Going Bananas

It\’s often said, \”When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.\” But what do you do when life hands you bananas?

We recently received several cases of bananas from a generous benefactor–and then we received still another case from ANOTHER generous benefactor! We all like bananas, but there\’s only so many you can eat before they start to get mushy…so, what to do? Fortunately our head cook, Sr. Marie Augustine, is an expert on bananas. Whenever we receive large quantities of bananas, we dry them! It\’s easy to do, healthier than banana bread or muffins, and the sisters love them. 

First, of course, you peel the bananas!

Then you slice them, first across the width, then in half down the middle of the banana, so you have four pieces, as you can see here!

Be sure to place the bananas seed side up–they get very sticky on the bottom otherwise. We dry our bananas on baking sheets on top of the stove. It usually takes a few days. You can probably do it faster with a drying machine but we prefer this method because we can do a lot of bananas at once. 

Dried bananas are naturally sweet, and make a great addition to breakfast! When we started drying bananas, we learned that not only our African sisters (like Sr. Marie Augustine, who is from Tanzania), but also our Vietnamese sisters were familiar with dried bananas and liked them. We are fortunate to have a wide mixture of cultures and backgrounds in our community, and we welcome any more that would like to join us! In the meantime, we\’re enjoying our bananas–and we\’re so grateful to ALL our benefactors who make our life possible!