Strange bananas?

For those of you who don't know, those strangely large and straight bananas are actually plantains.  We love them in our house.  There was a mutant double plantain (as in two of them stuck together in one peel) in our Bountiful Basket last weekend and we were excited!  If you aren't familiar with them, you probably don't know what to do with them either.  Our favorite way to eat them is fried.  In fact, I don't think I've ever eaten them any other way.  But fried plantains are so YUMMY that I have never looked for another way to eat them.

So here is how to prepare them:

Pour a layer of oil into a frying pan and heat the oil (we had our burner on high)

Cut the plantains at an angle so that you get ovals instead of circles

Then peel the slices and place them in the frying pan

When the bottoms begin to brown, flip them over to fry the other side.  When both sides are browned, remove them from the pan and place them on a paper towel in a plate to remove excess grease.

Pretty simple, huh?  Wondering what else to eat with them?  We always eat them with refried black beans.  Unfortunately, Walmart didn't have any, so we bought canned black beans instead.

To "refry" them, you need to drain them and dump them in a sauce pan.  Heat them up on medium.

After some experimentation, we decided the best way to mash them up was with an egg beater.  We did this intermittently as they cooked up and got softer.  The finished product looked a lot like the refried beans you are familiar with but slightly darker.

This is seriously one of our favorite meals.  The fried plantains are the perfect combination of sweet and crunchy and soft.  Plantains are better for you than bananas.  Yes, yes, we fried them...but use a healthy oil and remove excess grease and it is still not so bad.  I promise, if you try fried plantains, you will NOT regret it.  YUM!!

Chicken Fried Steak

The other day my little brother was craving chicken fried stake, so we went shopping for ingredients and made our own. Would you like to know how?  I will tell you....

Here are our ingredients:

cube steak

Chicken seasoning (we use it on all meat), garlic powder, and black pepper (not pictured: flour, eggs and oil)

First we mixed the dry ingredients in the amounts we felt like (primarily flour) in a zipper bag to form the breading

Then we scrambled eggs (and a little milk) in a pie pan to dip the steaks in

Next up, we dipped the steaks in the egg then shook them in the breading bag

Meanwhile we heated oil in a frying pan

Then we put the steaks in the frying pan

We also made mashed potatoes and gravy.  The gravy is kind of essential, but you could make any sides you want.  For the gravy, we just bought a cheap mix and followed the directions.  Here is the one we bought:

There you have it.  If you try this out, let us know how it goes!

Back in Action

If we even have any readers left, this post is for you....

I have been out of town lately, so I have not been posting. But have no fear!! I am back!! For my first post back, I will share with you the gift I gave my husband for our 2nd anniversary while we were on vacation. I got him a Cuisinart handheld immersion blender and some metal malt cups. Already they have been used to make over half a dozen milkshakes. I plan to experiment and post some yummy recipes using our new toy over the next few weeks and months. You ought to be very excited!



If you have stuck around this long....my sincere apologies for disappearing, but I am back and intend to keep posting.

Test Kitchen: Strawberry Bisque

This recipe was super simple, so I forgot to take pictures.  I will be "stealing" one for this post.  It is from this online photo album and was taken on a Carnival cruise.  That is where I first enjoyed this soup.  I recently found a recipe for it.  We plan to try adapting it to other flavors soon, such as raspberry.  SO YUM!!

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups frozen strawberries (this can be somewhat approximate...we used whole strawberries with stems and all)
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• fresh mint for flavor and garnish (optional)

DIRECTIONS

• Puree strawberries, milk, cream, and sour cream in blender or food processor until smooth.
• Blend in sugar.
• Chill 8 hours or overnight in refrigerator before serving.  (This serves to melt it a bit...microwaving it for about 5 seconds helps if you didn't plan ahead)
• Serve in bowls (chilled bowls would be a nice touch) and garnish with mint (optional).

Test Kitchen: Chicken Kiev

Today we decided to do our own test kitchen.  Who knows... maybe it will become a regular idea here.  We both like chicken kiev, so we tried to make our own without a recipe. First we gathered the necessary ingredients: 2 chicken breasts, 1 can cream of chicken, grated cheese, bread crumbs, sour cream, butter and broccoli.

We started by coating the chicken in sour cream, followed by a dip in the bread crumbs to give them a nice flavor and texture.

Then we put the chicken on a foil lined pan (it made clean up SO easy in the end).

Then we cut slits in the fatter part of each breast to make room for stuffing them and cut 2 slices of butter for each breast.

Then we stuffed the butter into the slits.

Then we mixed up the sauce (cream of mushroom and a handful of grated cheese with chopped up broccoli). The picture is before the broccoli as I got distracted and forgot to take a few pictures.

Then we stuffed the chicken with the sauce and dumped the rest over the chicken to keep it nice and moist.

We baked it for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.  I think it came out great!!  We ate the extra broccoli as a side.

And the best picture yet.... a peak at the inside of our creation.....

It was a very tasty meal and we were VERY pleased with out little experiment in the kitchen.  You really should try to make this, or better yet.... make up your own recipe by experimentation and email it to us so we can share it here.