Last weekend while at the farmers market, there was an abundance of fresh okra. Andrew being from the south has a special place in his heart for fried okra–actually, it’s more like a huge place–he loves it. Both of our grandparents grew it in their gardens, but Andrew has fond memories of fresh, fried okra piping hot from his grandmother’s and mother’s table. He promptly swooped up a big bag of the okra and simply stated: we’ve got to fry this. Ok, I thought, no problem!

However, there was a slight problem that I seemed to overlook: I have never fried anything before in my life. I know, it sounds limiting–and it is–but I just never got around to trying it. It always seemed a bit intimidating and since I have lived on my own for most of my adult life, I have my list of go-to things I would make myself for dinner–fried foods not being part of that list .

We called his mom that night to find out how she makes her fried okra. Becky explained the ins and outs of how she fries her okra to us on speakerphone while I copiously took notes. This shouldn’t be too bad, I thought, what’s the worse that can go wrong? (ha–now I am laughing at myself!).

Just as we were about to hit the kitchen, Andrew got a phone call, so I went ahead and started. I chopped up the okra, beat the eggs, and had a separate bowl for the cornmeal. I filled a pan with canola oil about 1/2 inch thick and let sit on high heat. I started to roll some of the okra in the eggs, then the cornmeal, then I threw them into the oil–they turned brown pretty quickly and looked OK, so I took them out with my metal spatula. Not bad! I was saying to myself like a good pat on the back. Somewhere in this process, a yellow plastic spoon came into the picture, melted in the hot oil, destroyed a lot of the okra and itself, and started a small fire on our electric stove. I must have screamed because next thing I know I heard Andrew come in behind me and say into the phone: Uh, I gotta go, there’s a small fire in the kitchen…

We put out the fire, put the burning oil plastic heap outside the side kitchen door, and smoked ourselves out of the house. Our next door neighbor Pat (the one who knows all) started to hose down her yard in anticipation of our whole house going up into flames! haha. Oops! I still had about half the okra left to fry, so I went back inside and started over, this time semi-successfully–at least I didn’t burn down the house .

Now, the taste of this okra was something else and not in a good way either. Somehow, the outsides fried up more quickly than the insides–basically the oil was too hot. The insides were crunchy and uncooked. So we started to eat our sad okra but eventually just stopped, pushed the plate away, looked at each other and decided it was some terrible stuff! So much for recreating fond childhood memories of fried okra for Andrew! Or creating a new one for myself! You live and you learn though , next time, it will taste better based on all the crazy things I learned this time around.

This morning, I opened the newspaper to find this quote by the one and only Julia (Child, that is:)–
The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It is doing something that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile. I think of my strawberry souffle. I did that at least 28 times before I finally conquered it.” I chuckled to myself and thought it a funny coincidence.