Yonanananabooboo Pineapple Banana Papaya Sorbet

Oh yea. I really needed to take a minute to at least draft this post as this was so outstanding. This was the second time I've used my new Yonanas frozen fruit sorbet machine. Saw this on sale at Amazon recently and thought what the heck? 

Sitting on 2 bushels of ripening bananas and having harvested several of our white Jade pineapples from the garden, along with the papaya that has to be harvested daily because it's season... Yea, kinda felt ok about this little purchase especially if it did what all the rave reviews claimed.

Holy buckets of frozen fruit, people. This is everything your covid summer has been missing. Ok, maybe that's just me but I'm digging this clever little kitchen device!

All it takes is frozen bananas, ideally, and frozen fruits of your choice, semi thawed enough to process. Shouldn't be mushy but still frozen just not rock hard either. Think about the fruit shute and size your fruit accordingly before freezing. 

Bananas will fit fine and that's sorta what makes the perfect sorbet without any additional sweeteners. It's frozen fruit science. Basically shaving the frozen fruit before forcing it out of the machine giving it the most excellent texture. Super fantastic texture. 

Our sorbet was started by chunking fresh pineapple, whole bananas and slices of peeled, seeded papaya. It's what we had. My first run using the machine we used frozen organic blueberries and strawberries from Costco and our homegrown bananas. It was out of this world.

Tsu was so impressed he immediately went to town on preparing a bag of fruit that became today's masterpiece.

This was the result of just a frozen gallon bag of fruit, maybe about a lb or so of fruit. The first quart was primarily bananas and pineapple until I could get to the bottom of the bag with the much more frozen papaya. But I ran out of room in my bowl so transferred that batch to a quart and ran the rest.

2 quarts or so of organic fruit sorbet made in less than 10 minutes. Ridiculous. Worth every penny of $40 or so on Amazon. Especially when I love sorbet enough to buy it frequently and I am blessed with an overabundance of fresh fruit. I mean, where has this thing been all my life?

Even if frozen sorbet isn't your jam...maybe it's frozen cocktails, huh?? Yea! Wanna blow your mama away with a real Pina colada? Or a strawberry daiquiri? Or a monkeyslap? Lol ok I made that last one up but kinda feel like I have one of those in my near future.

Bananas for Banana Bread

We have an abundance of bananas here in Florida. One of my favorite fresh produce stands, Rorabeck's, offers their ripe produce by the bucket from $1-3 and of course, it tends to revolve around what is in season and available for the week.

We are lucky to get ripe bananas year round so the banana buckets, if you know where they keep them are filled with 5-6 lbs of ripe bananas for an unbelievable price of $1. And it isn't just the Dole or Chiquita cavendish bananas, but also the apple and mini bananas that grow so readily in our tropical climate. Some of them are bruised, but not at all badly so I've been picking up 2 or 3 buckets at a time for our breakfast smoothies.

For breakfast smoothies, you can't beat it. We peel the bananas and throw them all into a ziplock freezer bag and freeze them for the kids' breakfast shakes. It's easy to take out what you need and freezing them is an easy way to make the most of an excess of this versatile fruit. And rather than water down the fruit with ice in the smoothie, the frozen banana performs the same role but adds a flavor profile that goes with almost any other fruit or veggie we have on hand. Its such a great way to get fresh fruits and veggies in their diet while actually making it feel decadent creating a texture like ice cream.

Another great way to use these abundant bananas is to make, of course, banana bread. I mean who can resist warm-right-from-the-oven banana bread?

Ingredients:

• 2 ripe bananas (2 3/4 c mashed bananas) 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 c all purpose flour
• 3/4 c brown sugar
• 1/2 c butter or coco oil
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

For 4 small or "mini' loaf pans, I double the recipe above and it is perfect. Fill almost to the top of the loaf pan. No need to grease or flour the loaf pan as there is ample fat to help it come out easily, especially if using loaf pans with non stick coating.

Bake:
Bake at 350 F degrees for 60-65 minutes. I check it around 55 minutes for the mini loaf pans.

Variations:

• Walnuts and White Raisins
• Nutella
• Double Dutch Chocolate
• Dried Cherries

Don't like bananas? Use applesauce in place of the bananas. But with so many beautiful varieties of bananas available at the moment and the ridiculously low prices I have to pay for ever-so-slightly blemished fruit, I just can't help but get inspired to experiment.  

Might as well make banana bread while I can because it won't be long before we are completely packed up and off on our adventure overseas. I can't wait to see what will be seasonally available and abundant in the South Pacific!