Real Bananas

This week on "facebook" I have new-old friends, learned about new games to play on-line and have made numerous posts.  Many of these posts are silly comments to island life; laughing to roll with the punches!  All said, it's been an interesting week.  My proudest moment was harvesting bananas.  We have had bananas before; our little rental house had a tree; I picked those, learned a lot from that event.  (ie; leave them on the tree until they are ready, first lesson!  Second, when they are about ready, cut down the whole bunch and then hang them in your bodega until about yellow!  There are more lessons, but not as important as those :)  

Anyway, so I have this gorgeous bunch on one of my many trees!  Roberto informs me it is time to cut!  We do this  and I can hardly wait!  Within 24 hours, we have huge, ripe yellow bananas!  Colin,  Roberto and I gorge ourselves sick on them!  They are so good, we are besides ourselves!  I send Roberto home with a half dozen, "snicks" he says, instead of "snacks!"  (See why he makes me smile!)  The next day, it is time to start making something with all this fruit.  I start with my famous banana bread, bake 3 loaves, a dozen muffins and a custard cream banana pie  :)   I give a loaf to Roberto, Steve helps himself to muffins, (won't say how many; they are small), another loaf to my girlfriend who has just returned to the island and one loaf into the freezer.

This morning, waiting to see if we have the "scheduled" power outage; we do not, so the baking resumes.  Dozen muffins, one giant loaf and a cake.  Steve has already left for the day and Colin shows up for breakfast looking for banana bread.  As he's eating his first course of breakfast, (a mixing bowl size bowl of granola and yogurt), he is ready for his second course.  Just in time the muffins are ready, he chows down three with a giant glass of orange juice.  (The woman at my grocery/produce store marvels at what I buy these days; she does not believe me when I tell her of my son's appetite!  I should have her over for coffee one morning to witness this ritual!)

The clean-up is complete, breads are cooling and these freshly baked goods will go into the freezer for future dates to enjoy.  We have another bunch getting ready and several more trees that will produce fruit in the next month.  I love this!  Now if I could figure out why my tomatoes are not producing fruit,  I would be most pleased!

Cheers again, and here's to "real" life farm-town-stuff!  :)  (Love you Lisa!)

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