Gary brought home a kitchen banana hanger. He hasn’t had a banana for months, but he explained, “IT HAD A MONKEY ON IT,” so what can you do?
He also brought home bananas, so I embraced the banana hanger, if it gets him to eat bananas.
But then, what happens when the bananas are gone? If you are Gary, you hang a monster from the Mansions of Madness game on the banana hanger.
I had to counter. We have lots of monkeys aound here, since that was Gary’s nickname in his youth.
13 responses to “Banana Hanger”
Banana hangers generally baffle me (they seem harder to retrieve bananas from than a fruit bowl or the counter? and I’ve never had a banana *damaged* by resting on a flat surface so I don’t see an advantage?). Maybe it’s an aesthetic thing… but as a place to dangle random objects entertainingly, I see the appeal. 🙂
KC – Per Livestrong, it keeps them cool so they won’t overripen and it keeps them from being bruised: https://www.livestrong.com/article/442734-how-make-bananas-last-longer/
I’ve literally never had banana bruising from countertop storage or from correct fruit bowl storage (if, like an Esteemed Relative of mine, you put the bananas in the fruit bowl with the banana poking partly over the edge of the fruit bowl and then pile more fruit on top, then yes: banana bruising will happen on that edge; but that’s the natural result of an engineer trying to fit more fruit than should be fit into a fruit bowl without taking into consideration the material properties of the fruits…). I’ve also had cool countertops; if I’d had wood countertops or had something underneath the counter heating it, rather than the countertops being giant heat sinks, then a banana stand for greater air circulation might be worth considering? Good to know the theory, though? Is it fairly easy to pull a banana off without pulling the whole thing over/knocking the banana cluster off the hook?
KC – I think the banana hanger is constructed so gnats will have easy banana access.
A friend of mine once did nannying to pay for grad school. She was chewed out by the mother of the family one day for not having washed the bananas immediately upon getting them home from the grocery store (in theory, to reduce fruit flies), upon which she took an informal survey of friends to say “has *anyone* else ever heard of this?” to which the answer was “no” – which she found reassuring. I mean, it’s always possible to have just totally missed one of the Everyone Does This For Food Safety things, but in this case: not so much.
That said, maybe Angry Nanny-Hiring Mom was correct and we’d all have fewer fruit flies if we washed our bananas. We used to use a pop-up anti-fruit-fly tent for peaches and tomatoes in the summer, and *that* was very helpful, but also a bit ridiculous-looking. 🙂
KC – I was surprised to find that I had friends who washed their canned food cans when they got them home from the grocery. That seems to me as odd as washing your bananas.
Well, that stuff is sprayed with a lot of pesticides en route, so there’s that, but… no, I still wouldn’t do that. (unless, I guess, I had a big deal allergy to a specific pesticide?) That’s a serious next-level grocery store trip hassle right there!
KC – true, but if the pesticide is on the peel, you’d only be touching it, not eating it, so you’d have to have some serious dermatological allergy. It doesn’t seem like a likely threat.
Oh, I was thinking of the cans; with cans, anything that’s on the top of the can has the potential to get shoved into the can’s contents by the can opener (unless you’ve got one of those unroll-the-can-edge can openers). I know this because of dust from my parents’ pantry and how they did not always wipe off cans before opening them…
I’m pretty sure the banana thing is to remove that sticky stuff that’s sometimes at/near the top, which might or might not harbor fruit flies. Probably not a pesticide concern…
KC – I will tell everyone right now that I do not wash my cans. Of course, I am touching the germs of everyone who picked up that can before me in the supermarket. I hate how germaphobic I have become so far: still I will not wash a can. I will also eat dust if it is transmitted to the can while opening. So be it.
I do not wash cans either, in general, but if there is a layer of dust on top almost thick enough to be used as craft felt, I do *something* about that. Or hair; if there’s hair, that hair is outta there before the can gets opened.
The assumption of properly functioning immune systems is really built into a lot of our society, which can make things weird. But I’d imagine that germs would not live long on cans?
KC – I assume all hairs are mine. Hairs On a can would not bother me at all, oddly. I would eat hairs and dust.
Eh, extra collagen in the diet (plus fiber from lint), I guess? Not my jam, though. 🙂