Slow Cooker Bananas Foster

Labor Day. A year ago, Terrence left on Labor Day weekend. The moving truck, the goodbye at the door, the fire helmet in his hand, the three toothbrushes in the cup. A year ago. A whole lifetime ago. In one year: a goodbye, a pregnancy, a birth, a pandemic, a name (Elijah), a baby who smiles at ceiling fans, and a woman who is somehow still standing, still cooking, still making chili in September and cornbread on Sundays and showing up to work in a face shield and coming home to three children who need her to be everything, always, forever.

I didn't tell Terrence about the anniversary. He didn't mention it either. We've moved past it — not forgotten it, moved past it, the way you move past a river: the current is still there, the water still flows, but you're on the other side now and the crossing is behind you. We're co-parents. We're friends. We're the people who made Elijah, and Elijah is enough to build a relationship on — not a romantic relationship, not the relationship we had, but the relationship we have, which is: two people who love a baby and each other in the way that people love the source of their child. It's a specific love. It's a real love. It's just not the love that lives in an apartment with toothbrushes.

Terrence visited this weekend. He brought Elijah a gift: a onesie that says "Atlanta" on it. The first Atlanta gear. Elijah now has Nashville gear and Atlanta gear, which is either bicultural or confusing, but at two months old he doesn't care about geography. He cares about milk and hands and the ceiling fan. His priorities remain excellent.

Kevin called. He's at Fort Campbell. Crystal is... Crystal is leaving. Not leaving Kevin — not yet — but leaving the base. She's going back to Ohio for "a few weeks" to be with her family. Kevin says it's temporary. I hear the way he says "temporary" and I hear all the temporaries of my life — Danny's leaving was temporary. My Waffle House job was temporary. The school's two-week closure was temporary. Temporary is the word that means "I'm not ready to say the real word yet." The real word, for Crystal, is: I can't do this. Kevin can't hear it yet. He'll hear it eventually. Mitchells always hear it eventually.

I made pulled pork — slow cooker, all day, Dr Pepper in the liquid. The Labor Day meal. The cookout-in-an-apartment meal. The meal that says: we may not have a grill or a crowd or sparklers, but we have a crockpot and twelve hours and the patience to let something become tender. Everything becomes tender if you give it enough time. Pork. Relationships. Grief. Children. Time makes everything tender. That's the whole recipe. That's the whole life.

I couldn’t send everyone home with pulled pork — Terrence had to get back on the road, the kids were fading, and I had an overnight shift in two days — so I finished the day the way I’ve started finishing hard days lately: with something sweet and slow and a little reckless. Bananas Foster in the crockpot, because if I was going to spend Labor Day talking about patience and time and the things that get tender when you stop forcing them, I was going to end it with a dessert that proves the same point. The slow cooker doesn’t care what year it’s been. It just does the work.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 2 hrs | Total Time: 2 hrs 10 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

4 ripe bananas, peeled and halved lengthwise
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
3 tablespoons dark rum (or 1 teaspoon rum extract plus 2 tablespoons water)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Pinch of salt
Vanilla ice cream, for serving

Instructions

Prep the cooker. Lightly coat the insert of a 3- to 4-quart slow cooker with nonstick cooking spray.
Build the sauce. Add the brown sugar, butter cubes, rum, vanilla extract, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt directly to the slow cooker insert. Stir gently to combine — the butter will melt as it cooks, so don’t worry about getting it perfectly smooth now.
Add the bananas. Lay the banana halves cut-side down in a single layer over the sauce, nestling them in as best you can. It’s fine if they overlap slightly.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours, until the bananas are very soft and the sauce has thickened to a glossy caramel. Do not lift the lid during the first hour.
Finish and serve. Gently turn the bananas cut-side up using a spoon — they will be fragile. Spoon the warm bananas and sauce generously over scoops of vanilla ice cream and serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow Cooker Bananas Foster — Because Time Makes Everything Tender