Let me share with you a little known fact. I hate sweets. Yep, Thats right. Cookies, Cake, Candy bars, everything. I do eat one on occasion to stave off diabetic shock though. Let it also be known that the sweets I hate the most are cupcakes. What? How can you hate cupcakes you ask? because they are filthy, chemical ridden mini cakes. If I wanted chemical poisoning I'd go to 'nam or hang out with some middle eastern dictator. Cupcakes suck! Or thats what I thought. Enter: The Cupcakery. A few colleagues and I go out to lunch every once in a while, and on the chance we go to a favorite sushi place, we see the cakery. I was bewildered at this sight. "A cupcake store?", I thought as we drove by, "What the hell are people thinking?". And then, it happened. One of the saints in our office bought our department a dozen cupcakes from said cakery.
Oh. My. God.
The cupcakes. Oh, they were good. The first one I had was the equivalent of a red velvet cake. The cake was soft and moist, the frosting was cream cheese frosting of the highest caliber, and I actually was saddened when I finished it (which took all of a minute). It was fantastic.
FANTASTIC.
F-A-N, TASTIC!
If I had to recommend a cupcake place while you're in Vegas, GO TO THE CUPCAKERY. YOU WILL LOVE IT. IF YOU DON'T YOU MAY HAVE MENTAL PROBLEMS.
Now I hate all sweets except cupcakes. Booyah.
(Editor's Note: For some reason, Food Mime was logged into my box. I have sentenced him to scrubbing random vegetables. For the good of mankind. )
Hobo fortnight continues, as Vitamin A scrounges around her computer for something of Lost-Ark significance- my Recently Paid Credit Card.
Finding money in my account, through the magic of FINANCIAL ALCHEMY, I quickly ran up my total at the nearest grocery store, buying the cheapest food I could get my grubby insane little hands on. (Editor's Note: Teleolurian has freakishly long fingers. This would be a lot of food.)
Part of my purchase was plantains. I've mentioned them before, in a bananas article. I wanted to make some tostones. So I followed what few instructions I could remember without actually having to follow a recipe. Because I hate recipes with all my cold, Korean heart.
First, I tried to peel them. Ladies and gentlemen, peeling a plantain like a banana is fool's work. Plantain skins are like alligator handbags. They don't just fall apart, you gotta have something sharp to get at the tasty/valuable insides. For this, I used my favorite EXTREMELY SHARP HOLY CRAP chef's knife, which of course went through it like (1) hot butter, (2) cold air, (3) so many tortured screams of joy at my shiny awesome knife.
Once I'd made the incision, the skin came off like a prom dress. Next, I cut the plantain (which NOW finally looks like a banana, and not the Cousin-Itt version of one) into half-inch diagonals. Ladies? Gentlemen? If you spend money on one thing in your house, make it a 10" knife.
Next, I dumped obscene amounts of shortening into the smallest skillet I owned. It looked like Antarctica.
Once that all melted over medium-high, I dumped in just as many plantain chips as would cover the bottom. Now, as we should know from reading this site, tostones are plantain chips that are (1) fried (2) flattened (3) fried again. For your assistance, here is a small MSPaint diagram:
So, I scorched them all brown. Cross reference: chicken.
Next, I 'flattened' them. How I was to do that I wasn't sure, but in the absence of a meat tenderizer I used a fork. Squiggly maggots of white plantain flesh came up between the tines. (Oh, did I ruin your appetite?)
Next, I refried them. Now, I had two options:
Brown Sugar And Orange Juice: After taste testing, I REALLY wanted to candy them. Unfortunately, brown sugar wasn't on my menu.
Lime Juice and Salt: BINGO. I had some wonderful tostone-chips. They tasted like fried superawesomeness. I can't begin to describe them. WHAT ARE YOU DOING SURFING THE WEB? GO BUY PLANTAINS!!!
