Bananas are driving me bananas.
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with bananas but lately they just leave me feeling inadequate as an adult.
Why do they brown so fast or why do some never ripen, just sitting on my counter mocking me. Then if they aren’t eaten in two or three days, the peel turns brown and there comes the issue. Do I throw them out (compost would be better) or try to utilize the rotting fruit in some other baking?
I’ve thrown many bananas in the freezer, aspiring to make delicious banana bread or banana muffins. A friend suggested I could throw the frozen bananas in a smoothie.
But then I’ll open my freezer months later and those four or five black bananas mock my inadequacy or sheer laziness.
There really is only a two-day window where a banana is the perfect firmness and flavour. The rest of those days are just mush and brown.
As a child, I was never a fan of the texture of bananas. I didn’t mind bananas cut up on my peanut butter sandwiches but never as a snack or at soccer half time. Bananas appeared everywhere in my childhood. Black and browning banana peels littered all over school grounds just waiting to be slipped on and brown or smooshed bananas in kids lunch kits.
As I became older and could make my own food choices, the only time bananas and I would meet were to be hidden in a smoothie.
But then came along my son. He is a true monkey. The banana has been his favourite fruit for over a decade. The tropical fruit became a staple in his life when he was a baby. He’s had a banana almost every day of his life. That boy is full of potassium!
So here comes my love-hate relationship. They are the cheapest fruit in the grocery store so that’s a bonus. But I can never get it right. Either too green or too ripe.
Thanks to social media, now I’ve found a new use for my brown bananas. Apparently you throw a banana peel into a mason jar full of water. Leave it for a day or two and pour the banana water onto your plants and vegetables and voila – happy and blooming plants.
That I can accomplish.
Monique Tamminga is the editor of the Penticton Western News.
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