What do you get when you combine Bananas and Summertime?!
**banana ice cream** **banana smoothies** **banana bread**
Yep - I came home today to these glorious spotty big bananas, and to the realisation that I wasn't thinking when I put the fruit away on Friday afternoon! 🤦♀️
I always find banana ripening to be so interesting. You can do everything right from harvest to fruit bowl and yet still have such little control over when these beauties are ready to eat.
Here's my tips to get the most of your bananas
Mistake #1: My fruit bowl was loaded to the top with 14 bananas!
Bananas are social fruits 🤣 and love to be in the company of other bananas or fruits (think Avocados). They release ethylene gas which ripens the fruit super fast especially when they are piled up on top of each other in a deep fruit bowl!
Mistake #2: It was on my table which gets a lot of natural light
I'm not suggesting to hide your bananas in a cupboard to slow down the ripening process, but it could be worth a try to at least keep them in a spot where it's not super hot or bright. At our warehouse, we keep ours in a dedicated area of our cool room (its just not as cold as the rest of the area but not as hot as ambient temperature) that helps slow the ripening process.
Mistake #3: I wasn't paying attention
The bananas looked greenish but they were actually soft and ready to eat yesterday when the spots came out. Now whilst I couldn't eat them all yesterday, there is still some that are perfect today and if I isolate a couple they will be fine for tomorrow.
The thing with bananas, and any fruit and veg really, is that there really is only so much we can control - the organic nature of produce - and subsequent varied ripening, is one that we do need to embrace. For many years we have been tricked into thinking that perfect yellow bananas are the only way we can eat them, or that farmers should be able to ripen them to the exact day required.
I even noticed in a local supermarket they had categorised bananas as ready to eat now, ready tomorrow and ready in 2 days 😳!!
Maybe conventional ones are a little less prone to ripening quickly due to the post harvest processes? Maybe they've just selected all the perfect fruit and keep it in air conditioning up to the point of sale so they can safely say when the fruit is ready? Maybe they haven't seen the bananas from our farm that are so divinely imperfect and ripen at all sorts of odds and spots naturally but are so sweet in flavour!
In any case, the real truth of bananas is that while we do everything we can to ensure you've got the right amount at the right time, we can't always guarantee when they will be ready (in fact sometimes a random bunch will just not ripen at all!). If you ever have any questions, comments or concerns on the ripening of produce, please just reach out!
We will be more than happy to replace any produce that doesn't meet our usual high standards for quality!
I do recommend growing your own too, it's super fun for the kids to watch how they grow and ripen! 🍌
For the love of the Harvest 🧡
Kel
