I'm not even pretending to be healthy here...

Hello, my darling little lovelies. This post will be somewhat of a different format this evening. You see, I stuffed up. Nothing terrible, I promise! You see, I accidentally invented last night, and I didn't have my camera handy to take photos for you! I am so sorry. Truly, because in this case, you would have jumped through the screen to get at what I am about to tell you about.

JP and I have a very good friend here named M. You see, M is from French-speaking Canada, and works for the consulate here in Sydney. Well, he did until today. You see, he got transfered to Colombia recently (Can you say hello vacation?! Cause I sure can...) and as a farewell, I wanted to cook him dinner. He mentioned to me once that he had never had real at-home fried anything, to which I naturally reacted with abhorrence. Naturally. So, my grand plan: make M a fried feast to die for. I pulled out all the stops; Deep Fried Chicken from this post, buttered potatoes, green beans, and to top it all off, Beer Battered Onion Rings.

This is where I started to invent. You see, I had everything I needed except the chicken for this. I had onions, flour, garlic, beans, potatoes... everything. I even had some buttermilk for some strange reason. So on my way home from work, I swung through my most reliable grocer and grabbed some chicken to fry up. Off home I went, super excited about making this dinner. I just knew it was going to be epic. Well, I got home, started cutting up the onions, grabbed some flour and added an egg. I went to the fridge, and....

NO BEER!!!!!


I looked at the clock, and saw that it would be cutting it close, but I could just make it to the bottle shop before it closed. Then I remembered I had already put the oil on the stove. And trust me, the thought of leaving 3 liters of hot oil on my stove top while I ran to the store just didn't sit well with me. I needed to go to Plan B. The only problem was, I had never made Beer Battered Onion Rings before, so there really was no Plan B. I was just gonna look up the recipe online and go from there. Enter Inventive Craig, stage right.

I didn't really even think to hard about what I did. I just kind of threw everything together and hoped for the best. And, trust me, best is what I got. The Onion Rings were super crispy and light, and the batter I came up with was divine! M couldn't stop eating them. In fact, neither could JP or I.

Really it was a stroke of cooking genius. I already mentioned that I had started with the batter when I made the terrible discovery. I briefly contemplated using whiskey, but then thought better of it, as any spirits here tend to cost roughly the equivalent of a small house in Manhattan. I dug through my fridge and saw the buttermilk. And Tabasco. And it was like a little halo of light, with that 'idea music' you get in the movies. I poured about half the bottle of Tabasco and most of the buttermilk into the batter, added some salt and pepper, and mixed it up to a consistency of wall paper paste. A bit thinner, actually. I really was going on a hope and a prayer here. Well, really, just the one time I had seen Paula Deen make Onion Rings on tv, and vaguely remembered what the consistency looked like that I was going for.

Turns out, I am a cooking genius. Make these tonight. And for thanks, I will be accepting donations of the cash variety. Plane tickets to Colombia are expensive, you know...


xoxo Craig

In which I corrupt an Aussie.

I corrupted my Aussie friend. I didn't mean to, I just wanted to make him one of my favorite things from being raised in the South.  I fed him his first ever dinner of Southern Fried Chicken with all the accompanying vegetables. You know, potato salad and coleslaw. I am officially terrible. I have created a monster. In between his sounds of delight and mouthfuls of chicken, I got the question... "What else can you deep fry??" Then his boyfriend gave me a dirty look. And so it starts. My bad, darlin! At least I hope you enjoyed my cooking...

And now for a little, teensy confession. Although I consider myself to be a good Southern boy, I am in fact, not a true Southerner. I was born in New York City. There, I said it, I'm sorry!!! In my defense, my parents moved us to rural North Carolina when I was 3, so for all it's worth, I claim the South as my own. That, and I have a pretty strong dislike of New York for some strange reason... except for the shopping and the food. Those parts are great. But, at the end of the day, the country of North Carolina has my heart. I mean, just look at it! Who wouldn't love it?

So, the funny thing about growing up in the middle of North Carolina with parents (yes, both of them) that grew up in the dreaded North, is that I was raised on mostly Northern fair. That is, until my mom became a minister to this tiny little church, in this tiny little country town, in an even more rural area than where we lived. All of the sudden, it was HELLO FRIED FOOD!!! It totally changed my tastes. What is this wonderfully crispy chicken substance? What is this absolutely decadent sweat brown drink?? Deep Fried Chicken? Sweat Tea!? Yes, I will have more of that please!

Needless to say, my parents weren't too thrilled that their children were eating what they deemed 'unhealthy' food, but, what where they gonna do, tell the cute old church ladies that we couldn't have any?

Now, the down side is that my mom never learned to cook these wonderful Southern delicacies. I really can't blame her, though. She and my dad were very busy enjoying the country.

So, I have had to learn them on my own, with much help from some of the wonderful church ladies at my mom's various churches over the years. The one thing that I never got an actual recipe for was Fried Chicken. When I would ask, I would get very vague, slightly dismissive answers that usually included things like, "oh, you know, just add some flavors then drop it in the deep fat fryer." Seems the recipes are held very close to the heart. 

So, off to the internets I went. I ended up at the doorstep of someone I consider to be the Queen of the South. A one Ms. Paula Deen. Thank you ma'am, for finally giving me a delicious, fast, and easy recipe for that wonderfully delicious fried chicken. And now, here it is for you, my dear readers. Make it. Love it. Share it. Then go for a run, cause really... you will feel the need...

xoxo Craig

Click here for: Paula Deen's Southern Fried Chicken