When Life Gives You A Bag Of Ripe Bananas

You Get Bananarambunctious!

---

Yesterday, I walked into our local super fabulous shopping center as I was so pressed for time thanks to a bout of hauling children to and fro to multiple destinations all before 8AM that I neglected to pack myself anything for lunch. As I am at the library for at least 8.5 hours on a Monday, I figured I better just grab me some grub from the local grocery market. It seemed like a good plan. Oh, and I also needed $5 to give to my kickboxing instructor that afternoon, for health and wellness reasons.

Anyway, as I walked in the sliding glass doors of our local grocery store, my eyes were instantly drawn to the neon orange stickers of on saleness that beckon any frugal shopper who's perennially on the lookout for a good deal. There, in the produce section, were big paper bags of ripe bananas. What was so great about these bananas is that they were just perfectly ripe, like Mary Poppins ripe. Practically perfect in every way ripe! And get this, the entire bag was only 99 cents! Squee!!

!!!!!!

So, I left the store with some Cheeto cheddar popcorn, a spinach pizza calzone thingy, and a big ol bag of opportunity bananas. I was so excited to craft things with that bag of awesomeness. As I type this I have a dairy free loaf of banana walnut bread baking in the oven. In my fridge is a banana cream pie, well, it's actually a lazy person banana cream pie, but honestly I needed something to feed to my game night crew tonight and I did have a random graham cracker crust chilling in my pantry that begged to be used.

The pie is termed lazy as I popped open the crust, laid sliced bananas in a pretty circular pattern on the crust proper, and then whipped vanilla pudding and whipping cream together for the cream pie part. Very lazy, but helloooo, very tasty too. I am thinking I might whip up a quick caramel sauce to drizzle on that pie when I get home for work, so I'll feel a bit better about the lazy part.

Cora was really trying to banana butter me up in hopes of getting a morsel or two...

Speaking of lazy, the smell that is emanating from the oven right now is making me banana bonkers. Instead of going to run the library I want to slather a big slab of warm, right out of the oven banana bread with a huge chunk of Irish butter. Mmm....I don't know what it is about banana bread, but just the smell of the stuff baking gives me the most cozy feeling. I wonder if Banana Hygge is a thing?

The rest of the bananas I am going to freeze for later use. I adore banana peanut butter chocolate smoothies. My mom used to make them for my brother and I when we were kids, so nostalgia is going to happen at some point this week. I'll probably make my banana cake with cream cheese frosting too, love that. Oh, and zubana bread (zuchinni banana)! Ah! The sky's the limit here! I am in a banana induced baking brainstorm!

Lani thinks her cuteness will sway me, NAY! NO BANANAS FOR YOU! Okay, they did get a chew, but that's not cause I am weak...

Which of course is going to make me posit, what are some of your favorite things to craft with bananas? I'm dying to hear your of bananalicious delicacies!

---

And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's soon to be put out to pasture and currently banana scented iPhone.

---