If you go to The Mercantile, the Pioneer Woman's, restaurant, you won't find any bananas on the menu. Is it a coincidence that it doesn't have a single banana in the building? I think not. In a 2011 blog post, Ree Drummond unabashedly states, "In my entire forty-two years on this earth, I've never eaten a whole banana." She goes on to very unapologetically explain that she hates bananas with a passion.
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The Mercantile averages 6,000 customers a day in Pawhuska, Oklahoma (a town of only 3,500). So it doesn't seem that anyone is hating on the decision not to serve bananas. Drummond and her husband, Ladd Drummond the Marlboro Man, are planning to open a hotel next door. I wouldn't hold my breath for bananas on the continental breakfast there, either!
Does the Pioneer Woman hate banana bread, too?
The Pioneer Woman
Despite her hatred for the fruit, she did share a recipe for banana bread in 2009. It's her mother's recipe, and even though "the flavor, the scent, the texture...[makes her] recoil in pain and fear and if they disappeared from the earth forever, I wouldn't mourn their passing" she ate a few pieces of this banana bread.
It must be mighty powerful! Either it's super delicious or it's something about a mother's love. The only other time she's shared any banana recipe is in 2011 when she wrote about Bananas Foster.
Pioneer Woman
Before she was a food blogger and Food Network Star, Drummond was a California native who made her way to Oklahoma to start the new American journey. Pretty much everything she cooks is good old Southern comfort food, and it's so good I'm OK that means I won't cook with bananas. Anything the Pioneer Woman cooks (or doesn't cook) is something I'll follow!
In addition to her recipes, Drummond also has an amazing bedding line, floral slow cookers, and she's getting ready for an epic book tour that includes stops in Los Angeles, New York, Texas, and Chicago.
