Green Tip #98: Banana Bread

Mmmmmm.... Don't you just love the smell of banana bread muffins baking in the oven? I can't even begin to describe how much I love the taste of the warm, luscious banana-y goodness topped with cinnamon and brown sugar. Well, I could begin to describe it, but I wouldn't be able to complete the description because it's very difficult to describe tastes and smells and then you'd be left with half a description of banana bread muffins and I just hate to leave you hanging like that. So I'll just let you make some yourself and you won't need me to describe it for you.

Hm? What's that? You're wondering where this is going and how it relates to Green Tip #98? Well I'll tell you! (Of course I will, I'd be a jerk to just say "Make banana bread" and assume that you can figure out what the environmental message behind it all is).

So, bananas are weird. Not the fact that they're shaped so unnaturally or the fact that bananas don't really have seeds which is weird for fruits. No, I mean they're all backwards in terms of when you can and can't use them. Let me give you an example. Let's say I wanted to make apple pie. Mmmmmm.... apple pie. I can't even begin to describe- Okay, sorry, I'm getting lost in my own head again. You can't go wrong with apple pie, right? Especially if you use perfectly ripe apples. Freshly picked, right off the apple tree. Sounds delicious, right?

Now let's think about banana bread. You go to the store to get bananas and you pick up the perfect bunch of bananas: nice and firm, mostly yellow with just a tiny hint of green and no spots or bruises at all. You take them home and... wait a week until they get gross and black and squishy because you can't very well make banana bread from firm yellow bananas. What gives? How come bananas are still useful after they've gone bad but other fruits you have to throw away.

Strawberries and blueberries start getting moldy, potatoes grow those nasty root things, lettuce withers and turns black, grapes get all squishy and sour and you have to throw them all away, adding more volume to the landfills (or kitchen walls). In fact, I can't think of another food other than bananas that are still useful for eating after they go bad.

So Green Tip #98 has two parts (depending on your level of tolerance of mold). First, you could only eat bananas (when they're ripe) and banana bread (when they're 'mature'). This will save a lot of produce from being thrown away. Alternatively, you can find recipes for [whatever moldy food you have] bread that can make use of your rotten food. (Don't worry, the mold spores will die in the intense heat of the oven. Maybe...)

So, if you've still got an appetite after that, march on out to your kitchen and fish that moldy bag of lettuce out of your garbage, because you're having lettuce bread for breakfast tomorrow!!