What Can You Do with a Banana?

We’re trying to eat more bananas in my house because they are healthy – high in potassium and a good source of fiber too.  But at some point, I realized that there has to be more to life with bananas than eating them plain, in banana bread and muffins, or as a topping for cereal.

As I thought about other quick and easy ways to use bananas, I realized that my ideas were all falling into 3 categories: hide them, highlight them, or acknowledge them.  

Hide the Banana – Banana Smoothie

Smoothies are easy to make with an immersion or stand blender. Here’s a simple version that you can mix in a minute for a drinkable meal or snack.

• 1 banana
• ½ cup orange or other fruit juice
• 2 ounces of plain yogurt
• ⅓ – ½ cup of cut up melon, strawberries, blueberries, or other fruit

Mix until blended.  If you like your smoothies sweeter, add a bit of honey or sugar.  (I find that light brown or raw sugar provide a more interesting taste “note” than white sugar in this and other recipes with yogurt.)

Highlight the banana – Peanut Butter and Bananas

Peanut butter and bananas are one of my favorite combinations.  If the truth be told, I rarely eat them together without adding chocolate, but that’s a story for another day.  As a sandwich or on a graham cracker, it’s a match made in culinary heaven – and not just for kids.  If you are more sophisticated (than I am), try almond or cashew butter.  And of course, there is always, nutella (a hazelnut and cocoa butter combination), but that spread is so addictive that I hesitate to recommend it to anyone who wants to keep their snack habit under control.

A peanut butter and banana sandwich, especially with whole wheat bread, is a super quick and healthy lunch. With a few raisins thrown in (they stick so conveniently to the peanut butter), it’s an almost-guilty pleasure. Plus, if you are brown bagging it, there is nothing easier to pack than a peanut butter (and anything) sandwich. 

Acknowledging the Banana – Banana Yogurt Parfait

As a lunch or even a dessert, bananas and yogurt are excellent together.  Layered with a few nuts, and perhaps a bit of brown sugar, they become a rather elegant parfait.  Beauty may be skin deep, but wouldn’t you rather look at this than a messy bowl of mixed up stuff? 

Banana trivia

• Bananas are made into beer and wine (in parts of Africa) and dried green plaintains can be ground up and roasted as a coffee substitute.
• Individual bananas are called “fingers” and they grow in “combs” or “hands”, each of which has 10-20 banana fingers.
• Bananas are the most popular fruit in the U.S.
• Best film featuring bananas (though the fruit isn’t exactly the point) – Woody Allen’s 1971 Bananas.  If you’re in a more serious mood, and concerned about where our bananas come from, you may want to check out Bananas!* and its 2012 sequel, Big Boys Gone Bananas!*

Cooking (not baking) bananas would be a whole other, unexplored way for me to use bananas.  I love plaintains with roast chicken, but have not made them myself, so that’s my next order of banana business.