A Few of My Kitchen Tips

I have had a few leave comments about my freezing bananas, they all have wanted more information. I thought I would share a few things that was shared with me by wonderful friends through the years. I have found these tips to be of great value, not only do they assure some tasty goodies in our home, but they actually have saved money through the year.

I know we have all been there when we buy bananas and they sit on the counter until they are turning brown, no one is going to eat them, so we either do one of two things, make a loaf of banana bread or some other banana treat, or we throw them away. How would you like the convenience of being able to make your favorite banana recipe any time you want without having to wait for your bananas to become overly ripe? If your home is anything like mine most of the time all the bananas get eaten before I even have a chance to use them for delicious treats.
Our local grocery store, and most grocery stores become over whelmed with all the over ripened bananas. Ours will bag them in brown grocery sacks, usually close to 5 pounds per bag and price them at .99 per bag. Wow if that isn’t a good enough reason to buy these ripened bananas I don’t know what is. I always pick up at least one if not two of these bags and bring them home.
After I peal all the bananas, I drag out my trusty blender. I just break up each banana and toss them in my blender, turn it on and smash them down. After this, I go to all my favorite recipes and then package all the mushy bananas according to how much the recipes call for. For instance my recipe for banana bread calls for one cup of mashed banana, so I will measure out one cup increments and seal them up in small freezer bags. I then lay them flat in my freezer for future use.
Any time I decide a tasty loaf of banana bread sounds good, I just go to my freezer and pull out a bag of frozen banana. Let it thaw, then I am ready to get to work baking my bread. I have even found out that by doing this, come Christmas it is easy to make loaves of banana bread for Christmas presents for neighbors, friends, and family.

Another little trick that I have learned is how to freeze my onions. Again this is something that was shared with me by a dear friend many years ago. I try to look for a good sale on onions, I prefer a sweet onion, but any type will work. I clean my onions, and pull the skin off them. I then cut them up into quarters. This time though I use my food processor with the grater blade. I run my onion through that just like you would cheese. After all my onions have been grated up, I package them in small sandwich bags and fasten them closed with twist ties. I usually put about 2 to 3 tablespoons in each little bag. I then put all these small bags into a large freezer bag and seal it shut. I toss this bag into the freezer. Should a recipe call for chopped onion, I pull out as many little bags as I need, while they are still frozen, I use my butcher knife and chop them up, throw the onion in my dish and cook as directed. Sure the onion will seem not as crisp as if it were fresh, but I bet there isn’t a one of you who haven’t bought an onion for a recipe, used what you needed and weeks later discovered the remaining onion in the back of your fridge turning black. By freezing my onions in this manner, assures that I use the entire onion. I never go to make a recipe to only discover I do not have an onion. As we all know less waste means saved money, and I love the convenience of always having chopped onion on hand.
I will try to share more of my kitchen tips with you as I go along. I hope you all enjoy these two tips.