Hominy Grill Banana Bread — Dale Knows How To Host

Back to School Edition! Mom with Dad in his academic robes. Chapel Hill, NC. Maybe early 1980s?

Me and my sister in our English school uniforms in front of our flat in Great Missenden. Our daughters recreate the photo in the same spot 30 years later!

Me on the day of my high school graduation showing off my degree project (I made dresses out of hardware and found objects and took fashion photos of them) in an oversize vintage blazer from Beggars & Choosers in Pittsboro and a hat from Modern Times, where I used to work, in Chapel Hill. I spray painted my shoes (high heel pumps) black. (Every time I wore them I would spray paint them to match. They had been red and silver previously.)

Mom in an adorable red fascinator at my Uncle Frank’s wedding. Dad looking dapper.

On our first family trip on the QM2 Mom insisted on getting the girls dresses with matching hats. They were the HIT of the ship!

Phew! As of this week my daughter is back in school. Like for real. IN PERSON school. We will see how long that lasts (thanks, Delta variant). But, after a year and a half of having her at home, I’ll take it! So, consider this the “Back to School” edition of Dale Knows How To Host. Growing up with academic parents in a college town, school was, obviously, a pretty big part of my life. I was the least intellectual person in my family (my sister was a freaking state Algebra champ and, well, you know about my parents), so I had to find a way to navigate that. My solution was to fly under the radar academically (As were great. Bs were acceptable. And, Cs? Well, let’s just say I only got one C because that fallout was INTENSE). My other solution? Be Artsy! The old smoke and mirrors trick. Maybe they won’t notice my lack of interest in school IF I WEAR A BIG HAT?!

I joke that growing up in Chapel Hill was like growing up in Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon where “ALL of the children are above average”. In Chapel Hill, everyone seriously was exceptional! It seems like an absurd proportion of my former classmates now have their own TV show or mega corporation or have changed the world in some rockstar way. (Or they are an actual rockstar.)

So, expectations were pretty high all around. I am so grateful that my sister and I both found the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. It was a real lifesaver. My sister started in 9th grade to study the cello, and I went in 11th grade to focus on Visual Arts. We were both ready for the independence of boarding school and that intense, early arts focus let us find our own way to be “above average”. (I mean, Elisabeth already was, but I needed a little help. Aside from my distracting clothing I was a little rudderless. I mean, I DID win best dressed in my 9th grade yearbook, but you really shouldn’t hang up your hat after that!) My mom was, of course, amazing about NCSA. I remember her driving me to my interview and being the perfect amount of calm and supportive. With my sister having attended for 4 years, we knew the school quite well and had a good sense of what it might offer me. Now that I have a daughter who is the same age I was when I went to NCSA, I think about what it might feel like to have your kid leave. Mom may have felt relief (ha ha) but I suspect she also felt some sadness because she was such a great mom and it was a large part of her identity. She never let on if she did. But, she was ALWAYS available to talk on the phone or willing to drive the hour and a half there to pick me up for the weekend.

As a part of my program I had to do a senior thesis project where I created a body of work and had a solo show in the Visual Arts gallery. I was interested in fashion and photography, so I decided to make two dresses out of hardware and found objects. I accompanied the looks with a series of fashion photos with the dresses on models. Well, I tell you what, I bit off more than I could chew! This was before the days of hot glue (or at least before I knew about hot glue) so I individually sewed thousands of pieces of hardware to a cocktail dress that I hand stitched. I worked for months on this thing. By then I had a car at school so I would sometimes drive home to Chapel Hill just for the night for a change of scenery and some company. Mom would help me sew a section and would then retire to bed. I would stay up sewing accompanied by whatever was on television at that Godawful hour. I can still feel the pang of loneliness and exhaustion I felt when that color bar and tone played at the end of the broadcast signaling there was nothing left to show! I was still up. STILL SEWING. Morning would come and I would load up my car and drive back to NCSA in time for English class. Now, this project not only took longer than I thought it would but it also took way more materials than I had planned on using. Mom made sure I had enough money in my checking account to make daily runs to Hechinger’s (remember that? before Home Depot?) to stock up on hardware. She never gave me a hard time about it and this project got *quite* expensive over time. When it came time to exhibit the dresses, Mom gave me money to rent some cool mannequins. This was quite a coup because it was pre-internet and they were hard to find. I can’t remember how I located them but I found some that were about 2 hours away from Winston-Salem. I had to borrow a friend’s large car and drive to this mannequin warehouse (that’s a thing) and deal with the weirdo who worked there. All by myself. At 17 years old! The whole experience was freaky but you know what? Worth it! And, thanks to Mom’s support, I pulled it off and wore another not so subtle hat at the thesis unveiling (see above photo).

Mom was in the hat game, too. Once she came to a parent visitation day at NCSA. I was at my easel doing a life drawing demonstration and in strolled Mom in the coolest Modern Times pantsuit with ankle boots and a bowler hat! A damn bowler hat! Like Lena Olin in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. (One of my art school faves.). Clyde Fowler, my unflappable, too cool drawing teacher exclaimed, “Who is that elegant woman?!”. “Mom!,” I said proudly.

Now, back to Garrison Keillor who is decidedly not elegant. Oddly, we have been on the Queen Mary 2 with him not once, but twice (!) over the years. He was a fellow guest and, fortunately, he didn’t sing. I’m not a fan. My dad has a theory that people from Minnesota shouldn’t sing. The two examples he gives are Garrison Keillor and Bob Dylan. Reasonable point.

So, for today’s “Back to School” recipe, I thought about how Mom used to make sourdough bread every week. Some days I’d come home from school to hot bread and honey butter. I’m hopeless with sourdough but I did find a recipe for something equally comforting in Mom’s files: Banana Bread. This recipe comes from the now defunct Hominy Grill in Charleston, SC, one of Mom and Dad’s favorite restaurants. Enjoy!
[And maybe consider wearing a hat to see if it improves your situation.]

HOMINY GRILL BANANA BREAD

1 1/2 cup sifted flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 oz unsalted butter, room temp
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup whole oats
3-4 medium sized bananas - ripe!
2 tbsp water

Sift dry ingredients together. In large bowl, beat butter until soft. Add vanilla and brown sugar and combine. Add egg and beat until pale. Stir in oats, set aside. Peel bananas, add water and mash w/ back of fork until coarse. Thoroughly mix the bananas with the butter mixture and mix in dry ingredients gently. Place in buttered 5x9 loaf pan that has been dusted w/ plain bread crumbs. Bake for 1 hour at 350. PS. The banana flavor comes out better after 24 hours.

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