Diaper a Banana? Baby Your Bananas to Make Them Stay Fresh Longer

Sounds crazy right?  Diaper a banana?  Here's the thing, when I buy bananas I look for the greenest, least ripe ones on display, but buy yellow ones if that's all the store has on offer. What happens when the bananas sit in the kitchen?  They get ripe and must be eaten within at the most three days.  After three days I have to make Banana Cake/Bread.  I know, not a hardship to make and eat cake, LOL.  However, it's eating one or two bananas each day that is the problem.

Why did I diaper my banana stem?  I was standing at the counter waiting for the kettle to boil. The ugly end of the bunch of bananas is, well, it's ugly and gnarly, all ripped and darkening and it's in my line of sight.  At that moment of not wanting to see the ugly end and having turned the bunch around more than once to hide the stem end, bruises get more pronounced and numerous from all the shifting of the bunch in the bowl, I ripped a small piece of paper towel off the roll and wrapped it around the ugly end- essentially, diapering the banana end.  And then I laughed at the sight of it, but left the paper wrapped around the stem.  Weird, right?

You know what happened next?  Over the next few days the bananas continued to ripen and then all of a sudden, they stopped.  They didn't get soft, they didn't get black, there are very few spots and this is good.  Not having to eat the bananas in two days is good.  Not having to make cake is good (sometimes.)  The bananas were yellow when I bought them and here is a photo of the banana that is on Day Ten after coming home.

Since I had this accidental discovery I searched the web and found where people have been wrapping the ugly stem end with foil, newspaper, or plastic wrap in an effort to slow down the ripening.  The results are varied.  Some suggestions were to wrap the whole banana and to separate the bunch.  That sounds like a lot of work.  A popular suggestion is to refrigerate the bananas.  The peel will turn black, but are supposed to be fine to eat.

I think I'll stick with my little paper towel diaper or maybe go crafty with a decked out cardboard tube from empty rolls of paper.  Hold the talcum powder and rash creme.