Going Ba Ba Bananas !!

IT'S BANANAS B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Bananas are my all time favorite fruit!! I probably eat one every day or pretty close. I love them with peanut butter, just smear a little on the top take a bite smear a little more and so on until you are at the bottom of the banana. Or a banana, peanut butter, and honey sandwich. In a smoothie, or the best summer salad with strawberries.

BAKING BANANAS !!

Can you smell the bananas? I love baking with them, banana cream pie. I like mine with a big dollop of whipped cream !! YUM. But they are also great in pancakes, cookies, muffins, and bread. The problem is, my bananas usually do not last long enough to cook with them. I may have one every now and then that gets ripe enough that I will pop in the freezer for the next baking day, but more times than not they end up in a smoothie.

GOING GOING GONE BANANAS !!

Imagine my delight when I received a bag of ripe bananas from my neighbor. He is my hero !! Only 1 problem and it is a pretty big one, I have no freezer space. We moved and our stand up freezer is sitting in my sister's garage, 20 miles away. We just have our small chest freezer in our house So now what do I do! I scour the world wide web, I watch a couple of you tube videos and I set forth on my maiden voyage of canning bananas.

This is NOT approved by the National Center for Food Preservation

Canned Bananas

1 jar per recipe of banana bread (Pint = 2 cups)

15 to 17 Ripe Bananas

Lemon juice enough for at least 4 Tbsp

Prepare jars, lids, rings, and the water bath canner.

Have jars sanitized and heating in boiling water. Place rings and lids in a pan with hot water.

Break up bananas and place in the blender fill and add 1 Tbsp lemon juice per blender full. Blend mixture until it is the consistency of applesauce. Pour into a heavy bottomed sauce pan. Repeat until all bananas are blended and in the sauce pan.

Add 1 Tbsp Lemon juice to sauce pan and heat slowly until mixture just starts to bubble. Make sure to stir mixture to ensure that the bananas do not scorch.

Set up area to fill jars. Fill jars, to the bottom of the neck with hot bananas, wipe rim, place a lid and a ring on, screw just until finger tight. Place in canner, repeat until all mixture is used. After all jars are in canner make sure they are covered by at least 1 inch of water. Bring water to a rolling boil and let cans process for the intended time for your elevation. Mine is 10 minutes.

After the jars have processed for the correct time shut off canner and let cool for 5 minutes. Remove jars be careful to lift straight out of the canner, DO NOT TIP. Place on a towel in a draft free area and wait for the beautiful sound of pinging jars (sealing). Let cool for 24 hours than label, remove rings and place in pantry. Remember Do not stack jars on top of each other, if for some reason the seal gets broken stacked jars can give you a false seal because of the weight of the other jar.

If after 24 hours any of your jars did not all seal or there was mixture left over, place in the refrigerator and use with in a week or dump into a freezer bag and freeze.