The Banana Wall

A Tale From The Manly Side Of The Muffin Pan

-Alan Allen

After noticing a banana melting into my kitchen counter, a friend of mine once said, “You know you can freeze those things and use them for banana bread right?” That was six years ago. You know what I’ve done ever since? Saved every banana that has begun to show the slightest sign of decay. You know what I haven’t done since? Shown any inclination towards making banana bread. 

One of my problems is that I have issues with splitting up the banana bunches, so I’m obliged to buy no less than eight bananas at a time. I justify my purchase by reassuring myself that my potassium level is probably too low. Single digit low. But honestly, who can eat eight bananas a week? That’s why they invented pills. Bananas are like the lasagna of the fruit world. Eat a bowl of cereal…unbutton the pants.  Right now I’m looking at a freezer filled with no less then twenty pounds of those things.

The other problem is that I don’t bake. The whole affair is way too messy for me.

I have better things to do than spend an afternoon wiping up fallout from rogue clouds of flour and herding runaway sugar granules with a sponge. Cleaning should never take longer than cooking, and cooking should never take an entire day. If I want my kitchen looking like construction zone, I’ll cook in the dark.

Then there’s the measuring. Main courses… no problem. Add some of this, toss in some of that, chop, sprinkle, rub, cook. But baking requires precision with cups, spoons, lines and fractions, and since I live in a “High Altitude” recipe zone, I’m looking at an afternoon involving some form of trigonometry. No muffin is worth that, and if this is what Professor Funny Pants meant when he told me back in college that I’d find a use for it one day, I want my fifty-six thousand dollars back.

At friend’s houses, I’ll usually take the liberty of checking out their medicine cabinet. I don’t want to take anything; I just want to know what they’re taking. And if the opportunity affords, I’ll take a peek at the contents of their freezer as well. Again, don’t want to take anything, I’m just nosey. The lineup usually includes a tub of Ice cream, a few mysterious ethnic entrees, several pizzas, and the occasional oddly shaped zippered, gallon bag filled with some sort of liquid. If they were to offer me the same courtesy, they would see nothing more than a wall of brown, rotten fruit.

My banana backlog wouldn’t have been a problem if a hunter pal of mine hadn’t offered to give me half a carcass of elk meat a few weeks ago, but the “Playskool” sized refrigerator in my studio limits any type of Armageddon day hoarding so naturally, a sacrifice was in order.

Luckily for me, every three years or so, the “Girlfriend Wheel” lands on “Baker!” It’s a risk you take whenever you spin that thing, as you never know what you’re going to get.  It once landed midway between “Camping enthusiast” and “Soap opera junkie”. Nothing ruins the solitude of a forest quite like the theme from “Days of our lives” blasting out of the back end of a travel trailer.

The last time I won the “Baker!” category, she insisted that we clear my freezer of the accumulated fodder. I would finally learn the art of making a mess. I would also come to learn that a spatula is actually two very different items with the same name. How can anyone be expected to follow a discipline that has discrepancies like that? But as usual, I accommodated for love. Six hours later we were staring at no less than twenty loaves of sweet smelling, golden brown goodness and after the flour settled, we were ready to sample the rotten fruits of our labor.

We set the table, plated the affair and sat down to give our creation a test run. The color was perfect, the smell sublime, but after the first bite, I realized that something was definitely askew. Apparently I missed the part of the recipe that said, “Remove all moisture”.  Apparently she didn’t. I admit that I don’t have the most widely exposed palette, but I have eaten boots that were more succulent. All that was missing was a shoelace to floss the taste out of my mouth.

Although the episode was a complete failure, there was an upside. The fantastic thing about baking two dozen of anything, is that you can give them away to your former friends. “Morning Steve. Thought I’d give you something that I would never eat.” Since my crew knows that I don’t bake, the blame thankfully fell on the girl, and she went down in history as “That cute, hot little number who should have been a cobbler.”

Needless to say my banana saving days are over. If I ever find myself in another relationship in which my partner enjoys squandering a perfectly good afternoon, she will no doubt be disappointed at my lack of on-hand baking components. I have freed myself from the chains of obligatory fruit hording. My freezer is a much more masculine appliance now. But as I gaze at the neatly wrapped towers of manly, man manna, I am saddened by the fact that not even the mighty elk can endure an indefinite, cryogenic lifestyle. Freezer burn is a horrible end. So as summer approaches, I know that I must fill the propane tank, choose a spatula, and start grilling as soon as possible. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for a recipe for elk bread.