More Brown Bananas

As promised I’m back with more things to do with brown bananas. This time I had a whole heap of them from work! I sold about 1/3 of our over ripe ones as “Banana Bread Bananas” for ridiculously cheap – I’d seen it done before, so keep your eye out – but the rest I had to take home, oh, poor me.

What the heck was I gonna do with 10 brown bananas!? Well, luckily I have a list. As, I've said before, I ALWAYS end up with brown bananas, so I just started going down my list, and made the first four things, after banana bread of course:

• Banana bread – made last week – so not this time
• Frozen bananas – to use at a later date
• Banana pancakes – and make some extra for easy breakfasts
• Fruit roll ups – Awesome!
• Smoothie

Easy peasy.  First, I froze the bananas two ways. I put some whole, sealed in labeled ziplock bags. These are great for making banana bread or banana pancakes in a pinch. Admit it, sometimes you just have a craving for some :) Then, I sliced a few more and put them on parchment paper, on a pan, not touching, then in the freezer. Once frozen, just move them into a container, and keep frozen. Use them in smoothies instead of adding ice or dip them in chocolate or peanut butter for a quick mid-summer snack.

To make banana pancakes (base recipe found here):

Banana Pancakes

Makes seven 5-inch pancakes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tbls oil
• 2 small ripe bananas (or one large one), mashed
• ½ tsp vanila

Directions:

1. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together egg, milk, vegetable oil, vanilla and bananas.
2. Stir flour mixture into banana mixture; batter will be slightly lumpy.
3. Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium low heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the pan and flatten the batter out a bit. Cook until pancakes are golden brown on both sides; serve hot.
4. Substitutions: use some or all whole wheat flour. I didn’t have quite enough milk, so I used half sour cream. Could also use, butter milk or soy milk (use just a little less than a cup for soy). Could use melted butter or coconut oil instead of the vegetable oil.

The batter is thick and these pancakes take a while to cook – they need to cook slowly, and are a soft fluffy texture when they’re done. The insides will seem not cooked enough when you flip them, but just be patient, their delicious.

I always make a few extra, and as I froze the sliced bananas, just put the cooled extras on a parchment paper lined sheet pan, freeze solid, then transfer to a ziplock. To reheat, just throw the frozen pancakes in the toaster oven and toast at the medium dark brown setting. They come out perfect.

Lastly, fruit roll ups. To make them, you need to dust off your dehydrator and get some special rollup trays (found here). I decided to make strawberry banana ones today:

Strawberry Banana Fruit Rolls
Ingredients:

• Big handful of strawberries, washed and husked
• 2 super ripe bananas

Directions:

1. Blend strawberries and bananas together, till really smooth.
2. Pour the mixture onto the special trays. Smooth out till it’s in an even ¼-3/8 inch layer.
3. Turn on dehydrator, and rotate trays occasionally, for about 3-4 hours, or until the fruit is dried, but slightly tacky to the touch.
4. Remove them while still warm, and roll up in parchment paper.
5. Substitutions: use any berry instead of strawberries, like blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, etc.

At this point I only had one banana left, so I just made myself a quick smoothie for breakfast, with all the other frozen fruit I had in my collection.

And that was that, 10 more bananas saved from the doom of the garbage can – and me stocked up on quick easy breakfasts and snacks for a while! Also, I know it seems that this would take up a bunch of freezer space, but it really doesn't. Especially, if you bake or make smoothies often.

Those 4 bananas that I cut up and froze, will really only make me maybe a weeks worth of smoothies... Then I'll be on the hunt for more!

More brown banana recipes to come later!

Cherry-Strawberry Jellam

People are picky about their cherries. The other day someone came into the stand looking for cherries and we had some, but there weren’t many left. He took the whole box of them over to the sun and went though each and every cherry in the box. A little later he came over to me with a bag of perfect fruit. The rest however, he said needed to go into the garbage. He was right. He took every last perfect cherry and the leftovers were all pretty sad – some had super smooshy tops while others had an under-developed twin sticking off the stem. At the end of the day, no one took them – so of course, instead of throwing them away, I just had to take them home. That same day there was also 2/3 of a basket of organic strawberries that had been passed over all day. They had similar symptoms of over-ripeness.

So, what do you do with squishy, super-sweet, over-ripe fruit? It was obvious to me! Make jam! I had never made freezer jam, but I hear about it often. Freezer jam is easier to make than regular processed jam, and requires less fruit and less sugar. This was a good option for me, because I was tired and I figured there was only about a pound of fruit to use.

Here’s all I did – washed all the fruit, and discarded the really weird ones. For the strawberries, I hulled them, cut off the squishy parts, then cut the rest of the fruit in quarters. For the cherries, I de-stemmed them, pulled off any weird twins, cut off the super-over ripe part, then just pushed out the pit. Then it all went straight into the blender! The recipe called for two full cups of fruit… I was a little bit short, so I threw in a ¼ cup of blueberries I had laying around, and blended the mixture up again.

The recipe that follows, is straight from the instructions that come in the regular Sure-Jell Fruit Pectin box:

Strawberry Freezer Jam 

• 2 cups crushed strawberries (buy 1 qt. fully ripe strawberries) 
• 4 cups sugar, measured into separate bowl 
• 3/4 cup water 
• 1 pkg. SURE-JELL Fruit Pectin 

Directions:

1. Rinse 5 (1-cup) plastic containers and lids with boiling water. Dry thoroughly. Discard stems. Crush strawberries thoroughly, 1 cup at a time. Measure exactly 2 cups prepared fruit into large bowl. Stir in sugar. Let stand 10 min., stirring occasionally.
2. Mix water and pectin in small saucepan. Bring to boil on high heat, stirring constantly. Continue boiling and stirring 1 min. Add to fruit mixture; stir 3 min. or until most the sugar is dissolved. (A few sugar crystals may remain.) Fill containers immediately to within 1/2 inch of tops. Wipe off top edges of containers; immediately cover with lids.
3. Let stand at room temperature 24 hours. Jam is now ready to use. Store in refrigerator up to 3 weeks or in freezer up to 1 year. (If frozen, thaw in refrigerator before using.)
4. Substitutions: The cherry freezer jam recipe called for exactly the same quantities as the strawberry one, so I felt confident substituting half cherries. Also, I wasn’t preserving it for the long term, so chemistry wasn’t 100% important.

Also, what I make is Jellam. I hate big chunks of fruit in my jam. It makes it hard to spread on toast, it has a weird mouth feel, and the chunks often float to the top of the jar… I don’t know, I just don’t like it. But, I also, don’t love jelly. It takes longer to make, its super thin, I don’t think it’s as flavorful. So, I just blend my fruit, to just about smooth. Kind of a half way between a jelly and a jam – a Jellam!

This recipe would work for those leftover strawberries and cherries in your fridge, that didn't get eaten at their peak and their just not that appealing to pop in your mouth as a snack. This jellam ended up being sweet concoction of fresh fruit goodness.