3 new ways to fat

A couple of weeks ago I had a lovely birthday lunch with two of my dearest friends. All three of us were born in the same week, same year, same time zone. We went to a restaurant and made rather restrained, sensible lunch choices as befitted women who make restrained, sensible lunch choices. I honestly can’t remember what I had for lunch—as I said, it was restrained and sensible. And apparently it was completely forgettable. Dessert? A shared piece of deep-fried cheesecake. Unfortunately it didn’t live up to its promise. It was okay, not worthy of the lard factor—some sort of marbleized cheesecake, coated in a crusty thing and deep fried. It’s a shame that it wasn’t a dessert to die for because I was hoping it would be something so delicious that it wouldn’t matter about the calories, grams of fat, or days subtracted from my life. Oh, well. Life is full of disappointments.

Then I heard about the newest, hottest food at the Iowa State Fair this year. In honor of the butter cow’s 100^th birthday, food vendors at the fair were serving deep-fried butter on a stick. (Imagine my naiveté—I never even knew there was a specific cow that produces butter and I’m amazed to know that a cow could live 100 years.) Someone needs to explain to me how they get the butter on a stick and why it doesn’t just melt when it’s deep fried. If I put a lot of butter in a pan, melt it, and insert a stick in the pan isn’t that the same thing? That’s what I had for dinner tonight. And I've never knowingly gone to Iowa.

Paula Deen wouldn’t be surprised by any of this. After all, Paula Deen is the one who has a recipe for deep-fried butter balls. (You can see for yourself at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/paulas-fried-butter-balls-recipe/index.html.) The recipe is basically butter, cream cheese, and a pinch of flour, deep fried. Paula Deen is probably going to live to be 100 years old, like that butter cow, and we’re all going to feel like fools when we spend our lives eating transubstantiated fats. (Don’t write a letter to the editor to correct me—I know that I wrote transubstantiated but it’s a theological concept that I don’t have time to explain.)