Bananas

Preparation

1. Banana Milk

   Step 1

   Purée all the ingredients together in a blender. Drink. Want to turn it into a treat? Add a scoop of your favorite frozen dairy dessert before blending and sprinkle cinnamon or nutmeg on top before serving. Want a frozen drink without the fat of frozen dessert? Freeze the banana in chunks first and blend it with just the milk and spices.

2. Roast Banana

   Step 2

   Peel back one thin strip of peel from the banana. Brush the exposed banana with melted butter. Fold the strip of peel back over the banana flesh, and/or wrap the whole banana in aluminum foil. Roast in a 400°F oven or over coals until the entire peel is black. Eat directly from the peel with a spoon.

3. Bland

   Step 3

   Sprinkle sliced bananas with spices, for example, anise, cinnamon, or nutmeg.

4. Darkening

   Step 4

   Coat banana slices with lemon juice. If they are already dark, slice them in half and arrange them good side up; no one will know the difference. An old wives’ tale claims that bananas sliced with a silver knife don’t darken as quickly.

5. Not enough

   Step 5

   You’ll have to fill the dish out with something else. Ripe pears go well with bananas without imposing too much on the flavor or smoothness. In a salad, try a cantaloupe to keep a lonely banana company; the colors are lovely together and the taste isn’t bad, either.

6. Overripe, mushy

   Step 6

   Of course, banana bread is the obvious choice, but if you’re not feeling obvious, here are two very simple and good things made from overripe and mushy bananas.

7. Too many (and they are all ripe at once)

   Step 7

   Well, you’ll just have to make a banana cream pie. This can be absurdly simple if you use a store-bought pie shell, canned or dairy-case vanilla pudding, and spray-on whipped topping. See your favorite cookbook for homemade alternatives.

   Step 8

   What, you still have more? All right. Mash them up, combine the bananas with lemon juice (1 lemon for each 6 bananas; or you can use that citric acid stuff groceries sell for home fruit processing), and freeze them in an airtight container or freezer bag. See, Chiquita, you can put bananas in the refrigerator! Now you have six months to find some interesting recipes for mashed bananas—banana cake and banana pudding for starters. Thaw fully before unwrapping or opening, or the banana will turn brown. (Although if it does, the taste is unimpaired.)

   Step 9

   Does mashing them up sound too hard? Okay, peel them, cut them into chunks, and freeze in freezer bags. Those chunks can be thrown into milkshakes or smoothies and will add creaminess and sweetness (without the fat of ice cream). Cutting them still too much? You are lazy, aren’t you? Okay, just throw the whole banana still in its peel into the freezer. When you take it out (the peel will have darkened considerably but the flesh inside will still be fine) and defrost (quickly done in the microwave), it will have become very mushy, making it incredibly easy to use for your banana bread (or cake, or pudding) with barely any effort on your part.

   Step 10

   Or why not experiment with the latest in low-fat or fat-free baking? (For some readers, this hint alone is worth the price of the book.) Many cake, cookie, and muffin recipes can be adapted to eliminate from three-fourths to all the fat by substituting fruit purées (like applesauce or mashed bananas). Chocolate things work really well with bananas. If you also use one egg white for each whole egg in the recipe, you’ll really be creating a healthier version of your goodie, without all those mysterious ingredients used in commercially available baked goods. It may take a little experimenting to get the proportions just right (start by using three-fourths as much mashed banana as butter or fat in the recipe, and add more if it’s too dry), but you’ll be doing yourself a lot of good!