Banana Dippers

One of my favorite things to eat, which I suspect categorizes me as an upper middle-class housewife in some datastore (does the NSA keep records of Kowalski's purchases? If you're in Cub, you'll have to go to the organic section - the healthiness of a banana with chocolate requires segregation from the other frozen treats lest they be contaminated), is Diana's Bananas.  Specifically, the chocolate babies.  They're wonderful and my preferred snack.  I mentioned to my wife once that it would be nice if they made chocolate-covered banana chips, because I suspected they'd be good.

Yesterday, when I was at the store, I noticed that Dole has just such a product, Banana Dippers.  They're good, but after eating a few, I've come to the realization that Diana's Bananas are a much better class of banana, or at least they have a better way of processing their bananas.  Diana's taste like the banana was flash frozen, and the banana retains much of it's creamy texture, although rock solid.  Dole's Dippers, on the other bunch, have large flaky ice crystals frozen inside a slice of banana taste.  Like they allowed the banana to go too ripe and then slowly froze it, unfroze it, and froze it again.

Now it might not be fair to compare banana slices and whole bananas.  I'm not qualified to say.  But while on Diana's site, I noticed they also make banana bites.  I'm going to have to convince the local grocery store to stock some so I can try them and do a real comparison.

Overall, I don't think you can go too wrong with frozen bananas and chocolate.  After all, Bluth's Original Frozen Banana stand made a killing even without the chocolate.  As an aside, I strongly recommend reading the wikipedia page on bananas, which has facts such as Jules Verne introducing bananas to Europeans in print via Around the World in 80 Days.  After going to The Fruit Hunters documentary, I'm more interested in the details about my fruit, although I'm in no danger of turning into Bill Pullman.  The picture of a wild banana was worth the read - seeing seeds in your banana is freaky and sort of gross.  It defiles what I think of as a pristine, parthenocarpic, banana which, according to The Fruit Hunters, has about one seed in a million bananas (well...not quite that bad, but it was significantly more than a bunch at the store).