Banana-Rama

What happens when a grocery order mistake creates banana overload? We take that as a challenge.

Three weeks ago — as far as I can tell — Kroger changed its banana ordering system, and as a result, last week, I ended up with 5 bunches of bananas.

Thirty five bananas.

Like, just look at that again.

Thirty five bananas.

Photo by Rodrigo dos Reis on Unsplash

I don’t know how it happened, other than it was kind of the Arrested Development joke come to life. What could 35 bananas cost, Michael? Five dollars? Well, yes. Five dollars. I should have known when I put the seven bananas in my cart and they cost $6ish dollars total that I was ordering either bunches of bananas or gold-plated bananas. A bunch of bananas is a dollar! Previously, when I’ve ordered exactly five bananas, that’s precisely what I paid.

Kroger, dastardly grocery chain that it is, suddenly altered its banana ordering process, and I’ll admit, I was too enamored with my own genius at coming in under $150 for a week’s worth of meals — including for breakfast, lunchboxes, and dinner — that it simply didn’t cross my mind that I’d overpaid for fruit (plus, look, I always overpay for fruit. We have a fruit budget. I have kids, and while I’m financially comfortable, I simply don’t have unlimited fruit money).

My husband, of course, was the only one home when the bananas were delivered, and according to him, it “seemed like a lot of bananas.” He ignored it because he doesn’t order the bananas.

And that is how our banana odyssey began.

To be fair, I also put it on Twitter or X or whatever that I’d made a mistake and ordered 35 bananas somehow. It was then that I found out I was far from the only victim of banana overload, and that Kroger has hoodwinked entire hordes of housewives into accidentally over-purchasing bananas. Some — not me, but some — could say that this seems suspicious on the part of a national grocery chain in the midst of a trade war that is threatening to hike the price of bananas by 10%, and kickoff World Banana War II (yes, there was, in fact, a World Banana War I).

The internet insisted that I freeze the bananas and use them at some later date, ostensibly in “smoothies,” but really that seemed soft. Anyone can freeze bananas. Not anyone can properly and without waste dispose of 35 bananas over the course of the week — because remember, we’re racing against the clock — without ever freezing a single one, and, quite frankly, this seemed like a personal challenge.

I may have a mental illness.

Anyway, unlike Carbonite Han Solo, things don’t usually survive the freezing process in our house. They get put into an underqualified Ziploc bag and dropped into the bottom of the freezer where they remain to be excavated in a year or two years or whenever the next refrigerator decides to engage malicious destruction of property, freezer burned and unusable.

For me, it’s just the long way to throw out bananas.

That gave me a week.

And by God, I did it.

It wasn’t easy.

We, as a family, may never eat a single banana ever again.

But by God, I did it.

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Weirdly, Substack doesn’t allow you to create “jumps” in essays, so if you just want the banana recipes, scroll down. Over the course of the week we made bananas foster, banana-walnut breakfast muffins (kid approved with qualms), chocolate chip banana bread muffins (kid approved), shortbread cookie banana pudding, and chocolate covered bananas.

I dismissed several suggestions out of hand. No one thinks frozen blended bananas make for a passable healthy ice cream any more than they think diced up cauliflower makes for passable rice. We are not a smoothie household. No one here is going out of their way to add another step to housing fruit and no one needs to deep-six their pre-workout. We are not a pre-workout group of people. We are not a workout group of people, for that matter.

The first few days, we ate the bananas as normal. Everyone got one in their lunchbox; everyone got one for an after-school snack. The second day, I insisted on sending an extra banana as consideration for lunch time trades. By the third day, only my daughter was still willing to eat bananas, and I was beginning to get worried that the other two might never poop again if we continued this rate of raw banana consumption.

I managed to, on the third day, offload one bunch of bananas to the woman across the street who offered to return them in the form of banana pudding. No thank you, I said. Just enjoy them. As a gift. Let them haunt your house like one of those dolls Ed and Lorraine Warren collected.

I started to count down on bananas and update my Twitter audience with the count.

On the fourth day, we realized we had to begin to use the bananas in earnest or we’d waste them, and that simply could not be. So we set aside bananas for two dishes, Bananas Foster, which allowed us to celebrate our wedding anniversary with the whole family and risk accidentally burning down our kitchen which has taken nearly a year to renovate, and for Banana Pudding, which is a southern staple, and if I can make a passable banana pudding for local cookouts, even as a Chicagoan, I knew it would be a crowd pleaser at home.

By Saturday, we’d reached peak banana ripeness, and banana bread became imminent. Instead of loaves, at least at first, I made muffins — a healthy breakfast option with walnuts, and a non-healthy still-breakfast option with chocolate chips. Needless to say, only I have eaten the walnut-laden ones.

With just three bananas left, we hit a wall. I wanted to make a metaphor about marathons and thighs cramping up but, of course, the solution to muscle cramps is bananas, so while it doesn’t work technically, the visual is almost spot-on. Just imagine us, inundated with bananas, having tasted nothing but bananas for breakfast, snacks, and desserts for days, dreading the thought of another loaf of bread. Another muffin. Ennui loomed.

But then, miracle of miracles! A neighbor in trouble! What better way to alleviate the pain of several broken ribs from a fall than a nice loaf of banana bread! Although by this time, I was assuredly manic, I did not specifically push her down her steps in order to create a need for healing banana goodness. Not that I’d be willing to admit to that, anyway.

Not knowing our predicament, she was thrilled.

Although I never gave myself a timeline — bananas have a natural one — it felt good to be done, like I’d accomplished something. Some of you may say I need more entertainment in my life, or to develop my sense of accomplishment with a useful pursuit, like demolition derby, but I know, in my heart, that I did something.

Kroger, of course, refused to be conquered. Just yesterday, as I was finishing up my weekly grocery order (a sad $165, $15 over my typical budget), it made sure to ask me a crucial question.

I assure you, Kroger, I am not forgetting anything.

*I will note here that it never occurred to me that we could mix bananas with alcohol in frozen drinks, which may have solved the banana malaise as well as a host of other problems.

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Recipes

Bananas Foster

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2cup Dark Brown Sugar

• 4 TBSP (a half stick) of butter

• 3 - 4 bananas

• 1 shot of rum (we used black strap) and

• a splash of banana-flavored liquer

• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

• Vanilla ice cream for serving

INSTRUCTIONS

• Peel the bananas and cut them into 1/4 in slices. We did this on the bias (sort of diagonally) but that’s entirely for aesthetics — and this recipe is really all about aesthetics.

• Heat a stainless steel frying pan (the kind with sloped sides, not perpendicular) on medium high heat. Melt butter until it foams. You’ll want to heat the butter slowly so that you can better control your mixture (and it’s much easier to recognize the points at which you do the following steps if you’re going slowly).

• When your butter stops foaming, add the brown sugar and stir until all the butter is dissolved. You should have a darker brown syrupy mixture.

• Add the bananas to the syrup and cook for 30 seconds to a minute. The bananas should stay pretty firm, but you do want them to get a nice coating in the butter and sugar mixture. Banana mush will defeat the purpose of bananas foster.

  Now is the theatrical portion of our dessert. Note: this only works with a stove that has an open flame. If you do not have a gas stove, consider a camp stove, or simply bring a lighter and just light the rum on fire the old fashioned way.

• Leaving the stove on, take your pan off the heat, ideally moving it to another burner. Add your rum and a splash of banana liqueur.

• To flambe, move your pan back to the flame, then tip the pan up and away from you slowly, making sure to maintain contact between the edge of the pan furthest away from you and the cooking surface. Once the pan has tipped enough, the contents will flambe — that is, they will light on fire. Take appropriate safety precautions. As noted, you can also just light this on fire with a lighter.

• If you want extra theatrics, sprinkle your flames with cinnamon to create indoor fireworks.

• However you start your flame, return your pan to a flat position and stir the mixture constantly over medium heat until the flame goes out on its own. At that point, turn off your heat and let the mixture cool.

• Pour the bananas and syrup over a large scoop of cold vanilla ice cream and serve immediately.

Shortbread Cookie Banana Pudding

Paula Deen, who I have good stories about for another time, revolutionized banana pudding when she used Chessmen cookies instead of Nilla wafers. I still put mini Nilla wafers as the base, and I generally cut this recipe in half unless I’m bringing a dessert to a party or get-together. It makes enough for a 9x12 lasagna pan.

Banana pudding is best when it’s been in the fridge awhile. It’s good when its fresh but it really needs to age like a fine hillbilly wine.

• 1 (7.25 ounces) bag Pepperidge Farm Chessman cookies

• 1 box Mini Nilla Wafers or your favorite vanilla wafer cookie

• 2 cups milk

• 1 (5ish ounce) box instant French vanilla pudding (vanilla is fine but it’s not the same

• 1 (14-oz) can sweetened condensed milk

• 1 (8-ounce ) package cream cheese, softened at room temperature

• 1 (12-ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed

• 6 – 8 medium bananas (enough for a single layer of your dish)

INSTRUCTIONS

• This is no-bake, so if you want to pointlessly preheat your oven, it’s entirely up to you.

• In a large mixing bowl, using electric hand mixer, combine milk and instant pudding mix. Mix on medium speed until you’ve combined the two and they’ve begun to set. Ideally, you want this to be sort of soft-set by the time you fold it into your topping.

• In a separate large mixing bowl, combine softened cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk. Beat together on medium-high speed until no lumps remain and mixture is smooth. This will take some time, but by taking extra time, you will prevent someone eating a clump of raw cream cheese.

• Fold the whipped topping into your cream-cheese-and-sweetened condensed milk mixture with a rubber scraper.

• Combine both the pudding mixture and the cream cheese mixture. I like to beat this on medium for just a minute or two until you have a nice, light yellow fluffy mixture.

• Line the bottom of a 9×13-inch casserole dish with your Mini Nilla wafers.

• Top with sliced bananas in an even layer. Make sure to get a full layer of bananas, even cutting some into halves or quarters to fill gaps.

• Top the banana layer with your pudding mixture. Using a rubber scraper, get your pudding mixture into all the nooks and crannies, pressing down a bit to get the mixture to soak in and under the banana layer and into the wafer cookies. Banana pudding needs to have a soft texture, and the only way to get that is to soften those Nilla wafers.

• Top with your shortbread Chessmen cookies. Since I don’t play chess, I didn’t pay a ton of mind to the order, or, really, whether I was putting them into the pudding right side up. Your mileage may vary.

• I’d recommend making this ahead of time and refrigerating for at least two hours before eating. Ideally, once you’ve eaten a few servings, let it sit at least overnight.

Banana Bread (in Muffin Form)

I use the same recipe for my banana bread as I do for my muffins. The only difference is, of course, that the recipe makes either one single loaf of bread or 10-12 muffins depending on how high you fill your muffin cups. The cook time for banana bread is about an hour and the cook time for muffins is about 18 minutes, so the muffins work better if you’re looking for instant gratification (and they also work better for school lunches and snacks).

This is for the plain recipe only. I added 1 cup of walnuts to one batch and 1 cup of chocolate chips to the other. All consumers preferred the chocolate chips. At least this consumer realized she’s better off eating the walnut ones. One recipe I tried had raisins.

Don’t do that. And don’t substitute honey or applesauce either. What is wrong with you.

I also recommend overestimating the amount of bananas you’ll need. I used three typical-sized bananas for the walnut muffins and, I have to say, they were a tiny bit dry. I used four bananas for the chocolate chip muffins and those were perfect.

INGREDIENTS

• 3 to 4 very ripe bananas. Take into account size. 3 average size bananas are not enough. 4 large sized bananas will be too much

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, warmed to room temperature

• 3/4 cup granulated sugar

• 2 eggs, beaten

• 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour

• 1 tsp baking soda

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• Optional

  • 1 cup walnuts

  • 1 cup chocolate chips

  • Not one cup of BOTH, just adjust as necessary

  • No raisins, don’t be terrible

INSTRUCTIONS

• Preheat the oven to 350 and, if making bread, grease a 9.25 x 5.25 loaf pan, preferably nonstick. For my loaves, I like to put a layer of Pam or other cooking lubricant and then layer a sheet of parchment over that, leaving a little bit of parchment paper to stick up on either side. It lets you pull out the loaf easily and without scorching your fingers.

  • If you’re making muffins, line your muffin tin.

• In a mixing bowl, using a hand mixer on medium speed, cream together your stick of softened butter and your sugar. Per Christina Tosi of Milk Bar fame, never worry about over creaming your butter. You want it to be consistent in texture, light and airy, and a nice light yellow color. You’re whipping in air that will help keep your product lighter and fluffier later.

• Mash your bananas with a fork or turn them over to your children to smash in a bowl. You want them to be a little chunky but not too chunky. If you can look in the bowl and think, man that would be gross if I bit into it, keep mashing.

• Mix your two eggs into your mashed banana mixture and then combine that with the rest of your wet ingredients.

• In a separate bowl, add your flour, baking soda, and salt, and whisk this mixture together until it’s completely combined.

• Add your dry mixture (your flour, baking soda, and salt mix) to your wet ingredients (your bananas, eggs, butter, and sugar), a little bit at a time, mixing thoroughly with your hand mixer after every addition. Don’t forget to also scrape the sides and bottom of your bowl in case your mixer can’t quite get those little remaining bits of flour and egg.

• Once your ingredients are mixed together, add your vanilla. I say 1 tsp, but, really, follow your heart.

• Pour your batter into your loaf pan or scoop into your muffin tins. You don’t need to worry about how far up the batter goes in your loaf pan, but if you’re making muffins, fill each cup about 2/3 of the way with an eye to parsing your batter out into about 12 equal muffins. Underestimate on the first go-round if necessary. You can always add more to your cups later.

• For the loaf: Bake at 350 for 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

• For the muffins: Bake at 350 for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of one of your middle muffins comes out clean.

• Allow your bread or muffins to rest in the pan for ten minutes, remove and cool.