Bananic Attack

As an husband and father, a good 40% of my time is spent throwing away fruit I just paid for, and bananas are the worst offender. Bananas are the avocados of the food world. They’re only ripe and fit for eating for 11 minutes and that’s usually longer than it takes you to get them home from the store. At minute 12, they’re soft. At minute 13, they’re brown. At minute 14, they’re a non-Newtonian liquid with properties similar to human plasma and dark matter. At minute 15 they briefly revert to a solid, but they’re 100% poison. After 16 minutes, it isn’t safe to be in the house with them. Do not even stare at them for too long as you may develop Bananaeye, so named for Professor James Bananaeye, the first scientist to identify and subsequently be molecularly destabilized by the condition.

HEY! Go check out the shirts and prints in my store! When you buy stuff there, I get to keep some of the money! Money I can then use to buy bananas to throw away!

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  1. Never happens to me. You must do something wrong: do you place them in the fridge? if so, don’t. Do you keep them with tomatoes or lemons? if so, don’t.
    Also know there is a life-hack to keep them fresh longer: place plastic foil on the end (where all bananas are joined together), this will make the bananas think they’re still on a tree.

    • And paint your threshold with calves blood, and only store bananas inside a five pointed star, and draw a circle of salt around all your bananas and…

    • Also: Never buy ripe bananas. If they’re yellow in the store, it’s already too late. Get the greenest ones you can find and you might stand a chance of eating them before they turn sentient.

    • Also separate them as soon as you get them home. Works really well to slow down ripening.

      Doesn’t stop fruit flies, though. Fuck fruit flies.

  2. Ah, the joys of tropical living. Takes 2 minutes to get them from the plant/tree into the house. Sadly that does mean less time for giant, freaking spiders to jump off.

  3. You’re wrong. Strawberries are the worst. No matter how carefully I inspect them at the grocery store or farmer’s market, when I get them home they’re covered in mold by the very next day.

    • Nope, RASPBERRIES. They’re my favorite, but I swear they’re moldy by the time I get home from the store.

  4. Let’s not blame the poor bananas. If you go to where bananas grow and can naturally go ripe, they are a delicious, surprisingly complex taste that stays ripe and firm for many, many days. But we, like morons, cut them off the tree, the only source of ripping hormones, so they’ll stay in their green state forever. Then just before selling them, we spray them with carbon monoxide, that’s right, the shit that comes our of your car’s exhaust pipe, to force them into a fake ripening sick which makes them into the bland, wooden things that choke down to appease our health god Dr. Oz.

  5. When I buy bananas they take about a week to go from green to brown. It’s usually a few days before I can even eat them, I had no idea this was something special.

  6. When bananas get ripe at our house we:
    – eat them with oatmeal or eat them with chocolate ice cream – the texture of soft banana works fine here
    – cut in slices throw in the freezer on a cookie sheet, then later put in a zip lock bag – great for smoothies
    – If the banana is really dark, throw it as is in the freezer, use to make banana bread some time in the future.

    My partner actually hates bananas and the only way he will eat them is in baked goods.

  7. Hey Joel I’m guessing you don’t eat brown bananas but you’re really missing out. Yellow bananas are okay, but when they have a ton of brown spots and the stem is just a twig is when they’re at their sweetest. I don’t even buy bananas that have any green on them, because it’ll be days before they’re any good.

    • To each his own, but this is one of the grossest things I can imagine. I judge food based on texture just as much as taste, and squishy/slimy is not something I’m a fan of. I actually prefer to eat slightly green bananas because they’re more firm.

  8. Alright, here’s the plan: you get the bananas green, but instead of waiting a few days for that 11 minute window, you force the ripening. You get a paper bag and an apple. Chant the words (they can’t be contained in written form, you must find one who knows them) while placing the bananas in the bag with the apple. Wait. There will be smoke, there will be fire, and there will be otherworldly cries. Continue waiting. Once the shaking subsides, check the bag. If the apple is still there: RUN. If the apple has been consumed by the bananas, they’ll be full, ripe, and unable to get away (like snakes, they get lethargic while digesting)

  9. This is so weird, it seems you’re talking about another fruit than banana’s I know. Or another planet ? I’ve bougth banana’s every week for the last 7 years and I have absolument NO idea what you are talking about (banana’s stay good to eat for days as far as I know) . And it is not as if I lived in a “good banana’s country”, I live in Belgium, like thousand of miles from any banana’s trees. Very weird.

    • If you live in Belgium, it’s a pretty safe bet that whatever fruit I get in Texas is subject to a vastly different set of circumstances and environmental factors than the ones you get.

    • A good pear is probably my favorite fruit and yes, it is nearly impossible to eat them when they’re perfect and sweet and soft and juicy. I get scared of waiting too long and I almost always end up eating them when they’re barely softer than an apple and somewhat bitter. If I ever do get one when it’s perfect, I consider it a cosmic blessing, but not something you can actually plan for.

  10. Come on, just put the yellow bananas into your hyperbaric chamber on The Bus….you know: the one they kept Skye alive after she was shot by Quinn. You’ll get a good extra twenty minutes to eat them before they turn to the dark side. Come to think of it, I really on S.H.I.E.L.D for MOST of my produce needs….

  11. This problem is completely foreign to me. I bought some yellow bananas over a week ago, and they’re still perfectly fresh. I’m eating one right now. Are ‘bananas’ the same kind of fruit over there? Is this one of those deals where the word means something different to Americans?

  12. I have the opposite problem. Before lil’ bit I don’t think I’d ever eaten a “ripe” banana. Now, with a 1.5 year old child in the house I have reached the point where I can purchase bananas ANY time. No matter what, whenever I am in any kind of store that sells bananas I buy them. Even with that being the case, I have to FIGHT to get one of them before they are gone! I know, you might say, “But you’d be fighting a baby!” but you don’t know! That baby eats a LOT of bananas which has helped him grow insane super hero-type muscles! (Short story, I’m scared of being beaten up by a banana-crazed baby.)

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