One of the things I want to do this year is move. When The Departed left, initially I spent a lot of time on spreadsheets, working out the economics of staying in my house. Why should I be forced to move? I thought.

But the longer The Child and I rattled around the house by ourselves, the more we realized – we didn’t really like it. It’s too big for two people, but more than that: it’s too generic for these two people.

I poked around online at ads for house rentals, apartments, townhouses, and ran across an ad for an older house, described as “cozy,” which is of course code for “small.” It hadn’t been updated in some time, and what updates there were seemed to be in keeping with the 1940’s character of the place.

I want that house, I thought. That’s my house. In my mind, it is already full of my grandma’s kitchen gear, and I’m crocheting something in a cozy corner.

Home: Something this large, generic house I live in has, oddly and in spite of my best efforts, never managed to be.

I’m stuck in this house for now, until The Departed and I can come to some sort of agreement – or the courts sort it out for us, one way or the other. In the meantime, I console myself with daydreams of a future that is firmly rooted in my past: A simpler world, with less fuss and much less stuff.

So the other morning as I found myself up much too early, rattling around my much too large kitchen, I reached back into the past for some comfort food. While my morning coffee brewed, I pulled out my 1940s-era copy of The Boston Cooking School Cookbook, by Fannie Merritt Farmer, and made myself a loaf from the simplest and best banana bread recipe I’ve ever found.

Best eaten warm, with butter.

This is my contribution to Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Why not swing by and see what other simple pleasures await?