Vegan MoFo 2013: Fruity Friday's: The Banana and 5 ways to eat it.

I totally spazzed on yesterday's post. It was written and edited, just needed pictures and somehow it flew out of my mind and didn't come back until this morning after I had to get ready to go to work. I will be posting it at some point, but right now it's banana time.

Bananas are a huge staple for me. I will eat on average about 10 a day, but my record as of right now is 27. They are delicious, cheap and a great source of not only calories but also phytonutrients. Win-win-win.

With mostly following the principles behind the 80-10-10 "diet", eating a high carbohydrate diet and high fruit diet is where it's at in this household. Since bananas are available year round, they become something that you learn to love... and find many many ways of eating.

Since we had 80 lbs of them ripe at the same time (oops) the past few days have been filled with bananas, having close to 20 a day for me and much more for my partner. We both have our favorite ways to eat them, but certainly agree on the simple smoothie.  Simply bananas blended with water, or if we want to get fancy about it, some greens or berries. My combo of choice would have to be 6-8 bananas, 2 large handfuls of baby spinach and a rounded cup of frozen strawberries. That would qualify as Option 1.

Our 80lbs are almost half gone 2 days later.

Option 2 I would say whole, but is that cheating? I mean who doesn't love the convenience of the simplicity of eat a banana out of the peel. Nature provided it with it's own packaging, totally compostable and no waste. Plus it's easily transportable. I remember in University my lunch would just consist of a hand of bananas that I could easily have in my backpack, on top pf my books all safe from bruising.

Now this next one is actually my favorite way to eat bananas, just freeze them peeled and in chunks and blend away in the food processor for some amazing banana ice cream. I have a full post dedicated to it here.



I used to make banana pudding all the time, it's a quick high cal meal that's easy to eat and can be made ahead of time. It's basically just mashed bananas cinnamon and either dates or raisins, although you can easily use any kind of dried fruit.

Last but not least, banana mylk. I love the versatility of this, since it was easily replace milks in any of its non-cooked uses, like in cereal. Just blend the bananas with a generous quantity of filtered water as needed. It doesn't keep and has to be made to order, but the freshness is worth the extra minutes it takes to prepare. You can make it as thick or runny as you want and adjust it to everyones preferences easily.