Munchie Monday: Food Fails This Week

On Saturday I wanted to use up some VERY ripe bananas so I made the "Two-Ingredient" banana pancakes.  That is really a misnomer because there are two main ingredients but many other additional suggested ingredients you "can" use.  I have made these before and they were very acceptable to both of us.

Banana Pancakes

1 quite ripe banana
2 eggs
Cinnamon

Mash the banana thoroughly with a fork.  When it is completely smooth mush, and in two eggs and beat until no egg is visible.   Put about 2 tablespoons onto a lightly greased but quite hot griddle or cast iron frying pan.  When there are lots of bubbles, carefully turn them over to cook a little more.

In this picture you see what happens when you don't follow your own instructions. I made these two pancakes with 4 Tablespoons of batter.  For some unknown reason...though it might have had to do with wanting to get the job over with faster.

These were the 2 Tablespoon model.  They worked better though you can see one of them fell apart.

Of course, with almost the last of our Pure Vermont Maple Syrup and real dairy butter, they were not half bad.  Just not great, so not a total food fail, but close, in my opinion.  Plus I do think that bananas can actually become too ripe, and if so, should not be used.  This would be a great time to have a compost pile.

The second food fail was some salsa soup I made.  No, I did not find a recipe online for it.  We had gone tomato picking.  We did not find as many Roma tomatoes as we needed to make the salsa so I added some of the regular tomatoes.  As a result there was way more liquid in the salsa than even I wanted to eat so I decided to make it into soup.

Salsa
4 cups (Roma, plus other) tomatoes
3 cups sweet onions
1 jalapeno, seeded
3 cloves garlic (more would have been better)
3 Tablespoons lime juice
1 Tablespoon cilantro powder from some leftover cilantro we dried in the apartment

Put the tomatoes into the high speed blender jar first, then everything else.  Pulse until it is the chunkiness  you like.  Taste, then add salt and pepper to taste.  I like quite a bit of salt.

This was okay the first day but after sitting in the refrigerator a couple of days the liquid separated out at the bottom.  I decided that since it was soup weather, I would make it into soup for supper.

Salsa Soup
In large saucepan melt 2 tablespoons butter.  Add 3 tablespoons flour and stir until the flour is blended in and a little tan in color.  Add 1 cup heaving cream and stir until smooth (which will be a while if you were not smart enough to warm the cream in the microwave a little bit first) then dump in the salsa.  Stir until blended and hot. Serve.

This was not a total food fail, either, just not that much fun to eat. I should have put the salsa back into the blender and blended is smooth first or used my wonderful immersion blender. The problem was the texture.  Flavor was nice. Dear One ate the tiny serving I gave him without a word.

You can see that our stove top gets rather nasty when I am cooking...and for a while thereafter if I am a dead dog and don't feel I have one more ounce of energy for cleaning up. This happens too often.

The final food fail this week was a quesadilla.  How can a quesadilla go wrong, you might ask.  Well, this is how:  you use incompatible ingredients.

In this case I put a flour tortilla in the cast iron skillet.  On top of the skillet I spread a small amount of thick leftover re-fried beans.  On top of that I dumped about a cup of chopped steamed cauliflower that was also leftover.  There were a few corn chips in the bottom of the bag so I crumbled them on top of the cauliflower then topped it off with a little bit of shredded cheese.  After all, what is a quesadilla without some queso?!

After about 4 , or maybe 5, minutes, I flipped it over.  The chips fell out as well as a slug of the cauliflower.  No problem. I just ate that up quickly.  After letting the second side cook/burn for some time (I was busy with another project--actually, I had picked up the afghan because I was so close to finishing the central medallion that I kept sitting down to knit)  I smelled that it was cooked. (Fortunately I did not HEAR that it was cooked.  That would have distressed Dear One who is always concerned that the fire department might come to see what was for supper...)

Anyway,  I did eat it  but, much as I love black beans, cauliflower, corn chips, and even cheese, they do NOT belong together in a tortilla.  This was really a food fail.  Even I did not like it.

So another luscious weekend of eating at the mission apartment.  I hope yours was more enjoyable!