Indulgence

Or maybe gluttony.  At the very least, fried green tomato OVER-indulgence.

Mike and I worked in the flower and vegetable beds this morning, planting, snipping, pulling up things, and weeding.

At one point, I saw that I had to sacrifice several branches of the Roma tomato plant since I had not tied it up, and it was choking out everything in its path.  It may have even killed a squash twice its size.

The branches unfortunately were full of green tomatoes, and I had the bright idea to make fried green tomatoes.  I not only had the idea, I brooded about it, looked up a wonderful recipe just to make sure they were perfect, and planned how we would each them.

First, I hate frying things.  Despise it.  Which is fine since nothing about fried food is healthy.  So this was a big sacrifice on my part, especially since I've been working hard on my blood pressure and have eaten only FRESH vegetables and fruit along with a little lean meat and yogurt.  But I figured it would be well worth it.  The plan was that I would eat nothing else all day and be free to eat only the tomatoes until they were gone and never make them again.

This was the harvest.

This is the recipe I planned to use and did so without any changes.  I especially like it because we had this buttermilk in the refrigerator left over from making banana bread that we hated to throw out.

This was the lineup on our ultra-modern plywood counter top:  A bowl of flour for dipping, a bowl of egg mixed with buttermilk for dredging, and a third bowl with corn meal, flour, salt, and pepper for the final dip.  

I can't say I enjoyed it after the first 10 or so were dipped - after the flour and egg started sticking to my fingers.  But I persevered and got the oil just right, and this is the result.

Perfection!

This was the first batch, and it made one more batch about this size.  The last one, I ran out of the cornmeal mix and was just tossing them with buttermilk and flower and sticking them in the hot oil.  Kind of like tomato-flavored cornbread.

We each took a plate and ate to our hearts' content.  The first 5 or 6 were the best.  After that, they were still good, but you then realized that you wouldn't be tempted to eat 3 plates of them.

We did have seconds and enjoyed every bite, but I wanted to be sure there were none left, none to tempt me, and no plans for making any more this summer.

After seeing the disaster of the counter top and the potential cleanup, I think I can safely say I won't be battering and  frying anything else.

So was it worth it?

It most certainly was, and I got it out of my system for a good while.

Counter tops will be delivered the week of July 9th and not too soon.  It's pretty rough dealing with this plywood and tape and appliances pulled out.