Bananas

 

There are always bananas on my kitchen counter. I don’t ever need to write ‘bananas’ on my grocery list – they are one of the things, like milk, that I buy every time I go to the store. We have bananas for snack several times each week because they are so convenient to store and serve.

All the children like bananas – for some they are their favourite fruit – though occasionally I’ve had a child that briefly got tired of having bananas. However, I would not put bananas on my personal list of preferred fruits – I will only eat green bananas. (note: I also choose savory over sweet, vegetable over fruit consistently).

Whenever possible I will buy green bananas. If the store only has yellow bananas I will buy just a few and make another trip to the store later in the week for more. I cannot have ripe bananas in my kitchen – once I can smell them then somebody better eat them or I’ll have to freeze the bananas or bake something.

Yes, I do bake a lot of things with bananas – but I don’t usually eat any banana flavoured things. Luckily, the children do like most baked banana snack foods too.

I bought a bunch of bright green bananas on one of my shopping trips last month – and they would not ripen. This picture was taken almost two weeks after I bought these bananas.

Not only were these bananas still green, they were too green even for me – they were very hard and impossible to peel. I had to buy more yellow bananas to use for snacks. I am stubborn though and was determined to get these bananas to ripen or find another use for them.

I searched for uses for green bananas. One site suggested boiling and mashing them like potatoes – that just sounds gross. Another suggestion was to slice them and pan fry – I tried that at nap time one day in hope we would be able to have bananas for afternoon snack.

I still couldn’t peel these bananas so I sliced them and then cut the peel off. I fried them in butter and added brown sugar to make a sweet glaze. Even with the sugar they tasted just like fried potatoes! I absolutely LOVED them – the children definitely did not. None of the children finished their afternoon snack.

I placed the remaining green bananas in a paper bag with all the green tomatoes that I had picked from my garden before it got too cold. Over the next week, all the tomatoes ripened and we ate them but the bananas were still green. I thought maybe my house was too cool (I keep my thermostat set at 18C) so I tried placing the remaining bunch of green bananas in my oven set on ‘warm’ for half a day – didn’t help. Maybe these bananas were even more stubborn than me.

I checked the bananas again on Friday – almost four weeks since I bought them – still green, though may be not quite as hard as they had been. I placed them back in the bag and decided I would fry them all on the weekend – it would make a wonderful snack for my son and I but I wouldn’t expect the children to eat them.

I was busy outside all day Saturday – taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather – and didn’t check the bananas. On Sunday morning I prepared to fry the green bananas but when I opened the bag….ewww !

The bananas were suddenly not only all yellow but are they were even starting to turn brown. There is no way I will fry or even eat these bananas – too over ripe for me…but I know what the children will love for snack on Monday