Day 6 recipe: beans and agèd bananas

We've decided to post short pieces about the interesting meals we've prepared using only the mostly canned food we brought on this trip. 

Today we wrestled with a problem we quickly discovered will dog us for the next few weeks: most canned food is textureless, and eating textureless food for days makes you sad. 

I (Piers) attempted refried beans with crisp slices of onion and a handful of crushed tortilla chips. This packed quite a crunch, and though I perhaps spiced the dish excessively, it went down pretty well. 

For desert we had agèd bananas fried with chili powder. To achieve a properly agèd banana, you'll want to spend several days inadvertently bruising the banana, to the extent that pulverized banana begins to ooze from a rent in the peel. When the stuff around them starts getting sticky, you'll know you're in business. I fried these bananas in a bit of oil until they developed a sweet and savory caramelized skin. 

"They stuck in your teeth a little bit," Bennett says, "but they were good."

"They were good," Nick agrees. 

"Yeah, I'd eat them again," Clement says. 

Perhaps he will; only the river can say.