Bananagram Three

Please note: this entry is part of a series and likely won't make much sense unless you've read the opening entry, Imperfect Omnivore.

Today I experienced fresh banana. True, I suppose I also "ate" a fresh banana, but as a word-choice it falls short. I perceived the banana (and I'll admit to finding it rather grotesque), smelled its unmistakable, nauseating aroma, felt both the leather of its hide and the peculiar fiber of its flesh. Noises of all kinds abounded. And then there was, of course, the taste.

Describing tastes is a process best accomplish by listing variably likely combinations of other flavors. The banana stands as a primary flavor; rather like vanilla or ginger, it's difficult to imagine a blend of ingredients from which banana-flavor could find genesis. It's sweet, I'll grant, with a sort of savory chewiness to it. But the sugar is cloying and the texture absurd; I'm not yet totally convinced that banana is a food.

And yet I did eat the thing -- and in that sense, the experiment was a success. Or, depending on perspective, it was distressingly close to, but not quite, an abject failure. Yes, I indeed consumed one (1) entire peeled banana. For this I am proud. I also came perilously close to vomiting on several occasions. Curiously, this had nothing to do with physical sensations of illness -- there was no systemic reaction to the ingestion of banana such as I could define. Rather, I felt a direct, powerful urge to retch at the thought of taking another bite of the stupid fruit. In this regard banana knows no peer in the slim list of foods I wont have anything to do with.

"Enjoyed" is certainly not the verb I applied to that banana. I have, clearly, quite a ways to go.

Comments

[c-man]

Well, I admire your tenacity.

I love bananas, but they are even gross to me, when the exact right stage of ripeness is not observed. The sickly-sweet, overripe banana is an abomination. For your future tests, if any, I would recommend going no further than the spots. Underripe ones are astringent and make me pucker, but it doesn't gross me out like the threatening decay of overripe ones.

[little light]

Have you tried fried plantains, hon? I'm not super-overfond of bananas my ownself (it's not that hard to be not eating them, you know, for medical reasons) but there are times when fried plantains are exactly what the doctor ordered. Especially in banana <i>sauce</i>, the red spicy-sweet stuff.

[Stove]

Ooooh, good one. I'll try that next. It does, however, bring up an interesting question: is a banana a kind of plantain or a plantain a kind of banana? Too the library!

[Stove]

Well, that was easy:

From the Oxford Companion to Food, ed. Alan Davidson. Both entries are by the author:

Under "Banana"
"There are... both eating bananas and cooking bananas, usually called PLANTAINS. (sic) The latter... are not a separate species."

Under "Plantain (Fruit)"
"The name given to varieties of the BANANA (sic) which are only suitable for cooking... Most varieties are longer and thicker than typical eating bananas, often rathe rangular in cross-section... All kinds are rigid and starchy, and only faintly sweet' they would be no more pleasant to eat raw than a potato."

There we go. Fried plantains it is.