Sometimes my brilliant ideas aren’t so brilliant
During my many trips to the Riviera Maya there were many, many things that I truly enjoyed and one of those things was a little dish that I’d always load up on at the breakfast buffet. That dish was fried bananas. They take bananas, quarter them and fry them in butter and brown sugar. Nummy! I always looked for them when I was in a Mexican resort and I started making them at home once in a while too.
During one of my recent grocery shopping trips I bought a few sweet potatoes. I like baked sweet potatoes as much as I like baked white or red potatoes with a steak or a good piece of baked haddock. Anyway, I had a small sweet potato left and was sitting there on the counter for about a week and then it hit me. I had a brilliant idea! I’d prepare that little sweet potato just like I prepare those delicious fried bananas.
So I peeled it with care, quartered it, and placed it in a covered frying pan with about a half an inch of water and let it cook. When the water boiled down and the potatoes were soft, I added about two tablespoons of butter and a quarter cup of brown sugar and that’s when it hit me. I had just made a serving of your common everyday candied yams. You know, the ones that you can buy in any grocery store in the free world and even in most third world countries.
Imagine my chagrin. It’s good that I like candied yams. I had never made them any other way other than opening a can and heating them up, but now I know, and you know what? They were as sweet and tasty as the fried bananas that I love so well, but instead of dreaming of the tropics while I had my breakfast, I had thoughts of the many thanksgiving dinners that I’ve had in my life and how much I love my dear grandmother. She made candied yams almost every Thanksgiving that she cooked, if not every Thanksgiving that she cooked.
So while this brilliant idea wasn’t really all that brilliant, it turned out okay in the end and I learned that candied yams taste surprisingly like fried bananas.