Kristi Good idea! I love banana fritters, even if they are not too good for my waist. But, you only live once! lol NC My Passies are doing well, no sign of flowers yet. They just keep on growing, they are about the size of the fence, about 6 ft tall. Laura I like that they use little sugar, sometimes I tried it with no sugar and they are good too. If we treat ourselves occasionally, it can not do much harm. Wanda I live in Oakland, near Orlando and I would be happy to have the whole Fla forum at my house! A nice bunch of people sharing the same interests. Bananas are probably one of the healthiest snacks we can give it to our dogs, and they are part of the family :o) Tom Now I know your weakness! lol I don't use too much oil when frying, only enough to brown. I like to use peanut oil, canola or sunflower. And because I don't use much, I don't reuse it. Sometimes I will finish the cooking after frying in the oven at high temperatures. Like when I do chicken tenders. If you like the muffins for breakfast, and because it is only you and Cathy, You can individually wrap them and freeze them. This way you can make a batch and only take one or two the night before to defrost for the next day. My father used to make banana fritters a different way. He used very ripe plantains, cut up in chunks and dipped them in beer batter and fry them. Something like a Japanese tempura, they were delicious! Have a sweet banana dreams everybody! lol Silvia

Interesting discussion and I'd test it myself, but it's too late for me to set up a valid test this year. After sitting in a bag with an apple for 2 days, even if I took some out of the bag and they ripened at the same rate as those in the bag, one could reasonably claim that the ethylene in the bag was what started the ripening cascade in the first place. I'm staying on the fence over this one for now. I did read the Max Planck article listed above, and it says: "It looks like the ethylene has absolutely no influence on the gene expression or the metabolism of habenero chilli peppers," says group leader Alisdair Fernie However, the Planck group looked at habanero chiles only, which are C. chinense, whereas Charleston Hot are C. annum. So while their work seems pretty definitive for habaneros, that doesn't necessarily mean it applies to all chiles. Maybe it does, but I think there's still some room for doubt about whether it is valid beyond C. chinense chiles. Anyway, 2 days since picking and the peppers continue to ripen, though so far none have gone beyond orange or yellow-orange, whereas the ones that ripened on the plant turned deep red. In the second bag of all-yellow peppers (ie none that showed any trace of orange when picked), at least 3 have started to turn orange. The same Planck article states that "Other fruits, like peppers, grapes and strawberries, generally do not mature after picking; they need to be harvested when ripe and consumed as soon as possible." That would suggest that I can't expect much more ripening of my peppers. I can see a color change, but I would certainly not call them ripe yet, so it will be interesting to see how far along they get. If they aren't going to go red-ripe, I'll have to be vigilant to shut it down before they start to go bad.

Well, if it was in May and June, I found that everything in my garden (including peppers and tomatoes) was as slow as a snail when it came to coloring up. I attributed that to the constant cool, cloudy, rainy weather. As soon as we heated up more, the tomatoes and peppers began to color up more quickly----at least until the rain completely stopped after early July and the rain completely stopped falling. Then, everything got sluggish again, more so because of all the extreme heat than the dryness. With all the strange weather we've had this spring and summer, I've seen a lot of unusual plant behavior this year. My Feher Ozon peppers produced a lot in the May/June period, then slowed down throughout late July and early August, and they really haven't perked up very much yet but I think they will put out a heavy round of blooms in September and will form fruit that we'll be harvesting in October and November. At least that is how it usually goes here. You can use your paprika peppers at any stage, but when I am going to dehydrate them and grind them into powder, I like to wait for them to turn fully red. If a freeze is coming this autumn and seems unavoidable, and you have a lot of peppers on the plants that haven't colored up yet, you can pull up the entire plant roots and all, shake off all the loose dirt, and hang up the plant or plants indoors in an area that doesn't freeze. Over the next few weeks, the peppers will continue to mature to their full color if they were far enough along in the growth process that they would have colored up anyway. You can pick them and use them as you please. I've had plants treated that way give us usable, freshly-picked peppers until well after Christmas. My uncle got me started on doing this by pulling up a jalapeno plant fully loaded with peppers, both green and red, and bringing it to me one Christmas. I was astonished and kept wondering why I didn't know you could do that. I've done it with both pepper plants and cherry tomato plants many times. Often I keep mine in the tornado shelter because it stays pretty warm in there even after cold weather has arrived, but I've also kept them in the potting shed, unheated greenhouse and garage. Once or twice I've brought pepper plants inside the house, but my cherry tomato plants are usually too big for me to bring them into the house.

It's perfectly fine to put fully ripened bananas in the fridge. It doesn't alter the flavor in any way. But a lesser ripened fruit will cease the ripening process in the cold temperatures, never fully developing the sugars, flavor, and texture of a ready-to-eat banana. The skin will darken, but the inside flesh will remain sweet and delicious. It's also been proved that you need to do more than just separate the bananas to prolong their fresh life. You can wrap the individual fingers in a paper towel while still attached to the hand if you want to keep them together. The idea is to reduce the concentration of ethylene gas, one of the chemicals responsible for ripening in fruits and veggies. There is a substantial heap of mythology about the storage of some kinds of fruits and vegetables. Factually, most (not all) of these foods can be refrigerated, once fully ripe, with llittle to no loss of quality. This equates to less waste. Pineapples, of course, stop their ripening process the second that they're harvested. They should be refrigerated, but still used as soon as possible. If left out at room temperature, they will begin to ferment and rot.