(Ingredients)

Banana
Cinnamon Powder

There’s nothing like campfire cooking – a far cry from the taste you get at home. You can’t beat barbecuing over the open flame and enjoying the final product. Hot dogs will never go out of style, but wouldn’t it be nice to top it all off with dessert?

Young men camping with their girlfriends should remember a way to a woman’s heart is through her sweet tooth. This month’s dish should help: Baked bananas.

(1) Place the unpeeled banana in the fire and bake until completely blackened. When the peel cracks, the banana bubbles out, covering the whole side with a sweet scent. That’s the signal they are ready.
   
Just as the name implies, baked bananas are a simple, tasty meal. Of course you can just “peel and pop,” but have you ever thought about baking one? Ripe bananas are sweet and delicious, while unripe are hard and have an “eggy” taste.

In nature, the first to notice and get a hold of fully ripened bananas are monkeys and other animals, leaving nothing but green bananas for us humans.

（2） When the banana feels tender to the touch, pull it from the flame, then go bananas with the cinnamon and eat!

Fortunately, our “highly developed” minds came up with the idea of allowing the fruit to ripen after harvest, giving us the softness and sweetness we have come to expect.

Some time later, someone came up with the idea of baking bananas; back-country tribes in New Guinea prefer this method even today. The baked banana steams and eats like a potato, with the best results coming from “monkey” or “Okinawa Island” varieties.

Simply baking the banana yields good results, but sprinkling some cinnamon on top really brings out the sweetness.

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