The blissful banana

Ripe and ready to use...

...in smoothies, baking, raw mousse, porridge, crêpes, and fruit plate or as a snack on the go.

I like my bananas to be ripe, with nice brown spots on their skin and with a sweet scent around them when I sniff close. I do not buy them green, as green bananas will never ripen properly, their skin will be dull and the taste won't be pleasant, not to mention the texture.

There are always green endings though, this seems to be unavoidable. To help my bananas to bring out their best I place them on my apples (I usually keep 3 to 4 clusters of bananas on my fruit and veg stand and at least half a dozen apples), and as the days go they become more and more ready to use. If I ran out of my ripe ones and only got the ones with the green endings, to accelerate the ripening process I put them in a paper bag with one or two whole apples (apples emit ethylene gas as they ripen).

I still remember the taste and texture of the bananas I ate in Rio. They were very VERY different from what we call here a banana. BUT let's be thankful to globalisation to even have them around. What would we do without them?