Pharm Cooking: Preferring predictability
By LOU GREENHAW
Contributing writer
Summer is rapidly coming to an end. School has started, and in just days I can reclaim my house from the mess that Carson will be transferring to his room at Tabor. My dining room looks like a command center for a terrorist sport's fanatic. There is computer equipment everywhere mixed in with a football, sports shoes and clothes, a jump rope and who knows what else.
Carson spent the summer in Tulsa as a youth pastor at a new church. He had a wonderful summer with an eventful homecoming. He called 55 miles south of Wichita where his pickup truck had broken down. I began trying to find a trailer and something to pull it to go get him. Then he called again and was going.
He called the second time from where he was stalled in the toll booth. We lined up the truck and trailer and were ready to head out when the phone rang again. He got it going. When he got almost to Walton, it died for good. However, that was within towing distance and our church friends, the Terrells from Lehigh, towed him home.
He quickly unloaded his stuff into the center of the kitchen floor, and they towed the truck off. By now it was almost midnight. He had planned to go to Kansas City to see his brother the next day. I needed my van to use for deliveries at the pharmacy on Thursday because the other pharmacy van would be in Salina at a meeting. So we played fruit basket upset. Carson took grandma's car, grandma took my car knowing that we had to use it Thursday afternoon, and I walked!
So I'm ready for Tabor to get underway so we can have at least a predictable life. We're signed up to ride the parent bus to Texas for the first football game, so we are getting pretty hyped.
Amidst all this Carson chaos, the garden has been producing buckets of tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and cucumbers. I made two-gallon batches of salsa last weekend and still had to put tomatoes in the freezer. Delivery man Jim gave me a sack of okra which I fried. I am going to use the leftovers in an okra salad. It's a way to have fried okra and still use up some garden produce.
My mom is the best okra fryer in the world. She uses an old iron skillet. I'm not positive, but I think around the time she was born in Oklahoma, they issued an iron skillet with a birth certificate.
FRIED OKRA SALAD
4 slices bacon
shortening to fry okra
1 pound fresh okra sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
cornmeal to coat okra
1/4 cup onion, chopped
1/4 cup green pepper, chopped
1 large tomato, chopped
Fry bacon until crisp. Drain and crumble. Add shortening to bacon drippings and heat. Coat okra with cornmeal and fry until crisp. Combine onion, pepper and tomato at room temperature. Add the bacon to okra to reheat just as the okra is done. Drain the grease from the okra. Pour hot okra over tomato mixture and toss. Serve immediately.
