A Discussion on Freezing Bananas and Food Waste

One of the reasons I started Meals Maven is to encourage the most efficient use of our personal resources, be it time, money, food, or health. In my opinion, one of the biggest challenges we face globally is the massive amount of food waste here in the west, and extreme famine elsewhere. We toss so much food into our landfills even while people are starving. The juxtaposition of these two extremes- having so much more than we need, when so many don't have enough- is staggering. Maybe if each of us take deliberate steps to minimize our waste and maximize the use of our resources we could do more for someone else, be it here in North America or across the oceans.

Let's discuss bananas. Many years ago someone told me to just toss an old banana still in the peel in the freezer when it got too ripe to eat, and then use it later to make banana bread or muffins. Being young and impressionable, I did the first part of that- but the bananas were so nasty when they came out of the freezer, too slimy when thawed to peel and too cold to handle when frozen- they just got tossed in the garbage. Every time I had ripe bananas I followed the same procedure, and every time I couldn't bring myself to use them.

Several years ago I got the bright idea of peeling the bananas. I know, right? Seems simple enough. But how to peel and freeze so you can use them when you need them in the easiest possible way? Five simple steps:

• Peel the banana. Compost the peel
• Place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper
• Place in freezer
• Remove from freezer, place frozen bananas in a ziplock freezer bag, and squish out the air
• Take out however many bananas you need when you need them. Thaw overnight in the fridge in a lidded container. 

It's not earth-shattering or even that genius of an idea, but it has helped me for years to stop wasting food. It's also helped to stretch my grocery budget. Now I gleefully buy bags of overripe and marked-down bananas. Do you have any tips to share that have helped you to waste less?