Going Bananas

We love bananas.  We love BANANAS! WE LOVE BANANAS!  Our kids eat so many bananas, up to 10 pounds in a typical week, that we sometimes believe they truly are monkeys.  When we're not checking their pants to see if we need to cut tail-holes, sometimes we get more bananas of a certain ripeness than we can finish before they get yucky.  I personally like them a good bit greener than most of the rest of the household, so when I see big bunches of yellow ones, I start to think about banana bread and banana cake and all.

Today, on the other hand, we were also blessed with more apples than we're going to finish, so we pulled out the good old food dehydrator.  It's been a while since we used it (probably before the move in '06) so I took a look on the internet for some helpful hints.  We haven't had good luck with dried bananas, they are just too sticky and grayish for anyone to enjoy, but apples have turned out well in the past.  This time I hoped to find a "dip" that would help the bananas look appetizing without adding too much extra "stuff". 


After reading a few recipes/blogs/etc. I ended up with a dilute solution of lemon juice and Tang (out of OJ and not going to the store at that point)  We dipped 'em and dried 'em, and the house smelled LOVELY all day long.  One set of bananas got too dark (Dolly still ate them) and the others were still gummy, but not grayish.  They sure tasted citrusy, though.  A qualified success!  The apples were very tasty all around, but only Dolly and I would eat them.

Blogspot is refusing to upload my pictures, which was the entire point to this post, and is very frustrating.  There are some really cute pix of Dolly doing the fruit dip, but you are spared the ones of me in my "lazy Saturday" hair and red face doing the same thing.  Insert imagination here!