For me, it’s close. I buy both, and it seems like a matter of hours for me to enjoy either one, as I leave it to ripen, before it’s more than ripe, it’s soft, sometimes even moldy, and inedible. I must toss out pounds of either one every year. The bananas go from “green” to “disgusting” and the cantaloupe go from “too hard” to “gag me with a spoon” almost instantly.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a rotten cantaloupe. We just don’t buy very many of them and we don’t wait very long before eating them.
When I buy a cantaloupe (or watermelon), I immediately cut it up into small cubes and consume it over the next few days.
When I buy a bunch (hand?) of bananas, we eat them for 2-3 days, then peel, chop, bag, and freeze what remains for smoothies.
Avocados are the very worst. You can’t buy them already ripe, or they’ll be bad before you get them home. So you buy them them still unripe (at around a $1 each these days) and after 2-3 days of being rock-hard inedibly unripe, there’s about a 20 minute window in which they’re perfect. Then they quickly turn brown and soft and disgusting.
Agreed. But there’s a guacamole window that lets you put overripe avocados to good use. I can make banana crepes with slightly overripe bananas, though that is a whole production that I don’t often have the time for, but the only remedy for mushy cantaloupe is the garbage pail.
Our chickens love rotten fruit!
Bananas, hands down! They’re my favorite fruit, but they last 3 or 4 days tops. Once they start to get mushy, yuck, in the garbage!
Cantaloupe. (As far as I’m concerned, cantaloupe is rotten from the moment the vine is planted. I can’t stand it.)
As soon as my avocados are ripe, I stick them in the fridge. They keep, perfectly good, for days.
Bananas achieve the perfect level of ripeness while we are sleeping at night.
And if they are placed in a ziploc bag and frozen, for future banana bread, they crawl to the back of the freezer and become unrecognizable.
~VOW
Overripe bananas are usable in things- I think banana bread is the classic “use up them overripe bananas” recipe.
But…making guac out of overripe avocados? That sounds…not ideal. Aren’t you going to end up with brownish-green guac? Might taste ok, but not the most appetizing looking. Now, making guac out of perfectly ripe avocados is a good way to extend the avocado window-- the lime juice is a potent antioxidant, and I always make sure to put saran wrap on the leftover guac and carefully push out any air pockets before refrigerating. You can get a good couple days out of your batch of guac doing that.
I refrigerate guac, but putting whole avocados in the fridge seems to affect their texture. Might be my imagination though. I will try this- got a couple right now that are right around their peak.
I did hear of a hack where you submerge avocados in water and store them in the fridge when they’re ripe, and they last for over a week! I tried it once and it seemed to work well. But then I read that it can foster the growth of dangerous bacteria, so I stopped that experiment.
Generally the bananas, but that’s mostly because one of my kids will devour cantaloupe in no time flat once it’s cut, and they rarely sit around uncut in our house.
Bananas are something my wife likes, and the other kid likes, but they eat them at a sort of “now and again” pace, so sometimes we misjudge the number of bananas to get. Usually they’re fine for banana bread for a good while after they get soft and brown though.
Pears are the worst, but avocados are a close second.
I eat 4 avocados per week, and solve the problem by always having an avocado ladder going. I rotate them them into the refrigerator as they ripen, and pull each day’s avocado out in the morning to give it the final four hours at room temperature on the counter before eating it at lunch.
I agree. People don’t seem to understand you’re only supposed to keep them at room temperature until they’re ripe. Then you refrigerate them to stop the ripening process. If you leave them out at room temperature after they’re ripe, they’ll just keep going and spoil.
Yep, as soon as bananas or avocados are just about ripe, into the fridge they go. The bananas will turn an unappetizing greenish-black, but the fruit itself will hold at perfect ripeness for a few days.
Also, a cut avocado half will keep in the fridge for a few days. If the surface of it oxidizes a little, just slice it off in a little thin slice. Hopefully you left the pit in it, as it keeps the little concave place from turning brown.
And I also cut up canteloupe or watermelon and refrigerate it as soon as I get it home. That way it gets eaten up fast.
KIF MAP Bags
I’ve used them since the 1990’s. I reuse tbe bag for bananas for a couple months.
