Weird banana mystery solved

Popoulu Banana

Reader Ruthy solved the banana mystery. She identified my weird bananas as Popoulu. Once I had a name, I looked it up. That's it! Different sources say that there are from 400 to 1,000 varieties of bananas so I wasn't even going to try to identify it. I was counting on my Honduran readers to help me out and sure enough, they did. Thanks, Ruthy.

We be bananas, which has a compilation of information from different sources, says that Popoulu is originally from Polynesia and is popular in Hawaii. They say that the banana has a salmon pink flesh with a slightly acidic apple-like flavor that can be cooked or eaten fresh when it is ripe. Ruthy recommended cooking the ripe ones with brown sugar and cinnamon.

Some sources refer to Popoulu as a plantain rather than a banana, but I'm not even going to get into that!

We bought several banana and plantain pups (baby plants that grow up around the mother plant) from a man who was growing them in his backyard. It's very strange that he didn't mention that these were an unusual variety.

I know that the platanos are plantains but now I'm wondering if all of our banana plants are Popoulus or if we have some 'normal' bananas.

So it turns out that Frank was right. This strange looking fruit apparently is a desirable banana. Frank also says that he can tell a banana plant from a platano (plantain), so I'm going to trust his judgment.

El Jefe wants me to make tostones. So I think I'll try them for lunch today. I'll report back.