Thrifty Thursday!

Behold...the banana! In my opinion, nature's perfect fruit. Perfectly portable for a nutritious snack. Loads of potassium, to prevent those pesky leg cramps! A low GI food...perfect for diabetics. And you know those boxes of 100-calorie snacks you can get at the grocery...those little packages of tiny cookies that are really just enough to make you mad, not satisfy a craving? Who needs those, when you've got a banana?! See those bananas up there? Each one of them is just about 100 calories. And you can take it wherever you go! Heck, I tote one to work with me on most days!

I bet you're trying to figure out where I'm going with this. First, bananas are pretty thrifty in and of themselves. You can buy them all day, every day for 50-something cents a pound, and lots of times even cheaper than that! Second, they're really versatile...there's lots you can do with a banana. You can just eat a banana plain for a snack. But there's not much better than a banana slathered in peanut butter. You can slice it on top of your cereal to help get in those 5-9 servings of fruits and veggies you need to stay healthy! Make banana pudding! Slice one and put it in a fruit salad! Take good Jell-O and ruin it by floating banans in it! But here's the best thing of all...wait until they go WAAAAAAAAAY ripe (like almost black), and make the best quick bread in the world...Banana Bread! I'm going to confess something right now that I'm not proud of. I used to throw away over-ripe bananas. You see, David (who is a pickier eater than me, though neither of us is picky at all), won't eat bananas. So I buy a bunch of bananas and always have 2 or 3 that I haven't eaten by the time they reach that point where they're really not fit to eat. And I used to throw them away. What was wrong with me? I don't know what caused it, but one day I had an ephiphany! Freeze the blasted things so you'll always have them ready for banana bread! DUH! So here you go...the thriftiest part of my Thrifty Thursday post:
Now, I'm always ready for banana bread! Or banana pancakes! The possibilities are endless! Since my ephiphany, I've even been known to purposely buy those "Bargain Bananas" at Kroger that are 30 cents a pound (they had some today, but I resisted temptation), because they're in that in-between stage...not good enough to eat plain, but not rotten, either. I buy 'em up, bring 'em home, give 'em a good mash, shove 'em in a bag, and freeze 'em! YUM!