Banana Bread to Afghanistan

Last week I made reference to Jim working on a "cooking project" - I am now able to tell you exactly what that project was...

A colleague of mine and good friend of us both, Jenny Packham, is deployed to Afghanistan at the moment. Shortly before she left Cyprus in February, Jim started making his now legendary banana bread and made her an ambitious promise that he would get some to her while she was in Afghanistan, some way, some how...

Posting it was one option, but unfortunately the military mail from Cyprus goes back to the UK to be sorted before flying back via here to the middle east, which could have meant the banana bread would have taken a week to reach her. Jim considered trying to preserve it in some way by adding alcohol, but a few experiments using sultanas soaked in rum were not entirely successful.

So in the end the solution lay with our military connections. A contact at this end, a contact at that end (which then meant two lots of banana bread had to be sent - a second for the other friend in Camp Bastion!) and the banana bread hitched a lift on a direct flight to Afghanistan from Cyprus last Friday.

Over the weekend while we waited for news it had arrived, it all went ominously quiet, and whilst temperatures in Camp Bastion rose into the 30s, I had visions of the banana bread sitting in a hanger expiring in its cling film.

But, there is a happy ending to this story, because today the banana bread reached its destination...

...and Jenny assures me it has not suffered on its journey!

PS - Coincidentally Jenny also features in an article in the Independent today, do click through if you are interested in finding out more about what she, and the rest of the BFBS operational team do in Afghanistan.