Yes, that’s right. I, with all my puertorican heritage and vaunted cooking skills, was left feeling empty, drained, hopeless, by these little green monsters. Jo shows up at the apartment this afternoon, a big smile on her face, that twinkle in her eye that says ‘I brought you something special!’, and soon I see them there: plantains. I’d never really cooked with them before, but lots of people do, I had a cookbook full of puertorican recipes, and, really, how hard could it be to make mofongo?

That was my first mistake: underestimating my opponents. My second one was not slicing them diagonally: this was my first time, the cookbook said to slice them diagonally, but I forgot to, and, really, how much of a difference could it make, right? … right. 15 minutes later, after being fried in 350 degree oil (maybe I should have stuck to 300 degrees?), I had a whole bunch of tough-skinned, fried plantain chunks. No big deal. I was going to mash them anyway, with some oil and garlic and bacon and.. ooh, what’s this?

Mistake Number 3. I tried a bit of it on my finger, and while it was hot, I had no idea that its power was so great: 3 drops. 3 drops is all it took to render 3 plantain’s worth of mofongo nearly inedible. Holy crap is this stuff powerful. The heat gets into your mouth and refuses to leave, and the lightest touch spreads and infects an arbitrarily large amount of food. 3 drops, into my dry, too-cooked, un-mashable mofongo, and I needed a glass of milk to quell the heat.

Then again, calling the end result mofongo is being generous: Instead of a mash of plantain, spongy and sticky and delicious, what I has was a series of dry, mashed plantain flakes, too spicy to eat, too dry to enjoy… Gah. But it’s not over, not by a long shot. There’s two plantains left.. and they will be turned into something edible tomorrow. This I swear.

I’m having no second thoughts: I’ve wanted to leave the island for a long, long time, and this really does seem to be the time to finally set out and do it. But there’s no shame in admitting that there’s a few little things I’ll miss, and foremost among those are my friends, and the nights spent in warm camraderie around a few pitchers of amazing sangria, sharing food and laughs. And I sit, and I wonder if I’ll find a place like that over there, a place where the owner greets you by name when you walk in the door, where they have your table waiting, and there’s your friends, and your first glass of sangria is on the house. I hope I do.. and I hope I can invite my friends, both the ones I have now, and the ones I’m yet to make, over for a few drinks, and a few laughs.