"bananas" news and stories

Should you prepare to buy your last bunch of bananas? According to a recent story in The New Yorker, the answer may be yes. The problem (which has also been deftly reported by writer Craig Canine, in Gourmet magazine and in an award-winning 2005 story for Smithsonian), is that growers have been relying on a single variety, the Cavendish and its genetic clones. What happens when you have a crop without genetic diversity? A disease, such as fungus Tropical Race Four, which is now running rampant, can take down an entire fruit. It wouldn't be the first time.

The Cavendish became popular with good reason: "They are the only variety that provides farmers with a high yield of palatable fruit that can endure overseas trips without ripening too quickly or bruising too easily," says New Yorker writer Mike Peed. Canine, who visited a Belgian lab that houses the world's largest collection of banana varieties, tasted some of the varieties that may one day replace the Cavendish, including the Yangambi Km5, which just so happens to be hundreds of years old. "When I tasted it, I imagined I was tasting the future," Canine wrote.

So will we be eating the Yangambi 5 on our Corn Flakes in a few years?

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Try dropping this fun fact the next time that you're trying to get your kids to eat their lima beans: "Hey, did you know lima beans are radioactive?"

Depending on whether you've got a daredevil superhero-in-the-making at the dinner table or an atomic age Chicken Little ("The A-bombs are falling! The A-bombs are falling!") will probably determine just how willing you are to let them in on another secret: there are a number of foods that are radioactive.

Potatoes...carrots...hamburger...and that favorite breakfast staple: bananas. (Beer and brazil nuts are on the list as well, but presumably you aren't serving these up to your kids before school.)

As Katharine Shilcutt, writer for the Edible Science blog at the Houston Press, points out, it's the relatively high level of potassium in these foods, coupled with a little radium, that make them naturally prone to send any nearby Geiger counter sputtering.

Dream of seeing your artwork on every Chiquita Banana in the grocery store?

The thought probably never crossed your mind until right now. Well, timing is everything: Chiquita Banana is holding a Sticker Design Contest to revamp its look, Unbeige reported.

The contest runs through July 18 and would-be sticker designers can upload their art to the Web. Contest rules stipulate that entries should not have any "Inclusion or reference to Miss Chiquita" nor can they have any writing or text.

Also be sure to avoid material Chiquita could deem "inappropriate, indecent, obscene, hateful, tortuous, defamatory, slanderous or libelous."

Great things often come in bunches, and bananas are no exception.

Over the weekend, I ate the best pancakes of my life. I headed to CT with friends, and we had pancakes BOTH mornings. Sunday morning, I tasted the most delicious blueberry pancakes that you can imagine -- the taste and fluffiness were beyond what I thought a pancake could achieve. So I was already on a pancake high when I returned to the internet Sunday night to find TWO WHOLE blog posts on fruit pancakes. It made me even more excited to start experimenting with these types of recipes at home. Here are some from around the web that look particularly tasty:

1. Apple Pancakes from Smitten Kitchen

2. How to add fruit to pancakes post from Baking Bites

3. Whole-wheat pumpkin pancakes from Pinch My Salt (not a fruit, but so mouth-watering!)

4. Pineapple orange pancakes from All Recipes

5. Oven pear pancake from Real Simple

6. Vegan blueberry pancakes from Epicurious

7. Oatmeal raspberry pancakes with berry coulis from My Recipes

8. Spiced banana pancakes from Post Punk Kitchen