I should have taken a picture, I really should have. They were that beautifully golden-perfect.
So, I’m just on the front side of 40, sleeping on a couch–albeit a very comfortable couch, and that’s just ’cause there’s no bed in the place–and I don’t know what I’m going to do about my house in the hood, but I don’t care.
Because I love tostones. Yes, that’s right, I’m having an enduring and satisfying meaningful experience with twice-fried green plantains. It’s like the Cuban form of the Italian biscotti, another excruciatingly gratifying food that also requires cooking two times over, except they’re not nearly as sweet.
Dinner this evening: rice (I call it Puerto Rican because that’s what Maricris makes and she’s Puerto Rican, but it’s just medium grain white rice that will ultimately lead to adult-onset diabetes for me), black beans with sofrito (the black beans recipe kind of comes from Berta Maria’s mother, and the sofrito is a mixture of Maricris and Emilio, so it’s a cross-cultural meal: Cubano y Puertoricano), shrimp cooked in olive oil, garlic and merlot, and, of course, tostones.
I’m addicted, I admit it. Tonight we had to go to the Publix downtown because I knew from last night that the Sweetbay by the house didn’t have un-ripe enough plantains (I bought Goya frozen, which were good but just not the same). Thank god I froze half of what I bought this evening; we’d be Miami-bound tomorrow evening if I hadn’t.
Am I in denial? Is it weird that, for all practical intents and purposes, I don’t have a home yet have no desire to find one, need to move my furniture to my parents house but instead spend all my spare time cooking and seeking the perfectly fried tostone? Should it bother me that I need to clear out my house but instead obsess over the best recipe for am authentic Cuban sofrito?
Meh.
OK, so I’m quasi-homeless. I’m actually happier than I’ve been in a couple of years. I don’t have to worry about my dog when I’m not home, can sleep without fear of a break-in, and I have relative assurance that when I wake each morning my poor pink scooter (which has admittedly seen better days) will be in the same place I left it the night prior. Apparently that whole “shelter” thing in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs factors in more heavily than I gave it credit for.
Tostones, of course, are an even more basic need. I can live with that.
