This is my puppylove.

We had to put Shanna to sleep yesterday. She got really sick really quickly, and the vet said there wasn’t anything they could do to significantly improve her condition, let alone cure her. She was 12 and lived a very happy healthy life. She was probably the most ridiculous, obnoxious, best dog ever. We didn’t do a great job training her, so she was kind of annoying and constantly misbehaving but I absolutely loved her. I can’t imagine not having her around, pawing at me to pet her and scratching at the door to go in and out and barking at every passing car, person, or windblown leaf.

She was the absolute cutest puppy ever with big floppy ears and paws that were too big for her body. She used to run around the kitchen-den-living room circle over and over and then all of a sudden just fall asleep on the wooden floor. We had a trampoline in our back yard and I distinctly remember her chasing me around the backyard in one of her more rambunctious moods when she was teething, trying to bite me. I sat in the absolute center of the trampoline (as if she could get herself up onto it) and screamed until my mom came out and got her. This happened more than once.

She also got along really well with other dogs.

And was completely calm and receptive to baths.

She used to take our shoes and bring them into her crate and guard them as if they were her puppies. She would growl and bare her teeth at us when we tried to fish them out of the crate. She was really good at picking guests’ shoes, or the ones that one of us wanted to wear that day.

But she also used to stick her face in the basement windows from outside and watch me while I was on the treadmill. Or come over and put her head right in my lap. And sprawl out on the floor with me after a particularly large meal (for me, not her).

Because this is a food blog, I did bake something. Banana upside down cake.

Whenever I got home I would always yell HEY BANANA! Or some variation of that- banana head, shanny banany, banana face. You get it. It’s better than when I used to talk to her in a full blown baby voice until I was like, 11. (16). When I got home from work today it was weird to not have her lunging at my car and bouncing inside the house with me.

I already shared my banana bread with you but I definitely still needed to eat my feelings with some baked good so I decided to try this one of David Lebovitz’s. I followed his recipe exactly. And I ate it with vanilla ice cream  because that’s how I treat all my desserts. But also because it was Shanna’s favorite treat.

It was basically the same texture as my banana bread, and similar flavor- plus the cinnamon and the caramelized bananas on top. The two are pretty much interchangeable but this just looks a little fancier.

..but this post wasn’t really about the cake anyway.