Crepes Amy

When I purchased this 1976 title at an antique mall, the cashier said "good luck with these." Apparently she had tried them without success and then returned the book to the store. I thought "Oh honey, you have no idea who you are dealing with. I mess up even easy stuff. I have no thoughts of doing this well - it's just fun to try all this crazy stuff."
But I just smiled. She tried to follow it up with questions about my cooking skill, but I was having no part of that. I just made jokes, paid and left.

Still, I was a bit a afraid of the crepes. This vintage book has a pronounciation guide for the word crepes which I don't understand. Apparently in France it rhymes with preps, but in any other part of the world you can say it so it rhymes with Drapes. It also is entirely crepes recipes - some with meat, flaming crepes, grape juice ones (which of course I would have tried had I any at home here today), other gross concoctions.

My son and I are trapped at home as it is -10 outside today with the wind chill. So we decided on the 'peanut butter banana boats.' As a long time Elvis fan, anything with that combo is ok with me. First, we had to make the Dessert Crepes:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups milk
2 eggs
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1/8 teaspoon salt
Combine all these. Heat a lightly greased 6-inch skillet. (or invert a fancy crepe pan - does anyone have one of these?) Remove from heat. Spoon in 2 tablespoons batter; life and tilt skillet to spread batter. (This is the step which is the most fun in the process.) Return to heat; brown on one side. Invert pan over paper toweling; remove crepe. Repeat to make 16 - 18 crepes (if you have 2 hours to spare).
I did try to flip some just for fun. My son said 'That's silly."
We got bored after making 8 crepes, but they turned out pretty well.



For the Pb-B recipe: Quarter 3 medium bananas lengthwise. (OK two things: I only had 2 in the house, and there is no quartering a C-shaped banana evenly lengthwise.)
Coat banana pieces with 1 teaspoon lemon juice.
Using crepes, place a banana quarter on unbrowned side of crepe. Roll up as for jelly roll. Place seam side down in 13x9x2 baking pan. Bake, covered, at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. (I missed the word covered for a few minutes, then threw foil over it. No problem.)
In saucepan combine 3/4 cup milk, 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate pieces, and 1/4 cup peanut butter. Cook, stirring constantly, till chocolate melts and sauce is smooth. Spoon over each serving of crepes. (My sauce was very runny, possibly due to skim milk, so I kept adding peanut butter. This did nothing, so I just poured it over the crepes.)

My son said it tasted like waffles, which of course are much faster and easier to make. It was tasty, but again like after my souffle episode, I thought: What's the big deal? Maybe if I made flaming crepes it would seem like a bigger deal, though this is possibly not something my preschooler should be present for. However, it is never too young to learn fire safety and where the extinguishers are, right?

I'm reading a bunch of mysteries now as I'm on some panels this weekend at Love is Murder www.loveismurder.net. Also I've watched Toy Story 2 way too many times in the past few days.