Banana Bread and Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Homemade Marinara

Yum yum. I'm going to start with the successful recipes for this weekend. First, I made banana bread. I started with over-ripe bananas collected over weeks (it's hard to strike a balance between Shane eating them all before they get ripe and us forgetting about them until they're brown and mushy). I kept them in the freezer (see picture) which made them turn gross and brown. Even the cookbook warned "they won't look too good but they'll work just fine." They weren't kidding! I thawed them out in the refrigerator, then took them out and squished the banana contents into a bowl. I added walnuts and cranberries to the recipe, and I wish I had a picture to show how pretty that made the slices. I'll have to get those when we cut up the second loaf that's in the freezer now. The banana bread turned out delicious other than one issue: the recipe said to put the oven rack in the bottom position to bake the bread, which made it all burnt on the bottom and raw on the top. Somehow, it still tasted delicious! Next time I'll put it in the middle and I think it will turn out just right.

Next, I made spaghetti with homemade marinara. I sauteed onions and a green bell pepper in olive oil with some garlic powder, then added diced tomatoes and tomato sauce and simmered all that for about an hour. I added oregano, salt, and pepper to the sauce. Along with some H-E-B whole wheat spaghetti, this made for a DELICIOUS and healthy few meals! I was quite happy with myself. Then my next post happened. See above :)