Author Archives: Meg
Food 101: Tostones aka Fried Plantains
I created a monster. I turned Erik into a tostones monster. My first experience with plantains was tostones. I saw Alton Brown make them on Good Eats and was intrigued, so I made them. Erik’s first experience with plantains was them just cooked and in a sauce as a side dish at a Colombian restaurant. He couldn’t understand how I liked plantains so much (since not-fried plantains, while not bad, are definitely not as good as their fried brethren). So I told him about how amazing fried plantains are and that I would make them for him sometime so he could see for himself. I think he may still have been a bit skeptical. But boy did his mind change after he had them. Now we cannot go to a grocery store without Erik sneaking some plantains into our cart to make with dinner. As I said, I’ve created a monster.
This is what you’ll be starting with
I’ve talked about plantains before in a review of plantain chips. As I mentioned in that post, fried plantains are pretty much the best French fry you’ll ever have. Because they’re so starchy, when you smush them and fry them they almost become self-battering. It can be hard to believe that they haven’t been dipped in something other than water. They’re crunchy, starchy, and salty in all the best ways. You’re definitely going to want to give these a try.
We Can Do It Better: Glazed Pineapple Cookies
So, I fully intended to remake these cookies a lot sooner than this. However between Christmas, a string of birthdays, and then Easter it’s kind of been dessert overload over here for the past few months. Only now that most of the dessert baking occasions have passed did I really feel inspired to give these cookies another go.
If you remember from the original Test the Recipe post, following that recipe the cookies came out fine, but weren’t really very pineapple-y and the glaze was kind of a disaster. So my mission was to bring more pineapple to the cookies while also improving the glaze. Luckily this was kind of a two birds with one stone type situation. So, what changes did I make?
Cheat Code: Egg-less Avocado Chocolate Chip Cookies
I realize this is now our third chocolate chip cookie recipe on the blog, but well, we really like chocolate chip cookies. While the chocolate chip cookie recipe using cream cheese instead of eggs came about out of necessity, this recipe was developed strictly out of curiosity. I remembered from an old episode of Good Eats that Alton Brown said that avocados are actually kind of similar to eggs in terms of fat content so that got me to wondering if avocado could also replace eggs in cookies. And I was right! The cookies ended up with a slightly different flavor than regular chocolate chip cookies, but nothing that can really be pin-pointed to avocado. Even skeptics will enjoy these cookies. They’re also some of the most cakey chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had, so if that’s your favorite type of cookie, then these are for you.
The Snack Report: White Strawberry Shortcake M&Ms
When I saw that M&Ms had a limited edition flavor that was out for Easter, I figured what better to post this week than a review of them? For some reason this flavor is exclusive to Target, which actually has apparently happened before but I’m just now finding out about. In doing some digging it seems that M&Ms has released a few different seasonal flavors to Target in the past. I am now kind of upset that I missed out on some potentially awesome limited edition M&Ms. But I found out about these ones! And since we happened to be driving past a Target the other day, I managed to obtain a package. They’re definitely being marketed as a spring/Easter candy since the green M&M is wearing bunny ears (unless it’s all some sort of elaborate Playboy ad, but I doubt it). Other than the pastel colors I’m not entirely sure why they chose to make this flavor for Easter. Strawberry shortcake is much more of an early summer dessert, when strawberries are in season than it is a spring one. Seasonally appropriate nitpicking aside, let’s find out how these M&Ms taste.
The Snack Report: Russell Stover Key Lime Whip Egg
There’s a bit of a tradition here at Poor Couple’s Food Guide where, the week after Easter we go to the local drug store and buy a massive amount of the Russell Stover eggs for super cheap on clearance. We usually eat about 4 and then have the rest in a bag for most of the year. You’d think we’d have learned our lesson by now, but it hasn’t happened yet. This year however, a flavor jumped out at me and I couldn’t wait until after Easter to try it – key lime. The package caught my attention because I am a large fan of lime flavored things. I’ve lamented before the fact that green apple has been taking over lime as the go-to green flavor, so anytime I see something that’s still lime, I’m game.
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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