Naughty Nuggets

            Today was one of those days when I started out with one idea for dinner and end up with a totally different meal.  All through church, all I could think about was making chicken stir-fry for dinner.  As soon as I got home the chicken came out of the freezer to thaw.  The refrigerator has a good selection of vegetables for such a meal; I could already picture the dark green broccoli, orange carrots, light green celery, and red onions.  My imagination created such a vivid picture that I could almost smell stir-fry.  What foiled my dinner plans was walking through my garden where some lonely green tomatoes hung on the vine.  My mind started erasing the healthy dinner plan in exchange for some fresh fried tomatoes.  After all, these were the last green vine tomatoes of the year, so making them later was not an option.  Now that my mind had shifted gears, I collected the handful of unripe fruit (yes, fruit, not vegetable) and headed for the kitchen. 

Tonight’s batter for the dinner would be easy as I already had pancake mix in the refrigerator from breakfast.  I doctored it up and started frying.  My son Ted walked in just as the process got under way and decided to start grabbing anything else in our kitchen that would fry up.  No, we did not fry a Snickers, but we did fry green tomatoes, chicken, jalapenos, mushrooms, and sweet potatoes (thinly sliced).  My quick and healthy stir-fry morphed into a very tasty, but not so healthy fry-fest.  I ended up cooking asparagus separately, just so we would have one non-fat food on the table.

            Frying batter

            1 cup of milk

            1 cup of flour

            ½ cup of corn meal

            2 eggs

1        tablespoon baking powder

            ½ teaspoon salt

            add cayenne if you would like some zing

Use a deep pot for frying.  A low pan makes a huge mess.  Fill the pot with oil, at least to the 1/3 line.  Slice all vegetables, potatoes and chicken into desired sizes.  Dip the pieces into the boiling oil, turn when one side is brown; they are done when the other side matches the first.  Place on a side pan and let them sit in the oven on 300 degrees while finishing the other frying.  First, this keeps your food warm.  Second, the baking helps to extract the extra unneeded oil.  While serving be creative with the sauces you can use:  ranch, mustard, honey, honey mustard, ketchup, yogurt, chutney…whatever sound good to you. 

            If your stomach is anything like mine, you might want to immediately prepare a cup of ginger, lemon, and honey tea in order to not have to pay for your naughty dinner with a stomach ache.