banana flower

So apparently you can eat these things. They’re on my ever-increasing list of South Florida edibles I’ve been meaning to try. Thus far, I’ve been taking the easy way out and just eating the bananas, which are unreal.

On this bunch, you can see where I’ve been snacking. The bananas are small, maybe 1/3 the length of supermarket bananas, and they’re plumper, less tapered. The taste is sweeter and smoother, a little sticky even, less soft and starchy. I’m basically addicted. Every few days I do a walk-through of the farm, looking for bunches that are filling out and beginning to show color. At that point we bring them under the eaves of the barn and hang them, to keep the local wildlife (particularly fire ants) from joining in the feast.

Yesterday I bought a bunch of these bananas at the farmers market in Pinecrest, but when I tried one they weren’t the same – they tasted like the supermarket. Then I spotted the little sticker. Columbia. Not the town. Not the university. The country. In South America.

That’s one of the frustrating things I’ve noticed about farmers markets in Southern Florida. A lot of them do not have strong vendor regulations. Wholesalers can come in, put their non-organic globally sourced produce in quaint wooden crates under a colorful shade tent, sell their wares at a decent mark-up, and walk away. It’s frustrating, because they undercut the local growers on prices and mislead the people who visit the farmers market. I wouldn’t buy those bananas in the supermarket. At the farmers market, I thought I was buying something different, when in fact that bunch probably came out of the same South American shipping container as those on the shelves at the local Publix. And now I’m the ambivalent owner of a $1.50 bunch of mealy, unappetizing bananas. But now that farmers markets are growing in popularity and profitability, I guess it is to be expected that the wholesalers will be finding ways to get in on the game.