ebay is the best madeleine.

last night after we had turned out the lights i was seized with a deep need to find:

1)

a kenner family tree house, and

2)

the woodsey squirrel family log home.

kirk went to get my laptop and watched while i looked them up.

memories of the tree house elevator were just stuck in my brain, though i couldn't recall all the details until i looked it up. but the button that makes the treetop pop up! oh. and the painted-on hanging plants that looked just like ours! and the feel of the woodsey squirrels' little brown chairs! and you could put your fingers in their sleeves, like little puppets. they came with a storybook, "lightning strikes twice," which terrified me. i don't know what ever happened to all this stuff -- i suspect my mother gave most of it away to her church, if it wasn't destroyed already by my siblings.

oh, toys.

the most perfect vegan banana bread recipe

i finally found this long-lost and much-cherished recipe today, while obsessively sifting through old boxes of journals and notebooks from 1998ish. i found envelopes full of old collage remnants, essays written in italian that i can barely read anymore, packets of articles i loved, postcards and magazine pages. it was a nice way to lose a couple hours of the afternoon.



the most perfect vegan banana bread recipe
(from the farm cookbook)

1. sift together: 2 cups flour, 1.5 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda

2. cream until fluffy: 1/3 cup margarine, 3/4 cup brown sugar

3. beat into sugar: 1 cup mashed bananas

4. mix in: 3 tbsp soy milk or water, 1 tsp vanilla

5. fold in: 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips. bake 45-50 minutes at 350° in an oiled loaf pan.