Like so many other people, I nearly always have a couple of bananas laying around that are getting overly ripe. Sometimes I just stick them into the freezer for later use, but I often toss them into a loaf of banana bread. Banana bread is fast, easy and works great for both breakfasts and for snacking. The only drawback is that you can get tired of it after making the same loaf recipe several times in a row. It is easy to dress up a loaf by tossing in chocolate chips, nuts or raisins, but it's nice to have some more varied variations available, as well. In this month's Vegetarian Times magazine, I saw a recipe for Peanut Butter Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips that looked quick, easy and tasty. Not surprisingly, it lived up to my expectations. The bread is slightly heavy, but not too dense, and has a good balance of peanut butter and banana flavors. I used milk chocolate chips instead of semisweet and cut back on the amount slightly. The bread is good plain and toasted, for breakfast, with tea or for dessert!

Although this photo of Fancy Toast's banana bread is a good one, it's not the look of the loaf that makes it appealing. The unassuming exterior hides a secret and that secret is booze. Erinelle turned an otherwise ordinary loaf of banana bread into a deliciously grown-up treat by adding a hearty dose of rum-soaked raisins to her banana bread batter. The recipe she used comes from Nigella Lawsons's popular cookbook How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking, which is full of decadently satisfying recipes that are designed to be very do-able for the home chef. Since all that really distinguishes this bread from other banana breads is the use of the boozy raisins, it would be easy to make the addition to your own personal favorite banana bread recipe if you didn't want to use Nigella's. You could even toss them into muffins or cookies for a little bit of a change there, as well.

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• This week's recipes: Stuffed Cabbage Rolls, Roast Turkey Breast with Cider and Apples, Quince Tart, and Chocolate Chip Walnut Banana Bread.

I haven't seen too many Greek foods with bananas, but apparently, 2,000 tons of South American bananas made their way to Volos, Greece. Then they were dumped into a landfill.

The bananas were actually on their way from Ecuador to Turkey (wait, so are there bananas in Turkish cuisine?), but had become rotten after the refrigeration unit on the ship broke down. The ship docked in Volos. The local mayoral council decided to dump the cargo, but nearby residents have begun protesting, saying that it will harm the local environment.

They could have saved themselves all that trouble if they had just caught the bananas a little earlier in an over-ripe stage and made banana bread. Duh.