Ree Drummond Refuses to Serve This One Food

After nearly eight years of whipping up Southern-style comfort dishes on the Food Network, and 13 years of writing about cooking on her popular blog, Ree Drummond certainly knows what she likes–and what she doesn’t like. Yes, even the laid-back “accidental country girl” has a culinary Achilles heel.

“I don’t like bananas,” Drummond, aka Pioneer Woman, tells Design and Living Magazine. “I like to drive that point home.”

She reiterated her disdain for the fruit in an interview with TODAY, exclaiming that she won’t go near “anything involving bananas.” Other words that she uses to describe her relationship with the fruit include “abhor, loathe and recoil.” Clearly, no love lost there. In fact, Drummond has abhorred, loathed and recoiled from bananas ever since she was a kid growing up in the big city of Los Angeles–a long way from the famously sprawling Oklahoma ranch she calls home today.

Despite her lifelong aversion, the Pioneer Woman has ventured to the dark side on occasion. In 2011, she surprised her Facebook fans with a rare banana-filled treat.

“I made something containing bananas today,” she wrote. “For those of you who know me, you know that this is monumental. I’ll be posting the recipe–and whether or not I worked up the courage to try it–tomorrow! Love, The Lifelong Banana Hater.”

That surprise was bananas foster, joining the only other banana-related recipe on her blog: her mother’s recipe for banana bread.

Drummond admits that it was easier to face her fruit fears knowing booze was involved. Nevertheless, she recommends slicing the banana in its peel to avoid ever having to lay a finger on the–gasp!–mushy banana. “The evil might melt your fingertips!” she writes. She also suggests slicing them in bigger chunks to make them easier to remove when you’re finished. Despite dipping a spatula into these uncharted waters, don’t expect Drummond to go, um, bananas for the fruit any time soon. Because after taking just two small bites of banana — a “character building exercise,” as she called it — Drummond confesses she finished her own plate of bananas foster … without bananas.