Banananana Bread 

This is a rich, rustic, melt in the mouth banana bread good for any time of day. Most important for a deep banana flavor is to use extremely ripe, black bananas. To further deepen the flavor and break down the banana starch, throw your ripe bananas in the freezer overnight, pull them out in the morning and let sit out for a couple more days.

Ingredients:
3 super ripe bananas
3 eggs
1/2 cup coconut sugar
1/2 cup raw sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
1/4 cup coconut oil 
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup almond flour
1 cup ap flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 325°. Coat loaf pan with oil. Combine flours, baking soda, and salt. Add in a few pinches of cardamom, cinnamon, and/or nutmeg if you want a bit of that spice flavor. 

Roughly mash bananas in a separate bowl. Whisk in eggs followed by all sugar and vanilla paste. Add coconut and vegetable oil and whisk until smooth.

Add dry ingredients to banana mixture and stir until just combined. Do not over mix. Pour batter into pan and smooth the top. For unnecessary aesthetics, slice a sheet of banana lengthwise and lay on top of batter. 

Bake until a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean, 50-60 min. The top will be quite dark, but don’t fret. That gives it that caramelized banana flavor. Let it cool in the pan.   

For max enjoyment, toast a thick slice in a cast iron skillet with a little butter and top with almond butter and maldon salt.

Variations:
1. Easily make gluten-free by upping almond flour to 1 1/4 cup plus 1/2 cup coconut flour. 
2. To healthify and up the coconut flavor, reduce sugar and replace vegetable oil fully using coconut oil.

Images, words, and recipe by Caylon Hackwith.

Rachel Schultz is a New York City-based artist whose work spans various subject matters. Most often she explores the human psyche, capturing their essence and at the same moment constructing something all humans can relate to. Schultz is interested in juxtaposing color and subject matter; such as anxiety and mental health, which can be veiled, dark, and elusive with a lighter more buoyant palette.

Using the human figure to explore these psychological themes like anxiety, impulse, and relations between self and other Schultz walks the line between caution and impulse, resulting in poetic repetitive mark making and intuitive forms. In these select pieces, a series of related gestures unfold across subdued monochromatic paper. Drawn intuitively and in sequence, these forms can be read as the physical manifestations of human being's shifting emotional landscape and its effect on self and others. The result is a meditative blend of spare elegance and dynamic movement.

This cocktail is a nod to Finnish and Japanese sauna and bath cultures, beautiful continued traditions that embrace meditation, physical wellness, sociability, and slowness, all things we value more and more these days. Similarly, palo santo proffers purification and cleansing that helps with stress and anxiety. And practically speaking, palo santo is a wood that is extremely fragrant and oil-rich, making the infusion process for this cocktail very quick. What it contributes here is a perfumed, wooded flavor that with the smoke from the mezcal and pine notes of the rosemary recall the scents of a sauna.

Lonna Cocktail - ingredients 
1.5 oz infused rice shochu 
1 oz mezcal
1 oz sweet vermouth
scant tbsp rosemary syrup
stick of palo santo

To infuse the shochu, submerge a stick of palo santo for about an hour. If you don’t have shochu (or soju) at home, you can easily sub for gin or even vodka. You can infuse just enough for one cocktail or scale up and leave the palo santo in for a bit longer. Feel free to taste after an hour and if you want more of that perfumed flavor, steep longer. When finished, dry out the palo santo stick for future burnings. 

To make rosemary syrup, add one cup raw sugar and 1 cup water to a pan. Add 3-4 full sprigs of rosemary and a pinch of salt and heat on med-high (if you have some rosemary lying around that has dried out, that works even better as it has more of that pine quality). bring to a boil, turn down heat and allow to simmer for 5 min. turn off heat and let cool fully, then strain out rosemary. 

To prepare the cocktail, chill a ceramic cup in the freezer. In a separate mixing glass, stir all ingredients over ice for 2-3 minutes until chilled and diluted (taste to test). Strain in your chilled cup. Squeeze a grapefruit peel over the top and discard. It’s best enjoyed next to a fire or in a hot bath if you have that luxury.

**Lonna is an island off of Helsinki with nothing but a sauna and its restaurant.

Photography, recipe, and words by Caylon Hackwith. Caylon Hackwith is a photographer, filmmaker, and art director of fashion, architecture, and objects. Find more of his work here and follow his instagram here.

We recently created a pin inspired by our namesake, IDUN, the Norse Goddess of spring, vitality, and rejuvenation. This pin is that much more special because the artwork is created by our friend, graphic designer, and licensed tattoo artist Kelly Thorn. Kelly works out of her studio in Greenpoint, Brooklynn and you can find more of her inspiring work here.

We recently asked Kelly to share a few things that inspire her and keep her balanced as a multi-disciplinary artist.