 Today, we're doing bananas. We'll do banana ice cream, bananas foster, flaming. We'll do banana pancakes. You have the recipe, one banana, one egg. Toastonies, which is these funny-looking plantains that look like bananas. And then there's a sauce for the whatever. And the syrup to go on the pancakes if you want it. Usually I use Maywood. Maywood had no more, so they recommended Grury Farms, which is Sheboygan. Part of our information today, which has nothing to do with bananas, is our city, Sheboygan City Forester. He's going to talk to us about trees in Sheboygan. All right, thanks for the intro. So, yes, I'm Tim Bull. I'm a Board Certified Master Arborist through the USA. Arborist, not Forester. Well, I'm a Board Certified Master Arborist. I am the City Forester. Gotcha. Thank you. Thank you. And I've been working for the city since 2016. And I wasn't the Forester right away, but in 2019, I became the Forester. So, since 2016 until now, every year, we've been unfortunately cutting more trees down than we've been replanting because large effect of emerald ash borer, the ash trees dying. But now, I'm excited to say just right away, this year is going to be the first year we turn that around. We're going to be planting more than we've removed this year. And a lot of that has to do with our tree planting has really gotten much better and better, more efficient over the last couple years. This last year and this year, we built what's called a gravel bed at our shop on New Jersey Avenue. So, it's a place where the trees are, they're in there right now, actually. They'll be there all summer. They're in pea gravel. So, they're bear root trees. They're tall. They're 10 feet tall or so. And they're inch and a half to two inch caliper. So, it's a typical size that we're planting on the street. Anyway, they come bear root. They come on a semi truck. And we put them in this pea gravel and there's automatic water timers. And the whole summer, they're going to be watered every day automatically five times a day. And then in the fall, we're going to plant these trees. And it'll allow the roots to really expand. It'll jump start the growth of these trees. And then when we plant them in the fall, they'll be much better off. Now, we did already plant 300 trees this spring initially. We got those in the ground and we'll have to water those weekly or bi-weekly kind of all summer. But the 350 that we have in the gravel, those are watered automatically. So, it kind of helps us out, extends our planting season. And that's one of the really big things we're doing. The other thing that since 2016-2017, the city put a lot of investment into our tree inventory. So, we have all of our trees on an inventory. And we have multiple devices. You can use your cell phone. You can use a tablet like this. And you can see every tree in the city. So, right now, we have just under, we have about 16,000 street trees and about 3,000 or so park trees that we have in the inventory. And those are, when I say park trees, we have thousands of park trees. But the 3,000 that I'm talking about are like, they were maintaining around them. We're going, we're mowing the grass around them. They're like key park trees, not just like in a woods. So, anyway, they're all in this inventory. And we're using this inventory to track the work we do on any of these trees. So, if we prune a tree, we record it. If we plant a tree, we record it. If, if somebody were to call me at the city forestry with a tree concern, I could pull up there, the tree they're talking about on the map, click on it, put in their information, their phone number, their callback information, their concern. And then I can prioritize it. If you, I don't know how well you can see this, but this is my site inspection map where I need to go look at concerns. And there's different colors on here, red meaning I need to get their ASAP, blue meaning it's kind of more neutral, just get there when I can. And that way I can, I can give them follow back, feedback and keep them up to date. Another big thing we did this year, through the Wisconsin DNR grant we got from them, we had these door hangers made to, to even better inform the, the public about what's going on with their trees. So if they call me with a concern, I can stop by and I could leave this service request form behind and I could write on there, you know, what I saw or what, what needs to be done. If the tree, like yesterday we're doing some construction, we're planning for some construction. So a tree needs to be removed because of that. So I left this tree removal notice behind saying the tree is being removed because of construction issues. It lets them know the stump's going to stay there. We'll get to this stump within probably a year or less. And if, or if, or if not a new tree will be replaced, some trees that are being removed, it's just not a good spot for a tree, but most places it is conducive for a new tree. So we'll let them know right away that yep, a new tree will be coming, you know, in the future. Along with new trees, there's also a new tree coming soon card, just kind of maybe a, maybe a tree hasn't been there in years and years and years. So I'll leave this saying, Hey, we're planning on putting a tree there just to kind of let them know. And when we plant a tree, we have a little care guide. It's not like mandatory that people care for them. But if they're willing to water the trees and keep an eye on the trees for us, then we give a little explanation of what they can do to help us. And the other couple that we have is a stump removal notice, just kind of some care techniques, as far as water and grass and such tree pruning. Some people call it tree pruning requests. And we do do that on a cycle usually, like eight year cycle, except when there's more extreme or more branches or something that are just really an issue that we have to get there before the cycles is up. So this keeps them informed on that. And there's one about tree roots. So tree roots affect sidewalks, and they affect sewers. And this has some information on that. One of the big things the city changed last year, which a lot of people might not know is now if a city tree lifts a sidewalk, the city will pay to replace a certain number of square foot of that sidewalk. It comes out to about three sections of sidewalk. It used to be the homeowner had to pay some of it, and the city paid some of it. Well now the city will pay 100% for roughly three sections, which is usually enough. And that was a big push we tried to get through and we did get through. So people are more willing to have trees because that was one of the big negative. So anyway, that was a kind of a quick summary of what we do. And hopefully, if you have any questions, I could take some. Yes, we're treating ash trees. We treated when the insect was found in 16, they decided we had 5000 trees at that time, ash trees. They decided to treat half and remove half. And so we treated half and we're ongoingly still treating those half. It's every three-year treatment. So far out of the 2400 we treated, we've only lost about 53. Those are the ones that are paging with spots? The blue dot. As a blue dot, it means that we're treating it. So this year I'll be treating 800. And I'm sure I won't treat all 800. There'll be some that maybe just won't be in good enough shape to retreat. It costs about $50 a tree to treat it, just for the insecticide. So there could be some other issues too, like maybe the sidewalk is really heaved and it just doesn't make sense to keep this tree long-term. So maybe we decide to remove it then, but we'll analyze that and make that decision every three years to see if the tree is worth putting another three years into. The treatment's done by drilling into the base of the tree, about six or eight holes, and then there's a bike pump that gets about 40 pounds of pressure and it injects the insecticide in the tree. Nothing sprayed or in the soil, it just goes right in the tree. Is the nursery in Wisconsin? No, so well, there's a lot of nurseries and the one we got the trees from this year is from New York, which is in a similar zone as we are. So the trees growing in New York can grow in Wisconsin. We ordered 20 different species of trees to be planted this year, and I categorize the trees as large, medium, and small. Now they all come the same size, but when they're mature they're either large, medium, or small. So when they're small they only grow to about 30 feet tall, so they're good for under-power lines. If they're medium, then they can grow to maybe 45 feet tall, but maybe they are not so wide, maybe they're only 30 feet wide, and if they're large they get huge. And the biggest thing infrastructure we're watching out for is the sidewalk and the grass between the street and the sidewalk. So we don't want those sidewalks to lift like they do so often. So if it needs to be eight feet or more wide now for me to plant the tree that gets large. You know, a lot of times you look in the city and there's large trees planted in four-foot, five-foot parkways, and that's where the issues are happening. So we're putting the smaller or medium trees in as that parkway gets smaller. Hopefully that answers your question. So we'll leave that card with them, and they could call me and ask, and usually I have a choice. Like I said, if you're getting a large tree it's going to be a large tree, but there's a choice of three or four of the large species per season, planting spring or fall. So I'm not asking every homeowner what they want, but if they call me, they get the card and say, hey, they're getting a tree, what am I getting? Then I can give them some flexibility. That is so interesting, Tim. Isn't it wonderful that we have an arborist, forester in Sheboygan? And who knew all of these things that he's doing? He is James Bond of the trees. Thank you, Bull, Tim Bull. Thank you. I learned a lot, and I'm on the committee with him, but today I learned lots more. Thanks, Tim. All right, here we go. Bananas. I'll start at this end and work my way down. These are the finger bananas that I find at the Maung grocery stores. Tastes like bananas, but they're darling, aren't they? Banana ice cream. I made banana ice cream at home, and we're going to eat banana ice cream topped with flaming banana foster. There won't be flames when you get it. I'm going to make banana pancakes. They're already, I've already made a lot of banana pancakes, but we're going to make more. And it is one banana, one egg. Faith Gruber taught me how to do that, and it actually works like magic. It really does. And then the tostones, which is a plantain, ripe and green. And you can make the chips with either one. And then here's a puree, puree sauce, which is kind of like creamed onions with fresh cucumber in it. You can put it on whatever you want. And then I mentioned the maple syrup before. What's in this little Tupperware thing that I've never used before in my life and probably have had for 25 years? Banana chips. Okay, back to the banana ice cream. About the cup and a half of mashed bananas. And it usually takes more than one banana, but I'm just doing mash it. And I did find when I made the banana ice cream, if I left it kind of lumpy, it kind of ended up chunks of banana in the ice cream. If I pureed it with the cream, it was a more even flavor. So depending upon the portion of banana ice cream that you receive, it may be smooth or not. Mashed banana. When we have the new senior center, Uptown Social, there'll be overhead mirrors and all that sort of thing. Okay, into this I'm going to put some lemon juice. And of course, you can use fresh lemon juice. I happen to have some of this in my refrigerator. So I'm doing it carefully measured. Two tablespoons. Some sugar. The white sugar is not close to me, so I'll put in brown. Vanilla. I've made so many flavors of ice cream at home. Watermelon ice cream. All sorts of ice cream. She brought me the regular sugar. Thank you, Vicki. Okay. And two cups of cream and one cup of milk. I'm just using straight cream. I use a combination at home of cream and milk, half and half and cream, whatever happens to be handy. Stirred together. Now my little ice cream maker, I'll show to you, works well. I used to have the bigger kind that looks like a bucket, and it has an electric motor, but it screams, oh my gosh, I have to put it in the garage. So this little quiet thing works really well. And of course, then there's a cold container that goes first. And of course, I forgot to bring that along. And then this goes into that container. This goes over it. Then this fits over nicely. Then I pour the liquid through there, turn it on, and in 30 minutes I have ice cream. And it makes noise, but it does not scream. Now of course, the other ice cream maker made more at one time. Now do you remember? I'm old enough to remember my dad on the farm cranking, cranking, cranking. And when that gets thick, it need just bold strength to keep that going and keep putting the salt and the ice. And they did it, but not very often. Now my grandfather loved banana ice cream. And he lived to be 102. And when he was a child, banana ice cream was probably the only flavor available, other than strawberry in the summer, because the bananas did come in on the train when he was a kid. So he learned to eat bananas, his favorite. But especially the overripe mushy bananas. As I say, he lived to be 102. So don't throw away those mushy bananas. And he lived in his own house. Even after grandmother died, he lived in his own house until he was 94, lived in an apartment for two years, then went to a nursing home in sleepy eye Minnesota. He was not happy. But then talked to people, played cards, they bring him his food, they wash his clothes. He thought it was wonderful. Because poor man at the house, grandma was gone. So how did he wash his clothes? Not that electric machine, the scrub board. Yep, sure. Okay, this is finished. We've put our liquid into the container that I do not have. And it's going strong. And the sauce to go on the ice cream. Now the ice cream really doesn't need this sauce, but we needed something for the class today. So we're doing bananas foster. Butter, sugar, brown sugar, white sugar. Let's put some brown sugar in here. And orange zest. Now I do it like this. Other people do it this way, but that isn't as handy for my hand. So use the zester whatever is comfortable for your hand. Even when it comes to pancake turners and rubber scrapers, whatever is comfortable for your hand will be most effective. And the zest, not the white pith. The white pith is pithy. Come on, keep going here. Melt the butter. Melt the sugar. A pinch of salt. And a little bit of salt. What's the song? A little bit of sugar makes a medicine go down, but a little pinch of salt makes everything taste better. Salt on watermelon. Oh my, that's delicious. Or rhubarb dunked in salt. It really makes your eyes twinkle, but it tastes good. I had so much frozen rhubarb at my house. I thought, let's use it today. Bananas and rhubarb, okay. So we made rhubarb punch. Okay, we have. Now I'm not going to pour it in. I don't want it to, I want it to heat up a little bit. Let's see, what do I have? This will work. Not a whole cupful. This is brandy. And we know where the fire extinguisher is there. Pour that in. But you notice I forgot to put the bananas in there. So quickly do that. Thank goodness I don't get grated on errors. And that's all there is to it. It's not as though the bananas have to be cooked. We just want them coated with this sweetness and this flavor. It's done. Now, is there some heat on those bananas? Let me know when there's heat and I'll come over with the brandy. All right. Any questions about the bananas foster? And of course you can use rum, bourbon, probably not vodka or gin. Banana pancakes. Let's put some bananas in here. Yeah, it is. And it works. And you can have this as lumpy as you want. You can use a potato masher again. And I'm this time using the food processor. There is no banana policeman that's going to come and check about how you're doing it. Thank heavens. Now, we'll put some eggs in there. Look here, they sent me these brown eggs. I don't want those. I thought the class will love it. Oh, and of course I made a mess here. A little pinch of salt, I think. Don't you? Because these pancakes will be sweet. And then you're going to put more syrup on them. You will be going home with a sugar rush today. I'll take this over to the window and they're going to make more banana pancakes. Needless to say, I made some previous to this morning because this won't feed all of us. Tostones. Plantain. This is a green plantain. And then because the ice cream is so firm, Vicki, why don't you bring that out? Because it'll take a while. These do not peel as easily as bananas, but they peel. No, it's more Caribbean. Yep, right. Because the recipe for the toastones that I'm using and the peri peri sauce is from Cuba Cookbook. The reason I chose the plantain is because it looks, well, it's in the banana family. Now plug in this heating element. And of course in the new building, when we get to it, and maybe Nourish, I don't know, they will have all sorts of outlets and all sorts of things. We won't have to do this. I'll wait until that gets a little hot, then I'll fry these, and they do not take long. And it's again, cut in little rounds. Now this is, yeah, tell me, this is the one that is green. Now I'll let you taste the one that is ripe also. Yeah, and it's very starchy, right? And not sweet. Now you try this one that looks like it's ready to be in the garbage, right? Right, right, right. Vicki, would you give me one of those little bitty spoons right there in the bag? Or Judy, thanks. Ooh, this is nice and mushy mushy. Come and taste the sweet one, the ripe one. I promise it will be sweet. That's all right. Okay, the oil is heating. Now we'll talk about this ice cream. I put it in this this Tupperware container on parchment, and then we have a knife. We'll cut it six by four. Vicki's worked with these kind of professional knives. They are magic, aren't they? And they dishwasher, they stay sharp, and they cost maybe a fourth of what the fancy knives do. And they, restaurant supply house, they really work. The peri peri sauce needs a little nutmeg on top. You know we in cooking class have to do something like this, right? Now you know you get the little nutmegs, the little balls, and you can grate them on a grater. But these work wonderful. And I can find these, I can still find these at Evans and Sheboygan Falls. Yep. And Vicki, this can go in with the rest of the sauce, and then all of this can be taken away. Thanks. Thank you, volunteers. Thank you, thank you so much. It's starting to sizzle a little bit. And then the soft ones, we drop in also. There. Just waiting for this to become golden. The green plantains, I will put on a paper, put another paper on top, and then pound them flat. The soft ones, you just fry and they're done. But they do get colored pretty quickly. Plantains, plantains. Keep cooking, keep cooking. These are the tostones, the little chips that I'm making here. And here's the bananas foster that will go on the banana ice cream. So I have this sort of backwards. You're going to start with your but actually, I think that on your plate, the whole meal is sort of sweet anyway. So you'll have the ice cream with the bananas foster, with some tostone chips, with some puree, puree sauce, and whatever you want. And then maple syrup if you want a little more sweet. And then of course, some banana chips in there. Say that again. Oh, thank you, yes. Banana pancakes, yes we do. That was the whole purpose of this cooking class was a banana pancakes. Thank goodness we have auxiliary help. Okay, so these are the firm ones. Now if I, I used to be able to use two tongs at one time when I was catering, but that's long gone. I used to be able to flip two crepe pans. I can't, I can barely flip one now. Yep, we want them flat. I use this tool and this and plastic bags to pound chicken breasts when the family comes and they want chicken parmigiana or something. The idea is to fry them again. So the firm plantains work, but it's more work. And I've already unplugged this, but that's hot. I do get carried away with the pounding. All right, the puree, puree sauce, the maple syrup. Any questions? It's for the tostones if you want it. We put a little bit on to the tostones. Yes, correct, correct. It's another alternative to sauce for the tostones is salsa. Well, you all know how to buy or make salsa. I did not need to do that in front of you, but I bet you've never had creamed onions with fresh cucumbers and not making it before. Yeah, like we use French onion dip on all sorts of things, and we use salsa on all sorts of things. We can use this sauce on all sorts of things. Yeah, chicken, turkey, Swiss steak. Well, no, it wouldn't be Swiss steak than whatever. That's it.