolate milk, but mostly it was just talk…and smoke.
   Mr Rankin was a big smoker and an even bigger talker. He told us Johnny Weismuller ( the original movie Tarzan) had taught him how to swim…by throwing him in the deep end of the pool. He owned a pair of wooden false teeth worn by none other than George Washington. He had a rock collection which glowed under black light and a German Shepherd named J. Edgar Hoover Rankin who leapt the hedge in a single bound on command. He had an old Plymouth with push button transmission. He even let me push the button once and we reversed to the end of the driveway. So in that short frame of time in which the very young can still believe the very old, I looked up to Mr Rankin.
   Does that mean I took up smoking later because of Mr Rankin? I don’t think so. Cigarettes were just there. Were a fixture as commonplace and accepted as chocolate milk. Just like at home. My Dad smoked too. On vacation we would drive from Illinois up to Hayward and later to Snowbank Lake with as many as five kids and the dog and Dad puffing away and our biggest complaint was lack of space. That’s just the way it was. So when I was old enough I did the most natural thing in the world. I smoked. And after smoking took my dad and my wife’s dad and mom and we had children and they started bugging us to quit because of what they learned in school, we still puffed away invincibly, until finally we put up a poster of a bare-chested Fabio in the garage where we were self exiled to smoke. A poster which said “Lips are for kissing, not for smoking.” And that’s what did it. So, yeah, Fabio helped me quit smoking. Not quite as romantic as Johnny Weissmuller teaching you how to swim, but there you have it.

Monday Morning: Wolves, Watercolors, and BIG Weather

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to remove the Gray Wolf from the Endangered Species List.  John Hart from the F&WS and Mark Johnson from the MN Deer Hunters Association talk about the reasons for de-listing the wolf at 7:20.

Also, on For The Birds, Laura Erickson continues her series on warblers with an update on the status of the endangered Kirtland's Warbler (right).

Then, in the 8 o'clock hour, we'll talk with Aitkin area artist and cartoonist, Duane Barnhart, about his watercolors and cartoons (right).  Duane is doing a watercolor workshop at the Grand Rapids Area Library Tuesday, June 7, at 7pm. His cartoons are a regular feature in the Aitkin Independent Age. His work has also appeared in Lake Country Journal and The Saturday Evening Post. 

And BIG WEATHER with Tornado Bob at 8:45.

Summer Essentials: June Edition

 by Maddi Frick

June has officially arrived which means summer is officially here, although the weather can't seem to make up its mind.  Summer means a change of clothes, eating habits, and most importantly, the music you listen to.  I'm ready for some care-free pop beats and feel-good acoustic sounds from artists I have yet to discover.  Here's a collection of new music to look forward to over these (hopefully) warm summer months.

Coldplay - Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall

Releasing June 3rd, this single by the infamous British band will hopefully tide you over until their 5th album release sometime in the fall of 2011.

Sondre Lerche - Sondre Lerche

The Norwegian's self- titled 6th album releasing on June 7th will promise some heartfelt beats, something you'll want to check out especially considering he recently played in Minnesota, in a barn in Wrenshall.(Other albums coming out this day include Jessica 6, Arctic Monkeys, Duncan Sheik, and The Rosebuds.)

Vetiver - The Errant Charm

The American folk band, who's toured with Devendra Banhart, will release their new album June 14th (the same day as Owl City's new release) through the label Sub Pop.

Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Bon Iver

The sometimes-claimed-by-Minnesota Wisconsinite will release his doubly self-titled album June 21st.  This is only his second album, however he's been collaborating with many other artists, notably Kanye West.  (Other albums coming out the same day from LMFAO, Pitbull,  Lil Wayne, and YACHT.)