Manila Bananas

Living in the tropics you get used to seeing banana trees around. We have one such tree in our back yard right next to the window, and the kids have spent months watching its fruit ripen. “Oooohhh…bananas!” they would point out nearly every day. They took a while to grow and the wait seemed long but finally they were ready.

The most unique aspect of this banana is how it looks. They’re fat and yellow with little brown scattered freckles. They plump up and ripen so much so that their skin splits down one side and begs to be eaten. I almost cut them up but eating it pure and unchanged from the way nature made them seemed preferable. Cutting it up would change the texture and therefore the experience.

Remember the episode on M*A*S*H when Hawkeye had corn on the cob sent in from the states. He talked about it so much that he had the camp all worked up. By the time it arrived they were reminiscing about lazy summer days and you could almost taste the sweet corn. You could hear its crunch when you bit into it and taste the butter as it dripped off your fingers and you pulled little corn kernels from your teeth. So when Private Igor Straminsky, the mess tent assistant, turned that beautiful corn on the cob into creamed corn, you groaned along with everyone else in disappointment. They just couldn’t leave well enough alone!

Taking food and twisting it into a completely other dish is delightful sometimes and at other times it’s downright criminal. For now I’ll leave the little cute sweet bananas alone and eat it in its natural state. The kids like it better this way too. It’s nature’s healthy snack. They taste sweet but with a little tang, lemony almost. I’ll eat them like this for a while because I’m still new to the Island and filled with banana wonder.

Sheila Cason, MD