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| Banana bread image by RobynAnderson, via Flickr |
For example, Mom told me I should gather all the ingredients needed before beginning to bake or cook. That way I wouldn't get half way through mixing the batter and discover I am missing an ingredient. I thought of that lesson the day I watched Judy make Rice Krispies® bars. She didn't gather all the ingredients together first. She just started with the first ingredient - butter - which she melted in the pan. Since the marshmallows were not out, there was no cue that they were needed, so she continued with the ingredient she did have out, the Rice Krispies.
Much of my work life I have managed projects, or been the primary interested party in someone else managing them - software development projects, access control projects, renovating an old building to turn it into an embassy projects, implementing the Department of State's student loan repayment program - and making sure I knew what all the pieces were and when they were going to be available was very important in each of those instances.
The next relevant lesson Mom taught me was never to break eggs directly into the batter. Instead, she taught me to break each egg into a cup first and then pour it into the batter. I thought it looked like an extra step, but she explained that sometimes eggs aren't fresh and if each egg was broken directly into the batter, a rotten egg would spoil the whole mixture. I don't think I have ever found a rotten egg, but I appreciated the scientific method approach to ensuring nothing invisible spoiled the batter when it was made visible. And identifying potential risks in order to mitigate them is a key step in any project management effort.
Mom also taught me that when I used one of the ingredients, I should put away the container it was in so that I would know when I was done that I had used everything. That's the lesson that was important for me today as I was mixing up the banana bread. When I was nearly done, I realized the butter was still on the counter. I had started out mistaking the first instruction - which called for a mixer - to involve the eggs. One of the eggs had a tiny crack so I was wondering it if was going to be my first experience with a bad egg. So that's what I put into the bowl first which I mixed until it it was a light golden color, just as the recipe said. Everything made sense next - I added the white sugar and the packed golden brown sugar and continued beating the ingredients. I followed the recipe until I reached the point where there were just two bowls of ingredients left: the flour mixture that also had the salt, baking powder and baking soda, and the milk, to be added alternately. I was ready to add the first when I saw the butter on the counter.
But another lesson I learned from Mom is that there isn't just a single way to do anything. I could follow a recipe - or the instructions for a pattern - and I would come out with the desired result. But Mom also taught me that I didn't have to lay out pattern pieces on a piece of fabric the way the instructions showed; instead, I could fold the fabric to cut the pieces one at a time and end up with leftover fabric when I was done. Leftover fabric is good.
Likewise, there is no single way to mix banana bread batter. So I had forgotten the butter. I knew I couldn't leave it out, but all I had to do was put the butter into another bowl, turn on the mixer again, and then when the butter was a light golden color, I added it to the mixture. Voila! Banana bread batter was fixed.
A final lesson in this home economics series is the proper way to clean up spilled milk. My instinctive response to seeing spilled milk was to head for the lowest point, where the majority of the milk pooled, in order to clean that up. But Mom pointed out that it was more effective to start at the source, where the milk first hit something it wasn't intended to hit, like the kitchen counter or table surface. She told me that unless I cleaned up the milk at the source of the spill, I would never get everything cleaned up. Even worse, if I concentrated on the end point of the spill, I might not even be able to see the path the milk traveled to get there as the quantity eventually slowed to a trickle, almost evaporating from sight.
Mom's lesson for cleaning up spilled milk comes to me often at work. For example, when I worked as a software engineer, our testing team ran every new version through a series of tests and assigned a priority to any issues they uncovered. Priority 1 issues were those that caused the system to crash. Priority 5 issues were cosmetic. We addressed priority 1 issues first and sometimes made it to the priority 5 issues.
One day I was ahead of schedule and I started on the priority 5 issues. One described extra spaces being added to the status message that scrolled across the upper right of the screen, depending on which floppy drive was selected. With drive A, the message was perfect. With drive B, one extra space was added. With drive C, two extra spaces were added. And so on. Extra spaces in the message were cosmetic, not meriting much time to address.
Except the reason for the extra spaces being added was found within the code that displayed the message, not the message itself. When I discovered this, I realized that if a user requested drive G, our priority 5 issue would become a priority 1 issue. We found the issue and corrected it.
That's cleaning up spilled milk from its source.
Because someone asked, here is the recipe for banana bread.
5 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
2 egg whites (if I have them, I use egg whites. If I don't have them, I use whole eggs.)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups mashed, very ripe bananas (I find 3 bananas is usually about right.)
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup heavy cream (I use milk)
1/3 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Spray bottom only of 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan with non-stick cooking spray.
2. Beat butter in large bowl with an electric mixer set at medium speed until light and fluffy. Add granulated and brown sugar; beat well. Add egg, egg whites and vanilla; beat until well blended. Add mashed banana, and beat on high speed 30 seconds.
3. Combine flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder in medium bowl. Add flour mixture to butter mixture alternately with cream with flour mixture. Add walnuts to batter; mix well.
4. Pour batter evenly into prepared loaf pan. Bake until browned and toothpick inserted near center comes out clean, about 1 hour 15 minutes.
5. Cool bread in pan on wire rack 10 minutes. Remove bread from pan; cool completely on wire rack. Slice and serve with butter and jam.
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