SOUTHERN CUISINE AND VISCOUS MATTER

Well, bless my heart! Today’s cooking episode had me laughing hysterically throughout the meal. Even though it is a wee bit embarrassing to tell on myself, it’s too funny not to share.

Now being a Southerner, one expects to eat okra occasionally. My usual way to cook it is fried in a tasty batter. ‘Down home cooking’ means everything is fried in Georgia. My family has nicknamed okra FEGGS due to its tiny little white seeds that resemble eggs and its propensity to involve the gastric system in violent surges of  – I was trying to figure out a way to put that politely, but you get the picture.

I personally like to eat healthier. (Right! Not!) But I do like boiled okra. It is particularly tasty when cooked with black-eyed peas. My family has dubbed boiled okra as Snot Pods. (Nerd Alert – Did you know that the human body produces around 1.5 liters of mucus a day?)

Anyway – Ronald had brought in the nicest okra which was a little on the small side – the best size for cooking boiled okra. I dutifully washed then sliced the little pods into eatable sized bites. I have always left them whole for cooking this way, but the okra was just a tad too long. Hmm. Somewhere along the way, that didn’t work so well.

I added water and butter in a pan and was careful not to let the stuff boil over, since my potatoes had messed up the stove five minutes earlier. Ah, the joys of multi-tasking!

I poured the mixture into a serving bowl. That should have been my first hint. It slopped into the bowl with a globbidy plop. Well, I thought, if I use a slotted spoon to serve it, the boiled okra would be fine. So not true.

As we dished the okra onto our plates, the snotty mass of gelatinous liquid oozed onto each of our plates. I thought, “Well, maybe as we try to pick up each piece of okra with our forks, it will turn out all right.”

It did not. Strings of okra goo strung from the plate to our mouths and back. As we tried to wipe our mouths and hands with napkins, the goo stretched from our forks, to our mouths, to our napkins, and all over our hands as we tried to swirl the goo to a stop.

My next thought was not to eat the slimy okra. Sadly the goop, being a liquid, found its way to every corner of our meal. The meatloaf, potato salad, cucumbers and onions, and watermelon were soon saturated with the mess. With each bite, the wet spider webs were swiped away as best we could. After about five napkins each and lots of laughter, we finished out meal. I just wish I had filmed the whole meal. No one will believe how bad it was.

Like I said before … You are welcome to supper, just come when Ronald has chef duty!

        Blessings

                       KB

Proverbs 17:22 A cheerful heart is good like a medicine.

PS For supper, I had Ronald take us out to eat – a very good choice.