Grilled Bananas Foster

So the month of January is over, which is typically a month dedicated to goals. If you’re like most people, your resolutions fell by the wayside a while back. Do you feel like your goal was a good one? Was it geared towards making you happier? Are you gonna stick with it? I’ve been struggling with this stuff for a while. I don’t normally make goals. Sure, I want to be able to climb harder and stress less and save more money and eat less meat. But making a goal to run a marathon or something doesn’t motivate me. I’ll easily drop my challenge on a lazy day with the excuse that no one else cares what I do.

Aimee and her family have been reading the book, The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. The author decides that she’s going to be happier this year, so she dedicates each month to a few tasks that help her towards her ultimate goal. Each month, the new tasks are supposed to become habits so she can build on them rather than forget about them. I don’t know if she ends up happier by the end of the year or not—I guess I should read the book.

I like the idea of Happiness. It should be a goal, and its got to be an easier thing to come by than many people think. If you made a habit of just thinking about being happy—right now!—you’d probably get pretty far in the right direction with no other goal at all. I started this a few days ago, and I think it just might work.

I also like the idea of habits. After that marathon is over, are you going to continue running daily? I won’t. It seems frustrating to always have to come up with new goals all the time. I think “run every day” or even “exercise every day” would be a more useful goal, since it would ideally become a habit that leads to overall health for the rest of your life. It’s also an easier goal to keep up with. You can always do some exercise daily, even if you’re too tired or busy for the right amount.

One more that I’ve been thinking about is waking up early every day. I always wish there was more morning. I want to do everything in the morning—exercise, shower, garden, read, work, and just stare. You need a lot of morning to do it all. And if I was allowed to just get up and stare, I might be awake enough to feel ready to exercise before the morning was over, and I might just do it every day. I’m a terrible self-motivator. I have to know how to trick myself.

I think if I got more complicated or added more goals than this, I’d fail at them all. I’m not sure about changing goals monthly like in the book. I think its gonna take more than a month of focus to stick to mine. I know these are the kinds of goals with no finish lines, which might make some people think there’s no point. But they are things I need daily, or I’m guaranteed to be cranky. Do I need a finish line if I can be happy every day?

Since I’m focused on being happy right now, I’m going to eat dessert, and I’m going to play outside. My favorite desserts involve bananas. Did you eat banana boats when you went camping as a kid? It’s always fun to throw food into a fire or on a grill, and grilled bananas foster is a crowd-pleaser for a mixed group of kids and gourmets alike. Keep going with that happiness goal, even through February. I’ll try to remind you in March if I’m still going with mine.

Grilled Bananas Foster

Yield

4 grilled bananas

Prep Time / Cook Time

5 minutes / 10 minutes

Activity Guide

Car Camping

Ingredients

• 4 bananas, unpeeled
• 4 teaspoons butter
• 4 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 4 teaspoons dark rum (optional)

Tools

• Campfire or grill
• Foil
• Knife
• Zip-top bag or small tupperware

Method

At Home:

1. Combine brown sugar, cinnamon and salt in a small zip-top bag or tupperware.

At Camp:

1. With a sharp knife, cut a slit in each banana lengthwise through the peel, making sure you don’t cut all the way through the other side.
2. Stuff each banana with 1 teaspoon of butter, the brown sugar mixture, and drizzle 1 teaspoon of rum over the top.
3. Wrap each banana in aluminum foil and place on a grate over a hot campfire. Grill for about 5 to 10 minutes, or until the bananas are hot and the sugar is melted.
4. Remove from heat, unwrap bananas, and eat with a spoon.