A pleasant surprise

 Although it is obvious from the pictures that this post is about fried green tomatoes, a more fitting title is "Using What You Have". Many years ago we were at home in Silver Lake for the Holidays and along with mom and dad and my sister, Barb and her husband Gary, we attended a service (I think it was a New Year's Eve service) at the Center United Methodist Church north of town where they had a guest speaker. Since it has been so many years ago and I don't remember the year, I also can't tell you whether or not Barb and Gary's boys Bret and Bart (Not Maverick, although some might consider them so????) were with us at that time. Today I picture the speaker much like Harlan Sanders. At least he was an older gentleman. The title of his message was, "If you don't have what you want, use what you've got." That message has been a centerpiece of our lives every since that night.

Fast forward to spring 2018. While shopping for garden plants at Prairie Gardens, I decided to look in the heirloom tomato racks and picked out one named "Kellogg Breakfast Tomato". That plant yielded huge yellow tomatoes that I do believe were the tastiest tomatoes I've eaten. Fast forward again to spring 2019. We had moved to this flat single level house in Urbana with very little garden space. I had 2 large pots which I decided to use to grow some tomatoes which was the extent of our garden this year for various reasons. I ran out to Prairie Garden's to get 2 Kellogg Breakfast Tomato plants. Hmmm none to be found and the experts there said the supplier must not have grown them this year. After I recovered from my disappointment, I started looking online and found some and hesitantly ordered 2 plants. I believe this is where I got them. Piedmont Nursery

That turned out well and those plants grew well and supplied us with lots of wonderful tasty tomatoes. Now it's fall and they are no longer ripening on the vine, so I gathered most of them to give away rather than see them all go to waste. 

 Today, I decided I should try some myself. After all on our trips to Florida, we stopped several times in Juliette, Georgia to eat Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, made famous in the Fannie Flagg book and subsequent movie. I looked up a recipe online and set out to accomplish another new task. First roadblock was that we didn't have enough oil to fry them in. I did find a half jar of coconut oil and my mind started to whirl. Hmm, that might add an interesting taste. Then we were out of corn meal and bread crumbs. But there was a bag of our favorite chips which I crunched up to substitute for them. Right near was a container of Tony Chacheres's Cajun spice that was sent to us by our late friend from the Veterinary Radiology world, Mike Thomas from Starkeville, Mississippi. I decided that would add a nice touch. I sliced one of those puppies and instructed and started the process.

Oh My Goodness!!!! I'm gonna have to do that again. I'm sure true southerners will think I have desecrated their classic dish, but that was really good. "I can't believe I ate the whole thing".... Sorry to those too young to know where that came from. One interesting thing was that although the tomato I used was just a slight tinge of yellow in color, when fried, it turned yellow and actually wasn't as "green tasting" as I remembered from the "original version". My advice is to fix yourself a mess of these. You can use an "authentic" recipe or try my version. Then find a copy of the movie and enjoy both together.

So by using what we had when I didn't have what I wanted, I ended up with a really tasty meal.