HOWTO turn a banana into a no-spoon baby-meal
Here's an awesome Parenthack: mash a banana in the peel, rip off one end and squirt it into your kid's gob like icing -- a no-spoon meal!
Throw a whole banana into your diaper bag before heading out the door. When it's time to eat, mash up the banana before peeling it - just squishing it a bit with your fingers does the trick. Then, peel open a small hole at the end (not the end with the longer stem). Squeeze the mashed banana into the baby's mouth like you're icing a cake. Voila - no spoon necessary, and almost no mess.How to turn a whole banana into a no-mess baby meal (no spoon required)
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Bananas - so wonderful a fruit :)
You can also use vodka to turn them into a kind of fruity jelly (or jell-o if you prefer). For those moments where you'd like a more "natural" jelly shot :P
You can also combine this tip with #1's comment, for a quick "parenthack" that knocks Junior out for the night, whee!
--DaveX
Monkeys usually open bananas at at the opposite end to the end that humans usually use. It's easier to pop the end open rather than trying to rip and zip and popping the end is easier even if the banana is riper (and therefor sweeter). Try it: you can get to that bitter little pip at the end and throw it away before snarfing down the fruit.
Om nom nom.
Please tell me you're going to dress up Poe as a zombie for Hallowe'en and that her first word is going to be: "Braaaains!"
Banana also makes the simplest milkshake/ice cream in the world. Slice up ripe bananas, freeze - the easiest way is in plastic trays, banana tends to cling to both greaseproof and foil which adds some unwanted texture to anything you make with them.
When you want ice cream, take a quantity of frozen banana and throw it into the liquidiser/blender with a spoonful of whatever takes your fancy - juice, milk, cream - and whizz. Even if you only add a little milk, the resulting whipped ice cream is very creamy and sweet, and people will have a hard time believing that you haven't added sugar and cream.
I cannot imagine why the fast food restaurants don't use real bananas rather than that horrible ersatz flavouring. Betty's Tea Rooms in Yorkshire use forzen banana for their banana milkshake, and it's the only commercial place I ever discovered that does.
To make a milk shake, add milk to the ice crem - freezing develops the flavour in some magical way.
To make a Christmas treat, take about three frozen bananas in slices, two or three ice cubes, a quantity of double cream and advocaat to taste - a festive breakfast in a glass and it tastes quite wonderful. Add a dollop of nice vanilla ice cream on top....
For keeping your child sedate, combine the baby meal and vodka ideas.
Thats how you eat pakistani mangoes. yum!!
Bananas make for a mess in the pants that equal few else in children.
I quite feeding my child bananas when she was still diapers/potty training because of this.
Magical Fruit indeed.
you just made me very hungry, Fee.
Mmmmmmmmm... nature's Gogurt...
My grandfather, born in 1900 and being from the south, recommended bourbon and honey.
I recommend using organic bananas. Otherwise the peel retains some nasty pesticide residue that is not good for baby.
HOWTO turn a banana into a no-spoon baby-meal, Part 2:
Give child banana.
Child eats banana.
yes, but if the the skin bursts... epic fail. ;) had that once in a while.
also a good tip: don't wear new (and especially not black) clothes feeding your kid bananas. instead i came to the conclusion, that it would be best to dress up like this:
http://www.cedmagic.com/featured/007/dn-2-4338-dr-no.html
(thank you ken adam!)
i also use full-body-amor for my kid:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/10121520
"...all you do is rinse"
some magical facts about bananas:
1) chimps open them up at what we think of as the bottom
2) the banana has three sections inside -- can cleanly and nicely be split into three pieces which makes it easy to cut up into little pieces for little ones
#3: The Yogenfrüz chain here in Canada uses frozen fruit (including banana). Their product is frozen yoghurt, and part of their "thing" is that they take blocks of frozen yoghurt (literally, as in take yoghurt, put in freezer, done), scoop fulls of frozen fruits of your choice, dump them in a blender/processor thing, and pump out your freshly mixed up frozen yoghurt.
Totally fabulous.
but without fully exposing the banana flesh by peeling, how can you verify there are no excessive black spots or, horrors, burrowing bugs? Just kidding,I know full well the little perishers hoover up cigarette butts off bus station floors every chance they get.
As you get older you'll notice the younger people think they've 'discovered' everything. From French Kissing and "life isn't fair", to now, apparently, feeding a child a banana! An "awesome Parenthack" indeed! Hey, how about this idea for repurposing? After the snack wipe your kid's gob on her shirt!
Jimbuck, not only chimps, but a lot of the rest of the world opens the banana at the "other" end.
In fact, you can see this in every cartoon and comic where someone slips on a banana peel -- the stem is sticking straight up, implying that the banana was opened at the other, "bottom" end. That's the iconic discarded banana peel. This implies that at some point, that must have been the accepted way to open a banana in the U.S. as well.
Also, be aware that bananas are naturally constipating, so, not so good if your baby/kid is having trouble pooping.
#15
It may also imply that the cartoonists were weird reverse-banana immigants... just saying.
Bart Diet for diarrhea: bananas, applesauce, rice, toast
Caroline - excellent point. I never thought of that discarded banana peel picture's implications! This requires a full blown study, for certain.
Of course bananas are also one of the fruits that we humans have messed with a little to much. True real bananas should have seeds, which we have breed out over time. Not a big deal in itself, but now you have a sterile fruit. It's not like you can plant a banana and have a tree grow. I heard they were having problems in South America a couple of years ago with a fungus (maybe bacteria) affecting the trees. And since most of the trees where genetically identical it didn't help...
It'll be nice when I can grow fruit in vitro in my kitchen...
Please consider that banana peels are usually loaded with herbicides, before you shove them into your baby's mouth! I wash my hands after eating a banana.
Unless you yourself enjoys a little mashed banana in the middle of the day, I suggest bringing the spoon along. Otherwise this would be quite wasteful when you end up throwing out 80% of the sloppy banana because no one wants to eat it.
Two things I forgot to mention above. Firstly, banana stains, badly. If allowed to congeal on baby clothes or muslins, it turns brown and then black and proves impossible to remove - so wipe up anything spat out.
Secondly if the baby eats whole banana including the stringy bits, it looks like a worm infestation once it has been through the digestive system. I remember my sister rushing her first-born to the doctor convinced he had some sort of weird parasite, only to find out it was simply banana strings in the nappy.
Hmmm, an interesting idea. The banana would have to be pretty ripe to mush up to squeezable consistency though, and the mess potential is huge.
We favoured the Baby Led Weaning route and gave our son bananas whole, with a little skin attached for grip. No spoon required and you can't get easier than that!
Foetusnail @11
Was your grandfather's recommendation to insert bourbon & honey directly into the kid, or to introduce bourbon & honey into a banana prior to the banana going into the kid?
I propose that in the interests of scientific child-rearing, it would be unsound to try either technique directly on a kid, without first rigorously comparing the two techniques using dad as a test subject.
bcsizemo @ 24: You're thinking of Panama disease, which effectively wiped out the Gros Michel banana cultivar a few decades ago. There's a new strain affecting the cultivar that replaced the (supposedly superior) Gros Michel, which Wikipedia tells me is a Vietnamese Cavendish.
If you don't know exactly where your produce comes from, I think it's important to stress that you should ALWAYS wash your fruit and vegetables THOROUGHLY, ESPECIALLY where young ones, who have less-hardy immune systems, are concerned.
People are routinely sickened (sometimes to the point of requiring hospitalization) by E Coli that can reside on the skin of fruit and vegetables. I used to be one of those who mistakenly believed that, as a vegetarian, I was safe from E Coli.
It's just not one of those bacteria you want to expose you kid to "to build up his immune system."
Once again Bananas are proof of Intelligent Design
Praise the lord and pass the wet-wipes.
Trick also works with Peaches/Nectarines. Just slowly knead the fruit with your fingertips to mush up the fruit (without ripping the skin) until you have a decent amount of mush, then pinch out a small hole in the skin and squeeze.
If you really want to baffle somebody... take a needle and insert it into the seam of a banana, now move the needle cleanly from one side to the other... repeat plenty of times down the banana... ensure no needle is left in the banana...
when they open the "doctored" banana, it will neatly fall into slices leaving them bemused...
I noticed that apes always peel their bananas from the non-stem end.
Bananas send out runners. I've got banana trees in my yard here in Florida, if it wasn't for teh tasty fruit I'd call them weeds.
Be advised that bananas contain a large dose of potassium and can induce cardiac arrhythmia in high doses. It's a common trick in paramedic classes to hook up the EKG and have somebody eat two or three bananas while watching for the onset of "Tombstone" T-waves. A whole banana given to a child is a significantly higher dose proportional to body weight than three bananas to an adult.
This reminded me of something I read about as a child in a wonderful old treasury published by Readers Digest (apparently, this was before Readers Digest became National Review Jr.).
I don't remember the book title, exactly, but it was a big, folio-size hardbound edition with beautiful illustrations and interesting puzzles, articles, biographical profiles and short stories. I'm guessing the publication date would have been mid-'60s to early '70s. I re-read it again and again.
One article described a kind of bar bet: You say, "I can slice a banana within its skin"--i.e., without peeling it. Your mark says something like, "Ah, g'wan witcha. Yer on, pal!"
Then you take a needle and thread and make a series of chained stitches through the banana. (There was a nice diagram showing the positions where the needle enters and exits--it was an interlocking hexagonal pattern, if I recall correctly.)
Then, you pull the thread tight, unstitch the banana and peel it. The slices of fruit fall out, and you win your bet.
(I can't remember now whether you were supposed to make your victim wait while you completed the sewing project, or if the instructions were for creating a pre-prepared banana, in which case I guess you'd have to initiate the challenge by saying, "I've cleverly sliced this banana within its skin--believe it or not!")
I never actually tried it, but now I'd kind of like to.
I can't believe you said "Parenthack"
*groans*
this works equally well with small rodents.
I've used exactly this method to prepare mashed banana for culturing fruitflies.
IsaacB2 @13, if the child isn't eating chunk-style food yet, or doesn't have the coordination to feed herself, that's not going to work.
Benediktus, Fee: Soak the affected area in cool water for a day or so, drain, then hit the banana spots with generous doses of hydrogen peroxide while scrubbing them with a stiff brush. Rinse. Repeat. If the banana dissolves before the fabric does, you win.
Frankieboy @18: Why not? You think you're the first person to discover sarcasm.
Caroline, Jimbuck, it's also possible that artists drew them that way because the stem end is more distinctive. If you're good, it makes the banana peel more fun to draw. If you're not so good, it makes it likelier that your audience will recognize the object as a banana peel.
Anonymous @33: Avocados, too. It also works for loosening up the contents of a potato baked in its skin.
Anonymous @37, I'm under the impression that tombstone T-waves are a sign of serious trouble. I have on several occasions eaten three bananas at once (long story) without missing a beat.
UkuleleElvis @39:
I can't believe you haven't heard the term before.BondJamesBond @40:
True! I once saw a roadrunner do that with a mouse, except it swallowed it peel and all.I looked up the sliced banana trick.
Teresa @42
"I can't believe you haven't heard the term (parenthack) before."
Guess I'm not as geeky as most round here.
And now I know the term, I sure as hell would never use it.
What's the point? Babies are 'messy'. Let them be. That's part of the fun of eating for them. They get to explore, learn how to feed themselves, and feel independent in otherwise very dependent lives.
Made in DNA (father of 1 yr old boy)