"banana" news and stories

Happy Banana Lover's Day!

American's best-selling fruit, bananas are perennial fruits, harvested year-round -- which accounts for their international popularity. Most successfully grown in humid, tropical climates, bananas are plucked when they're green, as a rare variety of fruits that ripens best off the bush. Although the regular Cavendish banana (pictured here) is the one you're most likely to encounter at your grocery store, other exotic varieties range from the Blue Java banana, reputedly to taste like ice cream, to a strawberry-scented Orinoco banana, to the plantain, or the "cooking banana" used prominently in Latin American cuisine.

Banana lovers are surely lusting after the glorious edible display pictured above, in which Flickr photographer transformed the banana's outer casing into a vessel for a delicious chocolate-y treat. How do you best enjoy your bananas? Share your favorite banana concoctions in the comments!

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Happy National Banana Cream Pie Day!

The classic diner dessert may vary in terms of additives -- chocolate shavings, graham cracker crust versus pastry dough, cinnamon, coffee or other updated nuances -- but in its traditional form, involves three primary simplistic ingredients that combine into an elegant trifecta: crust, banana filling and a light meringue topping. Wrote one L.A. Times reporter, "Pie lovers here debate the merits of the Apple Pan in West Los Angeles versus the Pie 'n Burger in Pasadena with the same vigor and pertinacity brought to bear on the subject of Obama versus Clinton on the Sunday-morning talk shows."

How do you enjoy your pie -- classic or creatively updated? Link to your favorite tried-and-true banana cream pie recipes in the comments!

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Happy National Banana Bread Day!

One of the more simple of edible comforts, banana bread is typically concocted with ease, with pantry ingredients available on hand. Whipped together for breakfast or as an afternoon snack, the best banana breads combine the creamy texture of the fruit, with a sweet, underlying banana flavor.

Thought to have been created by 18th century American cooks, today's banana bread may stick to tradition, but also strays away from it, using a variety of regional additions, from extra banana, to chocolate, nuts, ginger and more. If you're looking for a flavorful new bent, try Martha Stewart's banana bread pudding, or our salty-sweet peanut butter and milk chocolate chip banana bread -- or link to your favorite banana bread recipes in the comments.



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When Mobile city councilman Fred Richardson last year revealed he'd spent $9,000 of taxpayer's money on a 12-foot-tall mechanical banana moon pie, there were some skeptics. But Harriet Sharer of the Mobile Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau says the crowd at the city's first "MoonPie Over Mobile" celebration silenced all doubters.

"Some people thought people would make fun of us," Sharer recalls. "But we had 15,000 people show up and it's going to grow exponentially."

Mobile recently upped its commitment to the dessert, making the MoonPie hoist the Southeast's preeminent New Year's Eve celebration and dedicating an additional $25,000 to marketing the event. This year's festivities include live music, a gala ball and the slow rise of the snack.

"Everyone we knew does drops," Sharer says, explaining why Mobile's MoonPie defies New Year's Eve gravity. "Since the moon does rise, we decided to rise it up over the city."

Like Hollywood, the food world has plenty of storied marriages, some of which hold up better than others. Peanut butter and chocolate? Like Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn. Chocolate and garlic? More like Pam and Tommy Lee.

And pulled pork and mango? Like Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward: love at first sight to last the ages. And this photo, taken by Kevin at Closet Cooking, helps to explain why. These jerked pulled-pork wraps with mango and banana relish look like lusty testaments to this savory-sweet match made in heaven. As scenes from a marriage go, this is an indisputably happy one.

[Via Closet Cooking]