Banana harvest - One of the few sweet Bananas Panamanians grow for personal consumption ( Banana Chino ) Today Banana Pancakes & Smoothies

• 🙈 There are so many types of Bananas it's Amazing, This harvest was Banana Chino ( Chinese banana ). They are considerably smaller than bananas grown for export.

Only about 1/3 the size of regular export bananas but every bit as sweet and delicious.

They make a perfect snack food in case you don't feel like a full-sized banana or just eat 2-3 for the same volume.

I'm in no way a Banana expert and in doing research on bananas became overwhelmed with the information available about this popular fruit.

Today I'll stick with this type ( sweet ) and later do some blogs on others.

While gold panning in the mountains with some friends one night, we stopped at one guy's uncle's farm and picked a bunch of sweet bananas that were huge!, Maybe double the size of regular bananas 2 or 3 times as thick, a little longer and super tasty. Eating 1 of those was like a meal in itself.

• 🙉 An interesting thing I discovered is that Bananas are considered a berry! Just another great reason for being a Steemster, Learning more about life while sharing with others 🙌

Bananas are another plant that quite often has to be braced up because the fruit is so heavy the plant falls over Just like Papayas.

As was the case with this bunch, they were full size but still green, So the best way to help them ripen is cover and hang them up.
Keep in mind that when covered they ripen fast, this bunch would have lasted over a week if left hanging in the open and slowly ripened from the top down providing snacks for many days on end.
After day 3, I took them down and the whole bunch was ripe so it was cooking and blender time.
I forgot to take a picture of them green, so I hung this bunch loosely on the clothesline but before I could take a picture they fell and about 1/3 fell off. Below is what was left.

Now that's a lot of bananas to eat so Johana whipped up a large banana pancake the traditional way ( almost ).

She took 15 bananas mixed in 1 cup of uncooked rice with a bit of sugar and some salt with just enough water to make a nice consistency for a thick pancake and left sit for an hour.

Next was to get a clay cooking platter that typically would be placed over a fire, But today it went on our gas stove ( Thus the "almost" traditional comment.

Banana leaves are used in a multitude of ways deserving of a blog on their own. Today they are going to cover the clay plate to put the pancake mixture on as well as to cover the top, probably not so much to hold heat as to keep ashes/pests off the food while cooking over a fire outdoors.

Here is a little collage of the process, cooking takes 25-30 Minutes, the picture doesn't show well but it's about 1 inch thick.

• The pancake turned out sweet and moist, more like a dessert treat than a pancake and more that enough for the 4 of us eating it.

And with so many ripe bananas left over and not wanting to waste any, Into the blender they go to make smoothies and a dozen or so kept for snacks. Even our new puppy enjoys eating them.

• Next time maybe some banana bread will be in order? And when I get to Bocas del Toro I'll be sure to do a blog on the Chiquita Banana farm there. It's massive and they even have their own ships and containers for export!

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