Bad Cooking for Everyone and Fried Banana Blobs

I've taken a little time off to gather a few good stories.  The holidays were not that hectic and I made them that way by not buying many gifts...or cooking.  Unless I had an event that required my participation, cooking sat second fiddle to family and goofing off.  That doesn't mean it was boring around here or anything.

Our first visitors were my Dad and his wife.  Like I've mentioned before he has a restricted diet due to a heart condition and reflux so they mainly ate in their condo to stick to it. Totally understandable. I didn't have to do much other than take them to The Loveless cafe for their week's stay worth of salt and lard.  I tried for a little antioxidants by getting blueberries on my pancakes - whoopie.

Next was Christmas itself.  The food at these family gatherings is slightly unidentifiable or inedible so I eat before I go.  Here's my hubby G Dub doing dishes, isn't that nice?

After Christmas was the last of our visitors, my mom and her husband.  These are always great visits because she WANTS to cook! I usually can't take time off work when she's here so I come home to a fully cooked dinner - OMG, I'm thinking that this is the closest my 'po ass will ever get to a personal chef.  I just sit and eat....ahhhh, luxury. Except for the one night where she took a muscle relaxer then had a beer.

But the food came out ok.

Then came the weeks after New Year and the dreary days of winter get to me so that I get curious and that’s bad.  Considering my cooking ability I should never boldly go where I have never gone before…. but I get so bored.  And I’ve had pizza for 4 meals in a row.  I never ever thought that I’d get tired of pizza but I’d rather starve tonight than look at another piece.  Really I’ve been eating junk for the past few days and nursing makes me CRAVE sugar

( kinda like Will Ferrell in Elf  ) so I need veggies. Stat.

I ventured out and got a plantain. Why? I don't know. I know it's not a veggie but it is something different.  I just thought it was a big unripe banana - well, of course, that's what it is but the texture is wierd.  It's creamier...or something like that.  So I hit the interwebs to find out what to do with it and whether it was ripe or not.  Hell, I've only purposefully overlooked these in the produce aisle!  I found a woman's blog with some Spanish inspired recipes from her family and she makes Plantain Tostones ( http://karmafreecooking.wordpress.com/2008/07/).  Looks easy enough.  Yeah but this is ME cooking. Not her.

I've heard of fried plantain and again it sounds easy.  For these tostones:

1. Peel and slice the plaintain

2. Fry it slightly

3. Mash it flat

4. Fry it again till crispy

5. Sprinkle with salt and eat

This was an easy recipe.  Not counting the three off to the right that I screwed up by accidently turning off the burner when I was mashing so they soaked up too much oil, they don't have much of a taste.  They're sorta like fried cereal box.  I’m not sure I want to waste the calories.  I could have had a pretty fabulous dessert instead. Oh well.  I'm glad the recipe gal likes them though and judging from the comments she got so does everyone else. Hmmmm :-/

Don't feed it to the dog - EAT IT!