58 Pounds of Bananas

You can guess which one of us went to Walmart this morning! Hint: It wasn’t me!

I made a grocery order from Walmart Friday and when I looked at the price of bananas, I said “It looks like bananas are 34 cents a pound at Walmart!” I haven’t seen them that price in a couple of years but I don’t watch grocery ads. This morning Vince said “There shouldn’t be many people at Walmart early on a Sunday morning” so he went to get bananas. We didn’t talk about how many pounds he should get so when he told me he bought 58 pounds of bananas and kept bringing bag after bag inside, I about had a stroke. Our breakfast room floor was covered with bags of bananas. I was too shocked to even think to take a picture!

He did good though because it took all but one bag of bananas for two loads in the freeze dryer.

Our freeze dryer holds four trays. I got one load going in the freeze dryer.

I sliced up enough to fill four more trays and stuck those in the freezer. That will be the next load in the freeze dryer. I only have 8 trays. I could buy more but I don’t need more.

The one bag that was left, I peeled and sliced those, vacuum sealed them three bananas to a bag. Rita loves bananas and I add them to her food. Three bananas is a good amount to add to her food (I make in batches that last about four weeks so that would mean less than one banana per week for her) and I can always use those bananas for banana nut bread for us.

Even the peelings didn’t go to waste. I think I had nine bags of peelings that I stuck in the freezer.

In Texas I would chop up banana peelings and throw them around my garden plants, then scrape the dirt over them. I’ve recently read that soaking the peels in water and pouring the water is effective so I’ve been doing that. Now I can just grab a bag of frozen peelings, toss them in a five gallon bucket, add water and let them soak for a few days, pour the water around the plants and throw the nasty banana peelings around my hydrangeas.

Once the bananas in the freeze dryer are done, I’ll vacuum seal them in jars. For snacks for the car, I put them in half pint jelly jars. I always have a few freeze dried snacks for road trips – strawberries, bananas, apples, figs. For snacks we’ll eat at home, I put them in pint jars. I can re vacuum and seal those jars after we open them and that will keep them dry and crunchy. The freeze dried bananas are my favorite for cereal. Freeze dried strawberries get slimy, in my opinion, quickly in milk but bananas stay crunchy til the cereal is all consumed.

Vince just came upstairs and said “You’re done already?” Yes, several hours later, I’m done. He said “They’ll probably be on sale all week!” NO! I think we have enough til we find them on sale next time.