Check, please.

One of my dreams is to own a restaurant with Chip. I'd love to serve up some of my Grannys' chocolate syrup and biscuits and runnin' butter beans and cream-style corn (not all together, mind you). Chip's forte is BBQ and steaks and fish and pasta and, well, I guess everything is his forte.

Truth be known I do enjoy cooking, but my passion is baking. Since it would be nutritiously unethical to feed my family pastries for dinner, I decided I needed to expand my cooking repertoire.

Thankfully my mom gave me a cookbook filled with family favorites, but even with this resource I find myself falling back on a select few recipes: meatloaf, pasta/meat casserole, peach cobbler, etc. To prevent my family from refusing to eat the same meals every week, I subscribed to a food magazine in order to expand my cooking horizon.

The magazine proved helpful time and time again.

Last Sunday I plopped myself down, sipped on some tea, and thumbed through the latest edition of the magazine. The pantry was bare, and I needed to make my grocery list. I settled on some good looking recipes. One of the recipes that caught my eye was "pico de gallo." The helpful editors paired the pico de gallo picture with a picture of baked plantain chips. Just in case there was any doubt as to what you should serve the pico with, there was a helpful hint that said, "Serve with baked plantain chips."

Hey, I liked how the recipe looked, and I liked that the editor took the guess work out for me by suggesting a side dish (plantains).

*Just for your information, I'm sure many of you know what pico de gallo is. I had never heard of it before. It looked good, so I thought I'd give it a try. I assumed it was some sort of tomato-y entree. But I digress.*

Last night I decided to whip up some of that good looking pico de gallo and baked plantain chips. We were especially hungry, and I didn't want to wait the required half hour it would take to bake the plantains. I decided to fry them instead.

All the while I'm chopping up the veggies for the pico de gallo, I'm thinking, "Man, this sure doesn't look very hearty." I kept chopping, and then I started fryin' up the plantains. I was fully aware that the plantains would fry up like French fries because I've fixed them like that before.

Once the food is done I get each of us a bowl for the pico de gallo, and I get us each a small plate for our plantains and ketchup. After I sit down, I realize how odd our meal looks: a bowl of diced tomatoes, onion, and jalepeno on one side and a dish of plantains and ketchup on the other.

Chip kept commenting on how good everything tasted. I agreed. After a few minutes of quiet, Chip said, "Honey, I think this is some kind of salsa that's supposed to be served with plantain chips."

How on earth did I not realize pico de gallo was salsa? Talk about feeling inadequate, in terms of my culinary knowledge. I just laughed.

Salsa and French fries for dinner. Awesome. Maybe tonight we'll have saltine crackers and ice cream.