Going bananas!

One thing that I love about this area of Florida is that I can now get up close and personal with exotic fruits and plants.  I can actually grow my own mangoes and papayas 'everything your heart desires' as the song goes. 
Picture this scene!  Wandering in my 'back 40' and trying to identify all these strange plants, I found this broad leafed plant with a pendulous heavy growth which I now know is the 'blossom' on a banana bush.  On closer inspection, dangling above this not very attractive cluster of flowers was a 'hand' of small green bananas.  As I am new to these parts, I had no idea if these were green bananas or plantains. However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating - I checked on the web and learned that one should cut off the flowering growth when it starts to die, then cut the hand of bananas and hang them up somewhere to ripen.  That's where it seemed to get out of hand if you'll excuse the pun.  Those suckers stayed green for ages and also stayed fairly small.  I cut one of the fruits and too true, it was a sweet tasting banana as I know and love them. What was NOT clear is how in the blue blazes do you then control the ripening so that 36 of these don't either all ripen or rot at the same time.  I'm fairly competent in the kitchen but my imagination has been taxed to the max with ideas for preserving these fruits.  There are only so many banana breads that one can prepare, bake and freeze and if I drink one more banana smoothie I will start to turn yellow myself.  This year it has happened again. I am currently walking around yet another hand of smallish but potentially delicious bananas.  About 40 of the suckers.   I am faced with eating/using/baking with maybe 10 of these if and when they ripen overnight and then hold a memorial service for the 2/3 that became over ripe and rotted before I can figure out what to do with them.  My family have eaten their fill so I guess it's a search for recipes to titillate the palate before I admit defeat. I live in hope that my friends will be able to offer me some expert advice before I go totally bananas.