Attempted poll --

[kinzel]

Friday I was at the grocery store looking for a banana or two for Saturday's breakfast and I asked the young man putting up large bunches of seaweed green fruit if he's seen, you know, fruit  I could eat in the morning. He scratched his head and said "You want yellow? Most people get them as green as they can!"[Poll #1435756][Poll #1435756]

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Actually, Wife buys the bananas. But I entered the status of what she brings home.

[scaleslea.livejournal.com]

My wife buys and eats the bananas. I answered for her. "Never" is the answer for me. I have to be in a very special mood to eat a banana.

Doc

[orlacarey.livejournal.com]

when I'm buying them in the discounted pile it's because I'm going to bake with them. When I eat them brown-ish I'm either actually baking with them or putting them into a shake.

[spiritdancer]

I've got two littles and a husband who go thru bananas like monkeys :-) So, I buy a LOT of bananas. They generally prefer them yellow (I prefer them with green tips, myself). I buy 3 to 4 bunches at a time, and try to get a range of colors, so they get eaten at the eater's preferred color.

Anything that doesn't get eaten before going to the brown-spotted to approaching-brown stage goes into the freezer for later use in smoothies, baking, etc. Not that that happens very often :->

[sraun]

I buy them for my wife to eat them. I'm allergic to them unless they're cooked - I'll make banana bread with the really brown ones.

[jilltanith.livejournal.com]

Never, never, never. As in, I got sick on one when I was at an impressionable age and haven't willingly touched one since.

In fact, I hate 'em so much I don't even like to watch other people eat 'em.

[kimuro.livejournal.com]

I don't eat bananas much, but those who do in this family eat them when they are pale green or barely yellow, they will not eat yellow bananas at all. So I get a couple of pale green bananas and a couple of grass green bananas and hope they all get eaten before they turn yellow because if they don't ... I have to eat them.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I * buy* them yellow with green tips in hopes that they won't overripen before I get around to eating them. Then I forget to eat them. Then I decide to make banana bread. I give up and throw them away when they are dark brown, withered, and the fruit flies are starting to evolve.

[ariaflame.livejournal.com]

I'm not alone!

[amm-me.livejournal.com]

If possible, I eat them when they are yellow with a nice sprinkling of brown freckles, but preferably NOT bruises.

Oh, and the notion that bananas have lots of potassium? Well, they do have a good bit, but cantaloupes and potatoes have lots more. Your nutritional note for the day.

Abigail

Middle-school gross-out banana story

[amm-me.livejournal.com]

I went on a week-long trip to Colorado in February with a middle-school group. Due to unanticipated snow depth, the bus had to park a mile from the cabin, and all food and gear be packed in. The food was NOT arranged for this. The trail looked like Chilkoot Pass; a student would start with a large load and gradually discard parts of it to what he or she could manage through 20" snow. The older kids found a small sledge and made several trips to pick up the discards.

One of the early casualties was a large box of bananas. By the time they were retrieved they were definitely frostbitten, dark brown as bananas get in the cold, though not at all bad, if we could just use them immediately. Banana bread seemed obvious.

Turned out the easiest way to extract thawed frozen banana pulp from the skin (especially for middle school cooks) was to break off the end and strip out the insides like milking a cow. Reaction of the non-cooks to seeing this, and subsequent choice to eat the banana bread, was sharply divided between "Cool!" and "Euwwww!"

[cailleuch.livejournal.com]

I buy them yellow but like to eat them when they get to the little brown specks stage, when they actually smell like bananas. I buy some yellow and some yellow with green tips so that they ripen at different times and I don't end up with all brown ones. I am not the biggest fan of banana bread.

[romsfuulynn.livejournal.com]

I submitted my poll. However, my mother (86), who also lived in Baltimore growing up - (until about 1944) feels that a banana isn't ripe until it has brown speckles.

Not bruises though - that's different. And she'll eat it hapily all the way through to approaching brown.

[(Anonymous)]

Wish one could participate in these polls without being a LiveJournal subscriber.

[pgranzeau.livejournal.com]

Buy them pale green or partly green, mostly, at local grocery or farmer's market. Eat them yellow, hate having to cut out soft parts when they start to turn brown.

[redpimpernel.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised at how many people, like me, don't really care for bananas, except in bread.

In my family, some like them firmer/drier (yellow), others like them a bit softer/moister (freckles). So they get eaten with light green tips, but preferably all yellow, and into the light freckle phase.

Me, I like to draw smilie faces on the bananas in the store with a fingernail. (Banana graffiti!)

[victorthecook.livejournal.com]

While I like to eat bananas out of hand at the yellow stage, I save them to the deep brown point for banana pecan ice cream.

[jmr-udhgal.livejournal.com]

I buy them anywhere from partly yellow to yellow, though rarely yellow. I'll eat them if the bruising is minimal (mainly because I generally don't get through them fast enough to prevent that stage and I never thought of making banana bread). Eating them frozen is good - though not something I've done much of since high school.

Bruises!?

[od-mind.livejournal.com]

Please to be distinguishing bruises from normal ripening. Bruises bad, ripeness good.

I can eat a partly-green banana if I have to, but perfection is when they are soft but not mushy, well mottled with brown, unbruised, and before they start to develop that acetone whiff. After that, one makes banana bread, preferably with some dried fruit bits in it. (Cherries, cranberries, blueberries, apricots, no raisins please.)

Of course, it's all moot. The Cavendish is doomed, as was the Big Mike before it.

[grassrose.livejournal.com]

Swap "freckles" for bruises, please - no bashed nanners for me, but I do like them to be ripe enough to have freckled skins. The inside is still completely yellow.

[grassrose.livejournal.com]

Oh, and if you put bananas in the fridge when they freckle (or even before), the skin will turn blackish brown almost immediately, but the fruit will stay yellow and good for a few days longer than normal.

[sickmomma.livejournal.com]

I like my bananas with freckles, but if they turn all the way brown, they get made into chocolate swirl banana bread that's delicious.

When I was in college, my best friend/roommate and I would buy bananas together. She liked them on the green side (once they were totally yellow or, goddess forbid, developed some freckles, she wouldn't eat them), and I liked them when they were fully ripened. We bought them really green, and let them ripen slowly, buying new green ones as the older ones turned yellow. Worked great!

Fwiw, I eat bruised bananas too, if they're not too badly bruised. But it's not my goal when I'm buying bananas or choosing which to eat.

"...Never put your bananas in the refrigerator..."

[pakwa26.livejournal.com]

A couple of years ago we had an acute banana shortage in this country, when a cyclone wiped out our local banana population (and we don't import bananas, for reasons best discussed elsewhere) - the price went through the roof - from the average price of $2-$3 per kilo to over $14 per kilo - I went without for over a year, until the crops recovered - and it nearly killed me. I'd rather give up coffee than bananas.

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

Earlier this year I got the chance to buy bananas of a couple different types right from the grower. They're definitely better that way.

We buy them at all stages.

[sf-lover.livejournal.com]

I like mine a little green. My beloved likes them with speckles. The kids range between those extremes. We even buy the ones reduced in price turning very brown. Those get stripped of their peels, thrown into bags and frozen. The wife and kids eat them frozen like a popsicle. Any that survive this get turned into banana bread. Ha ha YUM!