Banana-que a favorite Filipino snack (Fried bananas in brown sugar crust) Image from www.thelongestwayhome.com

There’s a song that goes “Gusto kong kumain ng saging… (I want to eat bananas)” And boy do I enjoy eating those bananas.

Bananas are a big part of the Filipino diet. It’s the cheapest and healthiest dessert and / or merienda (mid-morning /mid-afternoon snack) staple I know. We eat it in all sizes: extra small fat finger-like ones, perfectly yellow as-seen-in-picture-book ones, short, fat and stumpy ones and more. We also eat it in all forms: out of the peel, fried with no sugar, fried with a crunchy sugar crust, chips, boiled, breaded with a sprinkle of sugar; wrapped in rice paper, drenched in brown sugar and fried and more.

So I am just relieved that the supermarkets here sell Philippine bananas, the perfectly yellow as-seen-in-picture book ones. Except that these Philippine bananas are shipped here in their unripe form with a green as leaves color. Should we stumble across those unripe bananas back home, it would take us at least a week or two (a full 7 to 14 days) to get them to their ripe yellow color. But here, in a mere 3-days, the bananas do transform from apple green to bright yellow…take a lookie!

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