This latest newsletter from www.rickdestefanis.com comes to you with a subject that is of almost religious significance in the South. And before I go further, fair warning and a disclaimer: You may want to avert your eyes if you aren’t from the South, and shield your device’s screen from children and easily offended individiuals such as snowflakes. Yes, you’re about to read words of near obscene description. This article may include such offensive language as bacon, dipped in egg, or rolled in corn meal.

Yes, we here in the South tend to put a number of things in that quasi–near religious catagory, including college football, NASCAR, deer hunting, and well maybe a few others, but one of them for sure is fried food. If you’re a vegan, or from California or one of those other third-world states, you may wish to go now, but we have many converts, perhaps even your next door neighbors, who have seen the light and realized it’s the one on the electonic thermometer telling them the grease has reached that perfect 350 degree temperature.

Fried is a word spoken with reverence in hallowed kitchens from Wilmington to Waco and everywhere in between. Fried is a word that emotes culinary dreams of near orgasmic delight. We can begin with the simple and the obvious: fried chicken, French fries, fried eggs, but like Forrest Gump’s army buddy, Bubba, when he described the ways to fix shrimp, a near endless litany of other fried foods can be named: fried okra, fried green tomatoes, fried catfish, fried oysters, fried venison chops, fried pork chops, fried bacon, fried sausage, country fried steak, fried corn, fried egg-plant, fried….I think you get the idea. 

The problem with frying is that it is as much art as it is science. Which is to say, don’t go buy your fried chicken just anywhere and expect it to be good. If it’s from any of the major fast food chains it’ll be greasy and tasteless. The best way to get top-notch fried food is to find you a good fry-cook and marry her. Anyway, I’ll leave you with a quote from one of the best fry-cooks I’ve ever known, my old pappy-in-law: “A good fry-cook can make a huntin’ boot taste good, but fast food restaurants have ruined the art.”  

The latest from the writing world is that Valley of the Purple Hearts broke a thousand reviews on Amazon, and I finished the first draft of Ghost II–Specter of Betrayal. I am working steadily in hopes of getting it out by late Spring. There are a couple of knee replacements coming that may slow me up a bit, but soon as my pit crew at Campbell’s Clinic in Memphis get my new tires installed, I’ll be back in the race. I hope all my readers had a good Christmas, and I wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year.