Posts Tagged: Banana Culture

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24
Apr 10

Banana Gin kills 81 in Uganda

This is tragic. Uganda – the world’s top banana consuming nation (with an average intake of about 500 pounds per person, compared to about 25 pounds for the typical U.S. consumers) – finds dozens of ways to use the fruit. That includes the national dish, a sort of mush called matooke, along with banana beer and a banana spirit – that’s the gin in question – called waragi. Last week, 80 people died after consuming a home-distilled batch of the drink that was, apparently, laced with methanol. Many suffered blindness and kidney failure before they actually succumbed.

Tragic, as I said, so I hope you won’t see this video – which I made in the Democratic Republic of Congo after my first taste of waragi – makes light of the situation. Even bottled and (assumedly) pure, the stuff isn’t so great, though my review was a little more kind…

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16
Apr 10

Banana Museum, Saved, Again!

Still the best banana picture ever.

I met Ken “Bananaster” Banister about six years ago, when I was beginning to research my book. At that point, his museum occupied a storefront in Altadena, California (a suburb of Los Angeles.) He’d been running the museum for decades, and it was the most amazing repository of banana items I’d ever seen. But Ken was retiring, and was trying to sell the place. At that point, he was asking several hundred thousand dollars for the facility; an eBay auction resulted in no takers.
A couple of years later, with the future of the museum in jeopardy, he moved it to an exhibition center provided by the city of Hesperia – a high-desert town between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. All seemed well when I visited in 2008. But earlier this year, Hesperia told Ken that his collection – now reduced – could no longer be accommodated. The search for a new home was on, again. Last week, that home was found: Virginia Garbutt, who owns a liquor store near Salton Sea – a dry lake bed and former resort area south of Palm Springs – picked up the collection, and hopes it will be a tourist attraction.

I hope so too, and I’m optimistic. I also hope that the new owners will maintain Ken’s sunny and wacky demeanor. Sunny, as in “a banana looks like a smile”  (he told me that when I first met him) and wacky, as in the picture below.

CNN did a comprehensive report on the saga; the picture illustrating the story is from my collection.

Here’s an account of my visit to the Hesperia museum.

Here’s a chapter from my book that didn’t make the final cut about Ken and his museum.

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19
Oct 09

“Fake Banana” at Significant Objects

Here’s panel one of Josh Kramer’s funny cartoon. Follow the link for more.

From Josh Kramer

Fake Banana | Significant Objects ; tip from the fabulous Siel at GreenLAGirl…

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8
Aug 09

Video taste test: Ugandan banana gin

Waragi is to Ugandans what tequila is to Mexicans, vodka is to Russians, and Diet Coke is to Sarah Palin. I bought a bottle during a stopover at Entebbe airport, and conducted a video taste test when I got to Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I’d been in the backcountry under rough conditions for a couple of weeks when I recorded this, which might explain my enthusiasm.


The stuff is rotgut – which isn’t meant to diminish the importance of bananas in Uganda, which are used not just for hooch, but  as a primary source of calories. People would starve without them, and the fruit is threatened by disease, making the nation ground zero for banana research.



Still, you could run a moped on this stuff. Which is more than you could say for Diet Coke.

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11
May 09

"Banana" is a "Low-Probability" Word for Typographical Errors

Above: The world’s most beautifully designed search engine. Wikimedia Commons License.

That’s according to the very cool Typo of the Day for Librarians blog, which posts a single word each day and – by searching electronic catalogues – determines how high the chances are that it will be misspelled in those records. They also add a little snippet about the word in question, and when the name of the world’s best-loved fruit was chosen, I was happy to see that a mini-review of my book was included.

I think the first impression one might have on encountering this site is one of novelty, but there’s cool utility here, as well. Though modern search engines automatically  recognize frequently misspelled words and do the correcting for you, but the TOTDFL blog is conducting real-time research in how mistakes appear and behave in both the digital realm and – via the collections that the databases link to – the analog world, as well.
According to the site – which solicits participation from librarians all over the world – he word “banana” has a low chance of being misspelled. The database the group searched found seven bad versions of the word (the commonly used “Bannana,” which most spell-checkers catch.)
Great site for word geeks, and thanks for making an example of me. I’m glad they didn’t comb my book for spelling errors, of which my readers have found over a dozen (one day, I promise, I’ll post a list of corrections – spelling and factual – here, so feel free to mail me your own lists of my screw-ups.)
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28
Apr 09

No Cups or Glasses Necessary…

This is a demonstrator project created by Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa. I love the idea, because it really does capture what a banana skin is. The colors, shape, and texture are perfect.

Here’s Fukasawa’s design for a strawberry juice box:

Here’s a second version, with a similar design. This one is actually on the market in Japan, I’m told, which is why it is less clean: the package needed information on it.

Less clean, but still lovely compared to some of our stateside juice packaging horrors:

Tropicana’s “Pine-Sol” line of bottle styles…

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…everything about this is undignified.

You get the idea.

Thanks for the tip, Dimitri (again!)

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14
Apr 09

Make Your Own Chandelier Out of Chiquita Boxes

This is just about the coolest thing ever. Dutch designer Anneke Jacobs first made this light fixture out of banana boxes in 2003 – but now, she’s released DIY instructions. I’m going to get to work on mine right away (you can buy one, too, if the project seems too daunting.)

Download the plans here (PDF file.)

via InventorSpot; thanks, Dimitri!


Continue reading →

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16
Mar 09

Banana Nut Cheerios: Review and Rant

Cheerios

You can barely see the bananas on the package, and the product itself could do with a bit more banana flavor, too.

You will think I’m a lousy sourpuss for saying this, but there are WAY too many kinds of Cheerios. But that’s because you probably don’t know how many kinds: Eleven. That’s right. With the addition of the new banana-nut flavor, you now need your toes to count the number of varieties of America’s favorite breakfast food that are currently available on store shelves.

Lots of Cheerios

I don’t care how much you love Cheerios. Eleven kinds? That’s insane! (There are two Yogurt Burst flavors; only one is shown.)

The other thing that’s totally sucky about Cheerios is the brand’s constant harping on the “fact” that eating it “may” reduce the risk of heart disease. SHENANIGANS and BOGOSITY! Not eating a lot of bacon may reduce the risk of heart disease, and Cheerios may a breakfast delight, but can’t cereal just be advertised as something that tastes good, even if two of the Cheerios varieties are shameless imitations Kellogg’s Froot Loops and Apple Jacks – a couple of the best-tasting bowl-and-milk horrors ever created? (See links below for the actual health claims, and why they’re the bunk.)

Aa far as eating the new variety goes, I’d say the banana taste could be more pronounced, and I’m not sure the overall concept of putting banana in the cereal itself (rather than into the bowl with cereal, as has been done since Chiquita came up with the idea, nearly a century ago – the story of the development of bananas+cereal as a recipe is in my book) is a step in a good direction. Still, I rank the product pretty high on the breakfast taste scale. Bonus points for doing it without artificial flavors. If you like Cheerios, they’re worth trying.

General Mills has a special Banana Nut Cheerios website, with a movie, nutritional info, recipes, and a 55-cents off coupon. There are also some “banana fun facts,” some of which are – if not wrong – then poorly worded (like this one: “There is no such thing as a banana tree. Bananas grow on plants.” I think what they mean to say is that bananas are an herb, or that bananas grow on what are basically stems.)

More about Banana Nut Cheerios (including coupon) here.

Crazy, hyped, manipulative nutritional claims about the cereal brand here. Info on why those claims are completely bogus here.

From Deroks awesome page devoted to bloody breakfast.

Bonus breakfast suggestion – thinking about Cheerios for your kids? Consider that the vampiric occult treat, also from General Mills, contains THE SAME AMOUNT OF ADDED SUGAR – twelve grams per 27 gram serving – than at least two Cheerios varieties – Apple Cinnamon and Frosted (Banana Nut comes close, with nine grams.) And much of Count Chocula’s sugar is delivered in the optimal form of marshmallows. Manufacturer’s nutritional claims for Count Chocula: none. Suggested nutritional claim: feed this to your kids and they will grow up to be INTERESTING. The image of the demonic dark lord of daybreak delight comes from Derok, and you can learn ever more here.

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27
Dec 08

Stocking Stuffers, 2008

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When you’re the ‘banana guy’, you’re blessed with special cheer: Gifts like these.

Item one is a massive bar of soap – about the size of a mango – with this lovely banana branding. On opening, it turns out to be a Portuguese-made beauty bar marked “confianca”, or “confidence”.

No banana scent, but the word “banana” was brought to us in the15th century by Portuguese traders, who found the fruit being grown at a town near the mouth of the Congo river by the same name.

That guy is going to get hurt.
Second on the list: this silicon “banana handle,” designed as a compact potholder. Slip the peel onto the handle of a hot skillet, and you won’t get burned. I tried it last night on a pot of spaghetti sauce, and it worked!

Thanks to the Thompson family for the loot.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

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24
Nov 08

This Thanksgiving, One Condiment to Rule Them All

IMG_1120.JPG

Got this at a Philippine grocery a few blocks from my house in Los Angeles. Price: $1.59. The lady behind the counter called it "banana ketchup," and that's pretty much what it is, with the same basic ingredients – sugar, vinegar, salt, and spices – as the tomato stuff, but with bananas substituted for the red fruit base.

There are a bunch of varieties from Jufran. The product is listed at Ketchupworld.com, with both regular and hot versions; neither of these seem to be the one I found – the ingredients listed for both are different. The ketchup site gets $3.50 for a mail-ordered bottle. Searching around, it seems that the product has multiple incarnations, with different labeling – some designated as "sauce," others as "ketchup," and some using bright red food coloring to make them look more like the real thing. Mine is marked as "The Original," so I'll go with that.

How did ours taste? Fantastic: a little spicy, a little sweet – with the same consistency as tomato ketchup. I had mine on a big hunk of Turkey breast. Whupped the daylights out of cranberry sauce.

All hail the new King of Condiments.

Here's a link to a brief wikipedia entry on banana ketchup.

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