This post is a re-emergence of my old favorite meme, Waste-Not Wednesday!BANANAS! Do YOU need 20+ lbs of bananas a week? Well, I can use that many and more. Here are my tips for not wasting a single banana.
- When you bring them home, fill your sink or a dishpan with water, and add 1 Tbsp vinegar (or bleach, or even just dishsoap). Leave the bananas there as save the rest of your packages. Raise the bananas from the water, give them a shake and set them on a towel to dry. This should virtually eliminate your risk of fruit fly invasion!
- You walk into the kitchen and find that the preschooler has opened a banana, taken a few bites, and walked off leaving it half uneaten? Toss it in the fridge. It'll keep for 3-5 days. The part she bit off will "heal" and seal the fruit. Just cut off that 1/4" when you use the banana. Offer it cut up in some yogurt or with a little granola, so she doesn't recognize it, or put it in a smoothie.
- Once they have become completely freckled and 'perfect' then just place them in the fridge. The skin will turn brown, but they'll keep for 3-5 days for eating. You can actually keep them over a week and still use them for smoothies during that time. After 2-3 weeks, you can still use them in baking.
- Ever heard of substituting applesauce for oil in baking to cut out fat? You could use a ripe mashed banana in place of fat, too, when you are baking muffins or quick breads or even a cake mix.
- And of course they can be frozen. It's tricky to peel a frozen banana, and it gets very mushy when it thaws- so peel them and place them in freezer bags. I even break them into chunks and put them on a tray to make "individually quick frozen" banana chunks, convenient for smoothies and baking.
Rather than banana bread, lately we've been using this banana coffee cake with chocolate chip streusel topping. It's *fabulous* although messy!
I'm also linking up this post to Works for Me Wednesday.
4 comments:
What a great post! I NEED to do something to control the fruit flies. Does it work with other fruit too?
Yes! I actually use it for any produce that won't be going into the fridge: tomatoes, for example, and pineapple and melons.
You may have saved my sanity with your fruit fly concoction. THANK YOU they've been driving me bonkers.
Oooh, I didn't know that about fruit flies!! Is there anything vinegar can't do?! Thanks for the tip!
Something I do with bananas that are overripe or partly eaten is make a cooked fruit sauce with other bits of assorted fruit.
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