The first thing I would say is prevention. Once bananas get to the make bread stage and you see you are not going to make it, then freeze them.

If you fail to freeze them, then use the banana peels for your roses. Dig a little spot near your rose, lay the banana there, then cover up. It will provide potassium for the soil.

Good for tomato plants also - and presumably other members of the solonaceae family such as peppers and aubergines.

I freeze mine once they’re brown all over. So way over ripe.

Slightly thawed bananas is all I ever use to make banana bread. When you get them out of the freezer, they’ll be completely black. When it’s time to add your cup of mashed banana (or whatever your recipe calls for), just cut a slit from one to the other and sqeeze the mush out and mix. No need to mash anything.

I like to discard the skins first (compost!) and then freeze them. They taste really yummy when their slightly thawed (just enough until they’re not stine hard) and add Splenda and cinnamon. Also good with frozen blue berries (and really healthy!).

I always make banana bread or cake with really over ripe bananas. Maybe i’m doing it all wrong…

the liquid obtained from simmering 1lb of over-ripe bananas in 1 pint of water for 20 minutes then straining through a double thickness of muslin, can be added to a fruit wine recipe (to replace an equal amount of water). This will give the wine a fuller body.

Banana fritters eg
http://www.recipezaar.com/139871
The skins end up in the compost.

You can cut the bananas in 5 - 6 pieces and freeze. Later you can mix them in a blender with plain yogurt and berries (frosen or fresch) maybe add a little fruit juice and drink for breakfast. I like that breakfast it last long and is healthy.

From the Friends of the Earth Tip of the Day!

“For a rich and natural face pack for dry winter skin, mash 1 egg yolk, 2tsp almond oil and 1 ripe banana into a paste. Apply to your face and leave for 10 mins, then remove with cool water and pat dry.”

Vinegar!

From “Zero Hour”, an epic poem of Central America’s history, by Ernesto Cardenal:

And the bananas rotting in the railroad cars.
So there’ll be no cheap bananas
And so that there’ll be bananas cheap,
19 cents a bunch.
The workers get IOUs instead of wages.
Instead of payment, debts,
And the plantations are abandoned, for they’re useless now,
and given to colonies of unemployed.
And the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica
with its subsidiaries the Costa Rica Banana Company
and the Northern Railway Company and
the International Radio Telegraph Company
and the Costa Rica Supply Company
are fighting in court against an orphan.
The cost of derailment is $25 in damages
(but it would have cost more to repair the track).

And congressmen, cheaper than mules, Zemurray used to say.
Sam Zemurray, the Turkish banana peddler
in Mobile, Alabama, who one day took a trip to New Orleans
and on the wharves saw United throwing bananas into the sea
and he offered to buy all the fruit to make vinegar,
he bought it, and he sold it right there in New Orleans
and United had to give him land in Honduras
to get him to break his contract in New Orleans,
and that’s how Sam Zemurray came to appoint presidents in Honduras.

saute with butter, sugar and perhaps some walnuts….and serve with CREPES!!

A past-its-prime banana banana is perfect for a milkshake! Peel it, freeze it, cut it into 1″ cubes, add 1 cup milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and blend. Yummy!

You can make a fruit fly trap with an old banana, put a chunk of banana in the bottom of a jar, leave it a couple hours and the fruit flies will be in the jar. Put the lid on quickly and flush them with water. I once threw an old banana at an escaped potbelly pig who was rooting in my flowers. He ate it and then was chased away by the neighborhood kids trying to capture him.