In the middle of midterms week, overloaded with teaching, grading and reading, I found myself in the kitchen of my basement apartment across the street from campus, ready to make a late breakfast of eggs and spinach to curb the appetite which had crept up on me after a furious morning of reading.
When I entered the kitchen, my eyes went straight to the fresh bananas on the counter, a fitting and healthy side dish to my forthcoming egg-centric meal. But lo, my friends! This banana was the fulcrum of the see-saw that balanced between healthy breakfast and delicious, thigh-expanding indulgence! This banana was a temptress, a siren, a gateway food leading me down a nefarious path far from the savory, protein-packed eggs and spinach and towards the freezer, the frozen land where empty calories and sweet devilry live! The yellow fruit in my hand, my mind shot straight to the ice cream left over from a dinner party the night before and the chocolate sauce bought last semester, unused but still viable and deadly.
And so there it was folks, the banana split, hinging on that distant kin of my original breakfast--the banana--was now being prepared by yours truly, half aware of my morning madness! The banana, peeled and split in two created a boundary for three scoops of ice cream to rest between, all awaiting the chocolatey drizzle from the Hershey's Special Dark sauce. A simple three step process which requires little work, but provides a feeling of dessert satisfaction far beyond your typical bowl of ice cream. A poor man's banana split for sure, as there was no whipped cream, nuts or cherries, but a solid and most pleasurable experience which, given its ease of preparation, should be a staple for the collegiate dessert menu. While I would not recommend replacing meals with this delightful combination of fruit and ice cream, I would suggest that my sacrifice of a healthy breakfast may remind you what a wonderful and simple treat the classic banana split might be for you.
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