Faith, One; Yucca, Zero.

Good evening! I hope you had a fah-buh-lous day!

Mine certainly ended on an interesting note. I got caught up in a battle of wills with my dinner!

My plan was to waltz into the kitchen, crank up the heat on the black beans I’d soaked last night, shimmy a yucca into slices and broil with some garlic butter. Bing, bang, boom, consume.

Nope.

The beans were easy enough. I threw in some onion, garlic, and pepper and adjusted the burner.

The yucca, apparently, had other plans that did not involve being my dinner.

That, right there, was as far as the knife was going to go. I huffed, I puffed, I threatened to blow it’s house down…but then it reminded me that it had already been ripped unceremoniously from said house.  Of course, my kitchen is entirely devoid of a potato peeler, so my next option was a cleaver. I wielded that sucker like a chef at the Bates Motel…to no avail.

Oh, it was on.

It was on like donkey kong. (This phrase ALWAYS makes me think of the Manning brothers’ Oreo showdown commercial. Have I mentioned that I fracking love Peyton? Some people get crushes on actors…I get crushes on quarterbacks. Major props to the folks in the marketing department at Oreo, because if anyone could get me to consume those chalk-stuffed cardboard wafers of death, it would be this man. If he asked me nicely. Or covered himself in them. But I digress.)

I was standing there, making the same expression as my man Peyton, staring down the damn root like it was Tom Brady. Sonofagun was going down.

And finally, five minutes and lots of ungraceful sawing maneuvers later…

Touchdown.

It was fairly smooth sailing from here, thankfully. I boiled the yucca chunks until they began to split at the center, slivered them into wedges, and baked with a sprinkling of garlic powder and salt.

The end result was rather tasty!

I used to work across the street from a Cuban restaurant that made the BEST garlic baked yucca…No joke, I stopped in after work 3-4x a week for it! You know you have an addiction when the workers have it ready for you when you get off in the evenings! Mine wasn’t nearly as good as theirs, but it certainly wasn’t shabby!

Should fuel me up nicely for the Power Vinyasa Yoga I have planned for the evening! I think tomorrow may be the day I ease back into running; the swelling in my ankle has finally gone down, and it’s not miserable to put pressure on. We shall see how that goes!

Have a great night!

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