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7.7.12

Pinterest is a liar!

The Goddess is a Pinterest addict. She spends way too much time there. Follow her at Pinterest.com/ILoveKilts.

Shameless promotion over with, back to the topic.

Recently The Goddess has been trying her hand at some cooking. What better place to be inspired and to find new and exciting recipes than pinterest?! Take for instance the following pin that she stumbled upon recently. Pinned here.

The link sent The Goddess over to a recipe on how to make lovely banana chips!  She loves banana chips!  Can't get enough of them.  Well why not give this a try?  The Goddess has plenty of browning bananas.  She decided it was worth the minimal effort to transform them into delectable works of edible art.

And while she was at it, might as well make some gorgeous dried strawberries as well!  The cook time was slightly longer, but since the oven is gonna be on anyways, what's another hour?

And they look so scrumptious!  Pinned here.

Both recipes were fairly simple, essentially just cut and bake at a low temperature for a gazillion hours.  Well, it felt like a gazillion hours.  The Goddess is not known for her patience.  Especially when Pinterest had shown her such beautiful, colorful photos of the end result, just waiting by the oven door was excruciating enough!

The disappointment afterwards was even more excruciating.

Banana Chips Recipe via Pinterest
2-3 browning bananas
Lemon juice
Parchment Paper

Preheat oven to about 175-200f/80-100c
Slice bananas width-wise no thicker than 1/4 inch.
Spritz with lemon juice.
Place on parchment paper as close as possible without letting the banana slices touch.
Pop in the oven for 1-2 hours.  Touch or sample at 30 minute intervals to check if they are as 'done' as you would like.
Pop out of the oven and onto a cooling rack (move the parchment off the pan, don't worry about separating the chips from the paper just yet)
As they cool they will harden some more, so if they are a little bit gooey still, they will solidify.
Eat.

That was the recipe.  Here's what actually happened:

Find two slightly brown bananas and some parchment paper. Take a photo.

Don't like the first photo you took and take another from a more 'artsy' angle.


Needlessly take a photo of the bananas peeled.


Slice the bananas and spritz with lemon juice.  
Look in the fridge for a lemon.  
Skip the spritzing part as you can't find a lemon.
Take another artsy photo of the sliced bananas.


Underestimate the size of your pan and the size of the giant bananas.
After slicing two, you will be out of room.
In hindsight, only use 2 large bananas.
Eat the third one since you've peeled it already.


Put in the oven and bake at 100c for 2 hours.
Open the oven door ever 20 minutes to poke bananas.
After 2 hours pull out bananas and cringe at the not so pretty coloring.
Let cool.
Eat one before it's done cooling.
Not enjoy the taste....
Take photo.


All in all it went as planned.  The Goddess turned 2 bananas into banana chips.  The consistency and texture is perfect, but the taste is not how she recalls banana chips tasting.  It's missing... well, the banana flavor. And what's with the color?  The Pinterest photo is much more reminiscent of banana chips over the end result The Goddess was able to achieve.  Further research is necessary.

The real muck-up and why The Goddess is calling Pinterest a liar stems from the strawberries.

Dried Strawberries
Strawberries
Salt
Pepper

Preheat oven to 100c.
Cut off tops of strawberries.
Halve or quarter strawberries depending on the size
Place on cooking sheet
Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Bake for 3 hours.
Cool on cooling rack.
Eat.

Easy enough right? HA!

Cut off the heads (laugh evilly) of the strawberries.
Except for one with a stem on it.  
Pose stemmed strawberry on the pile of other headless strawberry corpses.
Take Photo.


Lay stemmed strawberry on it's side.
Take another artsy photo.


Take a photo of the strawberries next to their heads.
None of this is actually necessary, but quite fun playing at being an artist.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.... Can't find another cookie sheet, so a pizza pan will suffice.
No where on the recipe's page did it say use parchment paper.  The Goddess is SOOOOO glad she did. 
Find out why at the end.



Take an artsy, close-up photo of the strawberries.
Imagine yourself Queen of the Pinterest Folk with your beautiful photography skills!


Take photo of the strawberries in the oven with the bananas. 


Check on strawberries needless every 20 minutes.
Feel part of your soul die every time you open the oven door.
Slowly your strawberries are withering before your very eyes.
After 3 hours, remove strawberries from the oven.
Take a photo of the carnage.


Had The Goddess not put down parchment paper, the pizza pan would have been stained, of that she is sure.
Take photographic evidence of the battlefield once strawberries have been removed. 


 Pose the strawberries in a custard cup.
Give up on the pretense of creating an artsy photo of these withered nasty things.
Take photo.. dejectedly.


The Goddess has NO idea what happened to make these poor strawberries wither and become shells of their once lustrous selves.  They taste bitter and sharp, but very much like strawberries.  If only they looked as delectable as Pinterest told me they would.

Oh well.

The main purpose for giving these two recipes a shot was to have some hand snacks available for our walk of the Isle of Arran tomorrow.  All in all, these will be eaten... just no photographic evidence for pinterest. 



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