Not Italian

Still struggling with replenishing my food supply from my vacation, I find myself one night with only a piece of tilapia in my freezer. For some reason this day I have very little inspiration for cooking ideas and resort to calling my mom to ask for suggestions. I ask her what she'd recommend with tilapia and, being an honorary Texan, she tells me I should cook Mexican food. I rarely cook Mexican food, even though I absolutely love eating it. Now that my salivary glands have kicked into gear thinking about cilantro and jalapenos, I walk to the grocery store in search of something not Italian.

Oddly enough, I end up getting nothing that is Mexican. When I first walked in some plantains caught my eye, and I decided to go a more Cuban route. I do admit that this meal was hardly authentic. Aside from the plantains, I don't even know if it is necessarily Cuban, but that doesn't really matter because it was tasty.

Contents:

• Tilapia baked with salsa
• Plantains sauteed with sugar
• Black beans with roasted corn

Yes, I realize that the picture is quite awful. At this point in the night taking a nice picture was the last thing on my mind. I just wanted to eat.

My technique could be greatly improved. Since the only corn I had in my apartment was off-the-cob and canned, the only way I could think of "roasting" it was to scatter it onto a baking sheet and stick it in the oven for a while. The end result was really dried out corn, but once I mixed it into the black beans the kernels were slightly rehydrated. Obviously, the better option would have been to buy a real ear of corn and then roast it inside of its husk, but that was not going to happen on this night.

Somewhat of a success, somewhat not. Either way I was fed and had a change of flavors which were the real goals anyway.