My adventures with bananas

 

February 16, 2018



Bananas are a wonderful fruit. They are easy to peel and eat; most people like them although some more so than others, of course. My wife Joanne, usually called Jo, took a notion that she didn't like them some years back. She thought that she saw a worm in one, dropped the peel on the floor, and then threw the whole thing in the trash. I had never heard of a worm in a banana before. I told this story to a friend and he told me that when he spent time in Panama with the National Guard, he had seen worms in bananas. I thought that she just mistook the little sliver things you see for a worm. She was quite sick at the time and was on a lot of pain pills so could have been seeing things.

Prior to that incident, Jo had eaten bananas regularly for the potassium to eliminate leg and other cramps. It does do that, but isn't an immediate help, although she thought so sometimes. I personally eat a banana every morning along with oatmeal in almond milk with blueberries and one cup of coffee.

I am very fussy about my bananas. They must be green enough to last six or seven days as that is usually the size of the bunch, but I have to be able to eat one the next morning after purchase. Usually there is one that is a little riper than the others. I also like them to be quite large, not long and rangy but kind of fat. Timing of my purchases is a problem sometimes, since we live some distance from town. I don’t like to buy them too much before we run out and sometimes the store doesn't have properly green ones.

One time I went to a nutritionist at the VA health care and she told me to eat half a banana for weight loss purposes. She said that bananas were the same as bread. That suggestion was a no starter for me, I don't like bananas to be cut before serving. I have seen pieces of bananas in a kind of a sweet red sauce in a buffet that were very good. Once in a while, Jo would make banana bread out of overripe bananas. I really liked that, especially when she put nuts in it.

My daughter Brenda ordered gourmet meals that were delivered to us with all the ingredients for one nice meal, but that had to be cooked. Once it included plantains, a banana that has to be cooked. I don't remember whether we liked them or not. Brenda only occasionally eats a banana because she says that they have too much sugar.

Brenda told me recently that she had read that bananas are in danger because of some kind of disease that threatens them. It probably would not eliminate them entirely but might really slow down the industry and make them much more expensive. That would be a disaster for me and many others if it happened.

Many years ago when I worked in large supermarkets, the bananas came in great big bunches and the produce clerks had to break them down. The story always went around that they would sometimes experience a small, live snake in the bananas. They even said that it happened in the Safeway, in which I worked. I don’t know if it was true or not. You draw your own conclusions.

We used to hear about slipping on a banana peel all the time. It was a favorite thing that happened in certain comic strips. I don’t see that anymore, I don’t know why.

We didn’t have bananas much growing up, in fact, it is only in recent years that I have eaten them regularly almost every day.

I have admired people who could take some mundane topic from everyday life and make an interesting story about it. This is an attempt to do that; what do you think?

 

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