Fat certianly does taste good!

Fried chicken breasts

We LOVE Yams!!
These turned out really good...
I cut them up, boiled them until they were soft, but not quite mash-able
drained the water and put them back on the stove 

added a little butter and brown sugar 

cooked them a couple minutes more so the sugar stuck

corn with butter and cream cheese!
my Mom had this in a restaurant once and started making it at home
and Lee LOVED it
I don't like corn that much... but cream cheese and butter make everything taste good!! 

In college I was telling a professor I had about something I had cooked (when I had my first apartment with some friends and we were coming up with meals all the time...) and I told her I made the very best mashed potatoes by using heavy whipping cream instead of just milk... and she looked a little taken back and said "well, fat certainly does taste good!"  hahahahaha so the girls I lived with and I started saying this all the time about everything we'd eat! aaaahhhh the precious days we spent living in a barn :)
We lived in a converted barn, turned awesome apartment!  It was part of a bed and breakfast.

We lived on the bottom right hand side. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, giant kitchen, cozy little living room.... :)

we had a huge yard with a gazebo!!
we had the best labor day picnic here....

the 4 of us at our labor day picnic!

 I miss these girls so much!!
we all got married this past summer....
our apartment was WEDDING central our senior year of college!

my friend Tiffany has "Barn life Wednesdays" on her blog, it's so cute! and made me miss our barn :(

Plantain chips!

today I perfected plantain chips!
this was the 3rd time I have made plantain, and the 2nd attempt at 'chips'
for some ridiculous reason, the first time I made them I started cutting the plantain by slicing it down the middle.... length wise. as soon as I did it I was like, why did you do that! so we had long strips of plantain that day... with brown sugar. they were really sweet and so good!!
Lee suggested I make chips (apparently they sell them in the vending machine where he worked) so the next day I attempted to do so but turns out Lee prefers his chips really crispy, and I like mine crisp, but with a little softness in the middle. so he wasn't quite satisfied.
alas today I decided to try again, we were having shredded chicken sandwiches for lunch after church... and in honor of valentines day, I thought to myself, I should cut the chips into little hearts! i cut a little v into the whole plantain at once and then sliced the chips... but they did NOT look like hearts.
I cut them soooooooo thin and they turned out delicious! I took mine out of the pan a little sooner than Lee's so his would be cripier.
and he LOVED them! 
he kept talking about how good they were, examining them closely, commenting about how I could sell them because they were better than the ones from the vending machines........ and he never noticed that they were supposed to be cut into hearts. HA!
I was waiting for him to say, why do these look like pac mans?? or what happend to them? lol.. but nothing. He just gobbled them down and I never mentioned it.

My chicken sandwiches (which my mom is famous for making) turned out the best they ever have!!! I made  them last night and let them sit in the fridge overnight & they soaked up all the good flavor.
and. I'm pretty proud of this idea... they got a little dry last night & I didn't have any chick broth or stock, or bullion cubes.... so I opened a can of chicken noodle soup & used the broth off of it! perhaps that's something most people would have done.... but I thought it was pretty smart of me :)

it looks a little gross here..... but is soooooooo good! 

a Cooper family favorite :)

Tomorrow Lee has his first tests of medical school!!! He's been studying like a fiend.  So we didn't celebrate Valentine's Day today..... well not really. we had really good lunch and dinner though, if I do say so myself... dinner was penne and alfredo with chicken, onions, and bell peppers and garlic bread, our favorite meal by far.
but tomorrow we're going OUT! :) and to the beach! together!

Star Fruit

I found star fruit really cheap, so we have been eating it like crazy.
I've found the very best ways are to eat it cold with a little sugar sprinkled on top to take away some of the sourness... and to grill it. it tastes so much sweeter when it's just cooked a tiny bit.
I found a website with about 4000000 recipies for using star fruit, so I'll be trying some of them out.
Here's what we had the other night. and it was GOOD.
Chicken, bell peppers, onions, and star fruit.
and we had potatoes

and it's pretty! i love pretty food