Goin' Bananas!

I was at the grocery store the other day when these bags of ripe bananas started calling my name.

I don't know if you can make that out or not, but the price on them was 99 cents a bag and each bag contained 5-6 pounds of bananas! But a great price on something is only valuable if you use it once you get it home.  No need for me to go into great details about the time I bought whole chickens on sale only to forget they were in the fridge...only $10 for 3 chickens, but they ended up in the trash.  Lesson learned - use your deals right away before you forget you even bought them!

So, what can a mom do with 12 pounds of bananas?

1) Feed them to the children!  Many of them inside the bag were perfectly ripe and ready for eating. 

Esther making her best "monkey face" while eating a banana

2) Put them in the freezer for smoothies.  This is super easy. Just peel them, leave them whole, pop them into a Ziploc bag, and put them in the freezer. 

I think frozen bananas make smoothies taste better than fresh

3) Get them ready for your next batch of banana bread.  My recipe calls for 6 bananas.  I dropped 6 bananas into the blender at a time and poured them into Ziploc bags.  I laid them all on a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer so that they would dry flat and take up minimal freezer space.  Next time I make banana bread, I set the bag of frozen bananas on the counter an hour or so before I need them and they're ready to go into the recipe.

After they're frozen, take them off the cookie sheet and store wherever there is room in your freezer.  Now that they are solid, they can also be set upright/vertical if that works better in the space you have available.

So next time you see that amazing deal on bananas, snatch up a bag or two and get your freezer ready for your next banana containing recipe!

God Bless!

Heather :-)