midwestern fck all cookies

sometimes you’ve got to have it all. Like when your city is storm ravaged, and perhaps at its most New York. Everything altogether at once; dirty and busted looking but wholesome and voluptuous and dynamic. Slightly addictive. Like these cookies.

i’ve been tucked in the radical muffin kitchen, grateful for power and good stores and a little help from the up-stairs neighbor.

adopted from Midwestern Living magazine, Lindsay’s Chocolate Cafe Chocolate Chip Cookies, this recipe makes a lot of dough. If you are not making a batch for storm relief, bake sale, or other event wanting dozens of cookies then freeze some to bake later. Freeze cookie dough balls on whatever flat thing you have that will fit in your freezer. Pop the frozen balls into a bag or bin and have fresh baked cookies at your beck and call. Or eat the dough out of the freezer at 2 in the morning. Whatever.

grate 4 ounces of a milk chocolate bar, frozen. Chop and toast 1 ½ cups of nuts; we used almonds.

cream two soft sticks of butter with 2 cups of sugar in some combination of white, browns, turbinado, etc. I used 1 cup of white sugar, ½ cup of light brown sugar and ½ cup of turbinado. Beat in 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon of vanilla or the innards of a vanilla bean. Beat in 2 ½ cups of oats, 1 ¾ cup all purpose flour, and ¼ hazelnut meal (or as much flour or other nutmeal) also 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda and ½ teaspoon of salt.

stir in the nuts and grated chocolate with 2 cups of chips—we used 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate and 1 cup of peanut butter chips.

intended to be Big, 3 tablespoon sized blobs are called for in the magazine; we went with regular cookie sized blobs on a parchment lined cookie sheet.

bake in batches at 375˚ for about 9 minutes, until the edges brown. Let cool on the cookie sheet a bit, watch to be sure the centers are fully set.

and, yes, these are good for breakfast.

season of the quince

one of the small Jewish grocery shops on J street had one lone box of quince, stationed at the end of one cashier’s stand, a box of passion fruit on the other. She was not paying any attention to the box, scanning two carts worth of groceries, but looked like a guard to me. quince!— i was holding my breath.

quince—the only member of genus Cydonia in the family Rosaceae, cousin to apples and pears and roses—make an appearance for a fleeting window of time in the fall, and now is a little early.

i approached the quince slowly and silently, cradling half a dozen in my arms with needless furtiveness. Bagged them myself when the cashier handled them roughly, because, despite being preternaturally hard, they bruise easily.

quince are ugly pretty (as Tyra would say) and smell divine, rose like and astringently fruity. Among people who discuss such things, quince is rumored to be the golden apple Paris rolled to Helen of Troy and the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden (for which pomegranates and, of course, apples also take credit).

peel, quarter and core the quince. Which is a nice little sentence for a task that will take a seriously sharp knife and careful, strong slicing through. They can replace apples in most recipes, although they take at least twice as long to cook. I baked half the stash and poached the rest, with the fruit and sauce from both efforts keeping nicely for topping cakes, along with butter cookies & whipped cream for sharing with co-workers, and muffins.

for the muffins, i used the poached quince. Three pieces of fruit chopped and simmered in a small saucepan of sleepy time tea and a bit of muscavado sugar for about two hours, until the quince is rosy colored and the liquid is syrupy.

heat your oven to 400˚.

these muffins began with an Apple Oat Muffin recipe from American Wholefoods, and morphed through the stores of the radical muffin kitchen. Pour 3 tablespoons of melted butter (replacing oil) over 3 tablespoons of muscavado sugar (replacing molasses). In a measuring cup, whisk together 1 cup of greek yogurt (replacing milk) with 2 egg yolks (replacing one egg), and one cup of chopped, mashed poached quince and juice, cooled. Stir this into the butter-sugar. Sift in a heaping cup of all purpose flour, with about ¼ of that oat flour, (replacing whole wheat flour). Stir in ¾ oats, 1 teaspoon baking powder, ¼ teaspoon baking soda and a bit of salt.

butter the top of a muffin pan to keep overflow from sticking, line with paper cups and spoon in the batter. Sprinkle tops with white sugar. Bake for 15 – 20 minutes, until browned on top.

11 cake: ménage à génoise

an experiment to bake my batter of obsession in a standard cake pan rather than a rimmed baking sheet as in a jelly roll and for mini-cakes.

mini-cakes themselves have become an obsession. One set sporting my virgin attempt at fondant. Photos are up on the facebook page; please like radical muffin to feast on bonus food porn. And i will try to catch up on the writing!

however—this is the brief season of quince, and quince insists upon a full sized cake. Most quince insist on a pavlova; these acquiesced to taking part in the great cake adventure.

the fruit, rock hard when raw and ripe, is apple-ish in shape, yellow as canary, and covered in a fine fuzz that every recipe recommends rubbing off even though you peel the skin off. The rubbing is meditative, a knowing of each fruit, and that has something to be said for it.

quarter and core the acerbic and hard orbs; halve or quarter the quarters. In a saucepan of appropriate size, bring to boil enough water to eventually cover the fruit slices. Sprinkle in a cup or so of sugar. Add a dash of salt if you are in the spirit of adding salt to everything. Maybe a squeeze of lemon. Add the fruit, cover and bring to a boil.

quince holds legend as the golden apple Paris awarded Helen and tempted Eve. A cake of quince from your kitchen is hopefully unlikely to end in war or expulsion from the Garden. The perfume of it will evoke this sort of divine allure. Quince are in the rose family, and smell like Arabian Nights.

lift the lid and inhale. Steam your face. Dream. As they poach they’ll blush pink. Cook until soft. Drain, set aside the fruit, and return the liquid to the pan and cook down until it is syrupy enough to suit your purposes.

in this cake, quince comes three ways: a layer each of smashed quince and quince curd in the filling and quince syrup in the pink butter cream.

the cake is génoise—the alluring vanilla speckled egg-voluptuous batter currently on call in the radical muffin kitchen. There were actually two quince cakes. The first a pile of quince slices in the center of a cake cooked in a single layer in a round cake pan for about 23 minutes. The custardy center worked with the fruit pile and the sides had a nice cake crust to frost with a thin ring of vanilla butter cream.

for this layer cake, each lawyer was baked in a heart shaped cake pan for about the same about of time creating a delightfully cakey cake.

6 cake: country-fresh pear cake

to spare my household another deluge of sugar, i turned to my wholesome stand-by Nikki & David Goldbeck’s American Wholefoods Cuisine: over 1300 meatless wholesome recipes from short order to gourmet (1983). “To have your cake and eat it too,” they explain, “The trick is to make the dessert an integral part of the meal.”

perfectly ripe farm fresh pears in hand and breakfast in mind, the Am Wholefoods’ Country-Fresh Pear Cake recipe answered the call. Just a few luxurious touches like a slab more butter and a crushed almond crust, made it just a twinge more…femme.

draw 2 eggs out of the fridge to warm. Preheat the oven to 350˚ then line and butter a 9 inch round pan. finely chop about a cup of almonds, roasted work fine, to dust the sides and loosely cover the bottom of the pan.

peel, core and chop 4 pears. the recipe calls for 2 pounds; i had 2 large and 2 small pears and that was plenty of pear.

melt 3 tablespoons of butter (one more than our wholesome friends recommend) in a liquid measuring cup then measure in a generous ½ cup of honey and ¼ cup of cream.

beat together—wholeheartedly— the eggs, butter, honey and cream. Add a dash of salt. Sprinkle in ¾ cup whole wheat flour and ¾ cup of cornmeal, through your fingers like you’re making polenta, and fold into the batter. The cornmeal taste and texture compliments the pears yet makes for a denser cake; you can make it as prescribed with all whole wheat flour or lighten it up by using yogurt and adding a teaspoon of baking soda. Fold in the pears.

pour into the pan. Spread to the edges and smooth the top with a rubber spatula. And bake for about 45 minutes. Enjoy warm with vanilla or ginger ice cream if you feel that way about it. Or eat with coffee in the morning.

5 cake: 771 peanut butter chocolate loaf cake

while cake from a boxed mix proved ill-advised, cake blitzed together in a food processor carried the day for modern convenience. Mindfully assembling the ingredients and greasing the loaf pan takes longer than whirring the batter, with a completely respectable crumb resulting.

squib & the preacher eater pickler both requested peanut butter chocolate cakes when the great cake adventure embarked. Sunny Meadows coming to dinner for the first visit to the new place called for a cake manifestation of the household tastes. Voilà—a quadruple chocolate loaf cake with peanut butter chips resplendent with gold glitter and bronze dust.

beginning with Nigella’s recipe for quadruple loaf cake, i added peanut butter chips and soaked with the Hershey’s syrup left from the marbled Bundt. Having not made the chocolate syrup from scratch, there’s nothing to compare, yet i think in this instance my preference here might still be the taste of nostalgia from the standard can.

heat the oven to 325˚ with a baking sheet set on the middle rack. Cut parchment paper to line the bottom of a loaf pan; line and grease the pan well with butter.

haul out your food processor if you got one.

if not you can still beat this together with a hand mixer or wooden spoon and a strong shoulder by creaming the butter and sugar, adding the eggs then the dry ingredients with the boiling water.

let 2 eggs and 1 ½ sticks of butter come to room temperature. sift together 1 2/3 cups all purpose flour, ½ cup cocoa, and a ½ teaspoon of baking soda. Measure out 1/3 cup of sour cream or yogurt, 1 ½ cups mixed frozen peanut butter chips and semisweet chocolate chunks, ½ cup of boiling water, and 1 1/3 cup of sugar; i used half brown sugar half white.

dump the butter and sugar into the processor then pulse a few times. Add in everything else except the water and chips. Pulse and pour the boiling water through the chimney of the processor lid until all is battery. Fold in chips. Pour into the pan.

bake for about 45 minutes, until just not quite set through. Put it on a cooling rack and poke some holes in it. A chopstick works well for this. Drizzle chocolate syrup of your choice (perhaps spiked) into the holes without being too neat about it.

let the cake cool. Meanwhile, over at the stovetop, bring ½ a cup of cream to boil in a small saucepan. Turn of the heat and whisk in 6 oz bittersweet chocolate until melted and smooth.

when the cake is cool, turn it out of the pan. A bit of parchment paper over your hand keeps chocolate syrup off you—we love parchment paper sandwich bags for all kinds of things, including this little task. When the ganaché is firm enough to be piped, spoon it into a pastry bag or craftily turned piece of parchment paper fitted with a star tip. Pipe the chocolate in stripes over horizontally over the loaf. Sprinkle with glitter and shimmer dust.

4 cake: lardy cake

a majestic looking Bundt was intended to be cake #4. As exciting as it was to unearth some Bundt history, and as photogenic the packaging and final cake, the pistachio chocolate marble cake – a recipe of cake mixes and boxed pudding offered up as characteristic of Bundt in its heyday – was, well, gassy. At least, it made me gassy. It tasted synthetic. The flavors sounds so grand, promise to capture the nature with real food in a future effort (catch the photos by liking Radical Muffin on Facebook).

this futile venture into boxes sent me right back to real butter. Enter lardy cake. no Pillsbury bake-off winner here; no showboating. Lovingly offered up by Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra in her tour of old world breads and sweets Warm Bread and Honey Cake, lardy cake is a British stalwart dating back to the second half of the 19^th century.

a harvest cake of freshly rendered pig lard, original recipes earned the name. up-dated versions rely on butter, and real slabs of fresh butter here are a real celebratory ingredient in city hearths, evocative of generous bounty, novel in its old-fashioned rich goodness.

Pagrach-Chandra is a staunch defender of lardy cake. writing from a hostile health-conscious environment in the modern UK, she cites critics’ warnings of “health hazard” and “artery clogger” then scoffs: I suspect that many of its detractors would not hesitate to pour cream sauce over a huge steak on a regular basis, yet they begrudge the bit of butter that goes into an excellent cake. Perhaps they simply do not like cakes.

radical muffins only live once, and butter is delicious. Lardy cake is an utterly worthy breakfast or coffee treat, a cinnamon roll all in one cake round that you slice to eat. Not only a great cake—in the vein of not too sweet coffee cakes—but also a good introduction to bread make. So take this on if working with bread is among your desired kitchen skills but its seemed too daunting to start.

in a large bowl, stir in a packet of dried yeast into half of ¾ cup warmed milk. Let the yeast come to life. Melt 3/8 a stick of butter, stir in a tablespoon of sugar, and set it aside to cool.

stir 2 ½ cups flour along with the rest of the milk and the butter. knead knead knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. leave to rise an hour or so, until doubled in size.

butter and line the bottom of a 9-ich spring form pan.

punch down the dough and knead in ¼ teaspoon of salt. pat the dough into a circle and sandwich between two long pieces of parchment paper or lay out on a well-floured surface. Roll out until about ¼ inch thick.

cream together 7/8 of a stick of butter, unsalted and softened, and 1/3 cup of dark brown sugar. work in ½ teaspoon cinnamon and ¼ teaspoon nutmeg.

spread the sugar-butter on 2/3 of the rectangle of dough, leaving a margin at all the edges. Sprinkle the buttered areas with 1/3 – ½ cup currants or raisins and lightly press them into the filling with the palm of your hand. Fold the dough over the filling like a burrito, taking care to seal the edges. Let rest for 5 minutes.

turn the dough for a fresh angle. Roll out the pastry burrito to form a slightly smaller rectangle. Fold again and let rest. Repeat 2 or 3 more times, depending on how much the filling begins to ooze. Less maybe more here; this cake may have benefited from one less turn or a sit in the fridge to firm up the butter.

on the final turn, roll the cake into a circle and pat into place in the pan. Leave for a final rise, letting the dough double in size.

preheat your oven to 350˚ and bake your lardy cake for 25-30 minutes. Pull it out and leave to rest 15 in the pan then turn it out to cool. Enjoy now or later. Quietly rejoice.

perfection salad

a salad, being in total control of herself, bitch

white sauce as civilizing agent; the indomitable Fannie Farmer’s final dinner menu replete with “level measured” splendor; strictly color schemed dinner presentations at culinary school commencement ceremonies—Laura Shapiro’s rich book on “women and cooking at the turn of the century” offered too many dainty morsels to begin this post other than in a scramble.

Perfection Salad itself may be obvious but best:

Shortly after the turn of the century there emerged a gelatin salad that crowned all these achievements, for it captured, confined, and molded raw vegetables themselves.  This was Perfection Salad, a mixture of cabbage, celery, and red peppers, all chopped fine and bound by a plain aspic.  During the next decades there was only one notable change in the recipe—the plain aspic became tomato—while the other straightforward ingredients hardly altered. … the Perfection Salad firmly maintained its identity, the very image of a salad at last in control of itself.

my own culinary style as fluid as identity as radical muffins understand identity to be, I find excessive measuring or other rigid ruling in the kitchen hilarious. Yet I admire the moxie of the domestic scientists who founded our countries’ first cooking schools. Their conviction in scientific process to create healthy and homey dwellings that up-lift the body and soul mixed with the emergence of the food industry to serve up gelatin salad as a mark of progress, high-class aspirations, and women’s intellectual equality to men.

these vibrant, science-minded ladies doggedly pursued studies through tracks available to women at the time, like leapfrogging to professors who would deign to teach them chemistry or bacteriology and annexing their programs to schools like MIT and Harvard. They were typically charitable or reformist in character. My hometown girl Jane Addams of Hull House sent a service worker to Ellen Richards’ New England Kitchen to learn from and adopt its’ school to soup kitchen model. Though their themes stayed in the domestic sphere, they founded national publications and organizations, staged World’s Fair exhibitions, and founded academic departments at universities as well as the elementary home economics curricula so many of us grew up with.

Melvil Dewey, originator of the Dewey Decimal system, and his wife Annie hosted a climactic conference in Lake Placid, putting placement in the library system of the newly christened “home economics” in their hot little hands. Side characters include the inventor of a contraption called the Aladdin Stove, who funded these zealous ladies, and Count Rumford— spy, questionable but sizable charitable works organizer, drip-coffee maker inventor, and Mrs. Richards’ idol— whose eulogy included:

It was without loving or esteeming his fellow creatures that he had done them all these services.

for a real Christmas dessert Parisian doll ice cream takes the banner for me this year

in short, what a hoot! if the screenplay isn’t in the works it should be. Starring Meryl Streep as Fannie Farmer bringing taste in the form of precise pimentos to scientific cooking (sorry to type-cast), and Alan Cumming as Edward Atkinson, Bostonian “freelance expert on most of the important political issues of his time,” philanthropist and stove-inventor weirdo.

an imaginative interpretation—or the uncovering of some steamy letters—could offer up some smashing scenes between the domestic scientists and the heads of the turn of the century’s women’s colleges.

as younger women, they may have been pioneering higher-ed schoolmates. Their warm professional collaborations later chilled as the one group’s determination to academically institutionalize home economics met the other’s resistance to include anything “feminine” in curricula determined to compete with Ivy League men’s schools.

Shapiro paints compelling characters, and it’s her wry eye on religion, class and race as well as gender that redeemed my faith in feminist books on homemaking. Plus sends me off to trowel the used bookstores (that remain) for Miss Farmer’s A New Book of Cookery and put a hold at BPL for her own Something from the oven: reinventing dinner in 1950s America.

kale pasticcio

fantastical cupcakes

the radical muffin kitchen hosted dinner to celebrate our new winter farmshare wherein we decorated these schnazzy cupcakes. Seems the artists were either too enamored with the art or too stuffed from supper to eat them. So although the buttermilk cake is worth a post someday, the recipe everyone has been clamoring for is the make-do casserole served up alongside the root veggie soup.

let’s call it brioche kale pasticcio, shall we? In Italian, literally, “a mess.” Yet in la buona cucina, it is something divine.  In the classic Italian kitchen, veggies and béchamel would snuggle amongst themselves or with some macaroni. This version holds custard not classic white sauce and is dense with rich bread, so emerges a golden savory bread pudding bedecked with greens.

slice and caramelize one medium mild onion in a heavy skillet with butter. Rinse and rip a generous bunch of kale into bite sized pieces and set aside.

butter a large casserole dish, and set your oven to 375°.

slice and cube a heap of day old brioche. We happened to have an acquired loaf lying around; brioche ain’t cheap. Although it is incomparable for soaking and cooking, as in for French toast or this, any dry bread will do. Play with whole grains, baguettes, etc. to create varying textures of wholesomeness. Toss bread cubes in a big bowl.

melt ¾ stick of butter in a small saucepan over low flame. Add a dash of salt, pepper and paprika, and slowly pour in about a cup and a half of whole milk. Bring just to a simmer then turn off the heat. In a bowl aside, whisk together three eggs. Pour the milk/butter in a thin stream into the eggs, merrily whisking all the while.

crumble about a cup of fresh white cheese. We had some marvelous German-styled something from our CSA. Farmer’s cheese, ricotta or feta would also work well. Shred as much hard salty cheese, like parmesan (as was used) or gruyére.

dump most of the custard and half the cheese into the bread crumbs and turn turn turn until all combined. Add in the onions and kale; mix well.  Turn out into the casserole, shake the pan to settle it all together and maybe give a gentle pat. Drizzle with remaining custard (dot with butter if it looks too dry), and cover with the remaining cheese.

bake until the custard is cooked through and the cheese is all melty and browning in spots. About half an hour. We used a pretty deep casserole here so the high temperature did not overcook the delicate custard. Similar recipes often call for baking in a water bath, which hasn’t proven necessary. Of course, if you are a crunchy top junkie then use a broad shallow pan and cook for less time. Keep on eye on it any which way.

sweet transcupcakes from transsexual transylvania

it will be difficult to keep waiting diners at bay, but do let this set ten minutes or so before serving. More mouthwatering than cupcakes, apparently. Certainly, there was none left to photograph.

ridiculous pumpkin mini muffins

pumpkin chocolate chip muffin with eggnog maple glaze

i don’t usually go in for the sugary-sweet, myriad flavored or, as Nigella would say, twee.  The pumpkin quick bread batter, however, made far more than anticipated so the overflow went into a mini-muffin tin.  Thank providence there has arrived a second mini-muffin tin to the radical muffin kitchen, because, have mercy, there was still more of that batter. More-mini muffins, even itty-bittier than the first.

frankly, i over-baked the teeny things, so to make amends I glazed them with what happened to be handy: maple cream and eggnog.

evoking a text from angela of acupuncture (my downstairs neighbor upon whom I foist so many baked goods her three year old thoroughly associates me with cookies): that was amazing…would love the recipe for those pumpkin maple muffins. Ridiculous!!

So here is the recipe:

cream together a softened stick of butter with a cup of sugar; to achieve ridiculousness, try turbinado sugar that’s been stored with a split vanilla bean. Blend in roasted pumpkin, about two cups. I busted out the electric hand mixer for this because my pumpkin was stringy like spaghetti squash and needed to be really whipped into the creamed fat and sugar.

care bear gummy in a star cookie

our sweet pumpkins arrived to squat on the steps under the looming giant glittered fake flowers, wired to the stair rails and strung with cobwebs, leading up to our apartment door for Halloween. They only offered up their autumnal aesthetics for a few days, because I promised the shop-keep I would cook these particular pie-pumpkins, as he chastised me these were “not for carving.”

to roast a small pumpkin, slice it in half and scrape out the seeds and fibrous pulp with a spoon. Leaving a few seeds to cook with the pumpkin to join it later in the bread keeps it real. Sit the halves, hollows up, on a parchment paper lined baking tray, and pour in a few slugs of good olive oil, turning the squash to coat the orange flesh. Add sea salt and a grinding of pepper. We also added saffron threads. Roast in a hot oven, 375°, for half an hour (more or less, depending on size and stove) until a fork easily pierces through its flesh. Flip the halves over about three quarters of the way through cooking. When thoroughly roasted, let them cool then scrape the flesh right out of the shell into, well, whatever you’re going to use it for. We had three pumpkins, and only one went into this bread and muffin extravaganza.

returning to the batter: scrape half a vanilla bean into the pumpkin etc. Beat in three eggs. Stir in three cups of flour total, adding about ½ cup of sweetened condensed milk in with the last cup, graham flour following two cups of all purpose. A dash of salt; ½ a teaspoon each baking powder and soda.

pour to fill a lined and buttered loaf pan a generous halfway. Add a cup of small chocolate chips, these were from Caluccio’s Italian grocery, to the remaining batter. Then fill (so it turns out) two mini-muffin tins. I lined them with papers but ended up peeling the papers off before glazing so might as well grease the pan and do without the papers to begin with.

fit it all strategically into a 350° oven and bake, pulling the muffins out at about 9-12 minutes then the loaf half an hour after that. Free from their respective pans to a rack to cool before glazing.

the glaze: cream two cups powdered sugar with one tablespoon of butter and two of maple cream. Admittedly, maple cream is an odd thing to have on hand outside of Vermont; all butter will do. Work in about ½ a cup of maple syrup and enough eggnog to make a glaze the consistency of good melted chocolate. Dip those wee muffins head first, let them dry, and dunk again. Let drip dry right side up on a rack.

the loaf doesn’t really want a glaze, being dense and damp as it is, but mini-muffins dry out quicker and appreciate a sugar shellac. Give them away lest you eat them all and go into sugar shock.

fryday friday

in the kitchen I am happiest when I am frying.  One reason is that frying takes the whole cooking process and condenses it into a continuously visible, uninterrupted sequence.  It resembles those nature documentaries where the camera shows us tiny buds developing into full blooms, compressing weeks of growth into seconds.  One is never out of touch with the food one is frying, even for a moment, and I find that very satisfying….

fried food must be eaten promptly, and cannot be reheated.  In Naples they have a phrase for saying that one thing follows immediately upon another. It is frienno magnanno, which means, literally, frying and eating. And that is how it should be done.

marcella hazan, more classic cooking (1978)

and that is what we did. although the night ended in a resonant and reverential reading of Marcella, it began with Paula Deen.

turns out, our stunning drag performer darling is also a sick fry cook. The night we met, in the back garden of Ginger’s bar at Brooklyn Pride, we talked Paula Deen and fell into the deep fryer of food love. Fry night has been pending ever since. Come to think of it—Paula’s how I baited the preacher eater too. Seems i owe Ms. Deen some gratitude.

our all you can fry event was an appropriate homage to the reigning queen of the deep fryer as well as a revelation to our visiting vegan friend from Sweden, the founding co-chair of the International High End Perverts Society (also the photographer, gratzi). Oreos, as it turns out, are vegan. And vanilla pancake batter, made with almond milk and egg replacer, fries up real nice.

the drag artist manned the fry pot in an old tourist’s souvenir “California” apron. the Texas fairy orchestrated a pile of golden okra nuggets that filled my great grandmothers punch bowl. reshma sprawled at the table—like Alice big from the Drink Me bottle in our kitchen too tiny for all her graceful limbs—dredging pickles with the enthusiasm only possible from a far-from-home Midwesterner with State Fairs in her heart.

fry me to the moon

This is what we fried:

vegan corn fritters

okra

breaded fresh mozzarella rounds

hallumi cubes tossed in flour & cornmeal

potato fritters with broccoli rabe and spinach

pickles

feta stuffed green olives

marinated artichokes

sprigs of flowering broccoli rabe

whole garlic cloves

morning star faux sausage

pineapple

oreos

mini-snickers bars

ring dings

fudge

in our orgiastic feasting, we surpassed ourselves before managing to fry up our marshmallows, cinnamon roll dough in a tube, and frozen butter slices. You can also fry beer, but we drank all ours.