The Remnants of the South

The scale informed me that I brought 5.5 lbs of Georgia back to California with me.

Awesome.

A co-worker informed me today that she was pregnant. She felt she needed to start telling people because her pants had started to get tight.

Honey! All of our pants are tight after the holidays! You had at least another month before you had to tell me. But CONGRATS! So Exciting!

You'd think, given what the scale told me on Sunday AM at our arrival about the approximate 5% increase in body mass, that I'd immediately embark upon a path of self-restraint.

But you'd be wrong, because we had green tomatoes from the last final output of our sad California Tomatoes who hate the onslaught of winter.

So, we did what anyone who returned from holidays in the south would do, and we coated them in flour, dipped them in egg, and breaded them in panko:



(You will note, we took pity on a few small red tomatoes too. FYI -- They turn to ketchup-like substances when deep-fried. We don't recommend it.)

And then, in true southern style, we brought the oil to somewhere between 350F and 375F (always hard to tell with a manual thermometer when the scale can actually move in the tube due to shaking):



And deep fried the tomatoes:



The final result was delicious (and even better when topped with horseradish and/or habanero-garlic mustard!):



If you have green tomatoes, I cannot recommend any use other than the salted, peppered, and fried green tomato use (possibly served with various mustard, horseradish, and other savory sauces), which, in my experience, is one of the great food pinnacles available on this planet today.