Pie and vodka

I’m not giving up on the pie crust thing, not going to let a little lard and flour conquer me. So I put enough pressure on myself not to fail again. I’m going to a potluck concert tonight and I’m bringing apple pie. This morning I went to the farmers market and found my favorite pie apples, apples that are only available here for a couple of weeks in the fall—Stayman Winesaps. Apple pie is about the only thing I can bring tonight. There is no other food in my house unless I decide to invent something with Cream of Wheat. (Actually, I was considering the options. Do you think Cream of Wheat could adapt to a savory dish? Kind of like a polenta thing? I could make curried Cream of Wheat with almonds and dried cranberries. What if I told them it was an Afghani dish from the tribal regions . . . probably not.)

Recently I became intrigued with a supposedly foolproof pie crust recipe that gave me reason for hope. The secret ingredient? Vodka. Here’s the thing—you have to beware of eating the raw crust dough. You know how there are all those little scraps and things that fly out of the food processor and you know they are unsanitary so you eat them raw to keep the kitchen clean? They have vodka in them. So in the middle of a lovely Saturday afternoon, I’m in the kitchen baking apple pie but I’m like a soused June Cleaver.

A number of foodie bloggers have written about this pie crust, originally from Cooks Illustrated. (Here’s the post from Smitten Kitchen, one of my favorite bloggers  http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/11/pie-crust-101.)  I made it in one big flop-over crust à la Martha Stewart and used Martha’s filling recipe for Bottom Crust Apple Pie.

The dough worked beautifully. It just came out of the oven. It smells incredible and it looks pretty darned good. Tonight we'll see how it tastes. Maybe vodka was the secret all along.

Calm in the storm

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:28

Today Pastor Mark preached in the Book of Jonah, about how Jonah ran away from God and God came after him. Whoa, that was an eye opener! This God of ours is no wuss. How many times have I run away from God? At this point the count of my run-away episodes is just one less than the count of the times I’ve come back. Thankfully he is a forgiving God.

And how about the strategies I use to avoid God? I say I’m having issues with “organized religion” or that I’m too busy or I’m ignoring God because I’m angry with him. Or I get stuck in that flower child I’m-okay-you’re-okay version of faith, feeling that everyone has a valid point of view when it comes to truths about a higher power. The trouble with the I’m-okay-you’re-okay thing is that it keeps me swirling around in my own self-righteousness without any real convictions or accountability. And when trouble comes into my life—as it certainly does—and I’m only relying on myself, then I’m hanging on to thin air. Thin air doesn’t work well—I’ve tried it. I need God.

Consider what happened to Jonah. Jonah got cocky and ran in the opposite direction from God. Jonah thought he knew better. God had to send a whopper of a storm to get Jonah’s attention. And, as Pastor Mark said, God left no doubt about who is in control. God has sent me some whopper storms too and he finally got my attention. It is through storms and suffering that God reveals himself. If there were no troubles in my life, I would not have turned to him in desperation. If my self-sufficiency had been enough to survive life’s storms then I would not have learned the peace that comes through trust in God. God calms the storm.

Chesapeake

The Chesapeake Bay is a vital part of my family. My father grew up on the Bay, in a community called Neeld Estate and the Xander boys sailed on the Bay and ate what they could pull out of it. And they passed the love of the Bay to the next generation. For years my brother Mark and his family have lived on Kent Island, on the Maryland Eastern Shore. Every year in September, Mark's family hosted a huge Xander family crab feast at their house. But this past April, my brother Mark was murdered by his next-door neighbor in the front yard of that house on Kent Island. For the first time in many years, this year there was no Xander crab feast. So my sister and I spent the day around Annapolis, including eating crabcakes at a quiet little restaurant on the water. We talked about Mark, cried, and honored the strong bond of family. It was bittersweet.

So, in honor of my little brother, here's the crabcake recipe that I've been refining for at least 30 years. I hope he would approve.

Maryland Crab Cakes

1 lb. crabmeat (backfin is best) cleaned gently

¾ cup crushed saltines

1 tsp Old Bay seasoning

2 eggs beaten

½ cup finely chopped herbs (parsley, with a little green onion or chives)

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce + dash Tabasco

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

Mix all ingredients except crabmeat. Pour mixture over crabmeat and mix gently with wooden spoon.

Refrigerate for an hour before molding into crabcakes. Fry in pan with oil and butter. (Or spray lightly with olive oil and bake in 375 degree oven for 30 minutes, turning after 15 minutes.)

Four servings.

Serve with sauce—mayonnaise, Dijon, lemon juice and capers.

Womanhood, piecrust, and Rachel's tomato tart

Last week I had come to the conclusion that I was a total failure as a woman. I was having people over for dinner and, as one final tribute to the waning days of summer, I planned to bake my once venerated lemon meringue pie. Total piecrust fail. Despite my respectful treatment of the unbaked crust, and despite my use of ceramic pie weights, the crust shrunk down like a . . . well, it shrunk down to a mere shadow of its former self. So I sprinkled the warm, shrunken crust with sugar and cinnamon and ate it. I felt obligated to hide the evidence of my failure, which of course was a yet another version of failure.

Then I called in the reserves. My friend Kath came down from Gettysburg and baked a piecrust suitable for the lemon meringue pie. It was a good pie but my feminine ego was crushed by my failure.

When I was in Seattle last month my daughter-in-law, Rachel, made an incredible heirloom tomato tart. Rachel is such a woman that she baked the tart for 3-year-old Theo’s picnic birthday party while carrying newborn Ignatius on her hip. So I got the recipe from Rachel and made the tart. It’s perfect—perfect crust, perfect filling, and simply beautiful. I feel like a woman again. Thanks, Rachel!

Rachel’s Heirloom Tomato Tart

Crust:

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flower

½ cup butter, cubed and chilled

1½ cups grated parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons ice water (or more, as needed)

½ cup grated parmesan cheese

Topping:

11 ounces chevre

2 tablespoons cream

3 tablespoons fresh basil, finely chopped

½ teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper

6 medium heirloom tomatoes, uniform size

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Sea salt

Combine sea salt, flour, butter, and parmesan in a food processor and pulse quickly to get a sandy texture with some pea size pieces of butter. With a few more pulses, blend in the ice water. The dough should stick together when you pinch it between two fingers. Roll out dough to even rectangle and place in pan, pressing across the bottom and working towards the sides and up to form a rim. Chill the tart shell for 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the tart shell from the refrigerator and poke a few times with a fork. Cover the tart with parchment paper or aluminum foil and fill with pie weights or dry beans. Place on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Take shell from oven, remove parchment paper and weights, return shell to oven, and bake for another 10 minutes, until deep golden brown. Remove and sprinkle with ½ cup shredded parmesan. Let cool completely.

In a medium bowl, combine the chevre, cream, basil, and black pepper, and place mixture in an even layer in the cooled pastry shell.

Slice the tomatoes and arrange in a nice pattern. Top with a drizzle of the olive oil, sea salt, and garnish with more fresh basil.

Cobalt confession

It was the humane thing to do. I had to buy it to rescue it from the indignity of sitting on a shelf in the discount store.

It was dark outside, raining and windy. I should have been at home ironing napkins. But I went out to see if I could find a new bathroom rug like the old bathroom rug that got ruined when I spilled bleach on it. As I was walking through the back of the cluttered discount store I glanced down the cookware aisle. There among the cheese graters and the cheap Teflon frying pans I saw something blue and noble. I walked toward it, thinking it was going to be an inferior imitation, not the real thing. It was indeed the real thing—a Le Creuset cobalt blue buffet casserole, 12-inch diameter.

It was half the retail price, and even at that it was expensive for me, especially since I wasn’t planning the purchase. I paced up and down the aisle. I put it in my cart and walked around the store, thinking, thinking, examining my conscience. I flirted with the front of the store, wondering if I should put it back, when three Armenian men presumed I was in line and stood behind me. Or maybe they were Russian. That did it—I was afraid that the Armenian men would get the blue pan if I put it back on the shelf. I didn’t want them to take it back to Armenia and boil goat meat in it. They simply could not appreciate it.

So I bought it, all the while considering that it was returnable, that perhaps I could foster it for a few days until it was safe to bring it back to the store. I brought it home and washed it. I put it on top of my stove. I introduced it to the other cookware and noted that it looked especially beautiful next to its cousin, my beloved Le Creuset cobalt blue Dutch oven.

I just pulled out the Barefoot Contessa’s recipe for sole meunière and I think I have the perfect pan to cook it in.

Little Edie

This afternoon I was in the check-out line at the grocery store. The woman in front of me was chatting with me about the rag magazines near the check-out lines. She was buying fresh flowers and two huge party platters of fruit. She was beautifully coiffed and she was wearing a pressed white blouse, khaki slacks, and cute little flat shoes with flowers on them. I was buying twenty cans of cat food, cat litter, and a 3-way light bulb. I was wearing sweat pants, black clogs, and a black t-shirt covered with—what else?—cat hair.

My purchases rolled along on the belt and I had a sudden objective view of myself that made me shudder. I saw myself as a disheveled, crazy old cat lady.

Last week I watched an old documentary film, Grey Gardens, about a mother and daughter, relatives of Jackie Kennedy, who lived in a run-down, formerly grand house in East Hampton. They lived in squalor with a bunch of free-range cats on their beds and raccoons in the attic. The mother (Edith Bouvier Beale—Big Edie) and the daughter (Edith Bouvier Beale—Little Edie) were beyond weird. Were they totally nuts or just incredibly eccentric? Probably both nuts and eccentric. I felt almost hypnotized watching Little Edie, a former debutante and failed actress, who wrapped her head in turbans that appeared to be made out of drapery panels and old sweaters. She paraded through the film in a variety of costumes, danced, marched, and hammed it up for camera close-ups. And she tore up entire loaves of Wonder Bread to feed to the resident raccoons. There was a mountain of empty cat food cans in the corner of the living room.

Lord help me, I’m turning into Little Edie.

A love incorruptible

Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with a love incorruptible.

Ephesians 6:24

Pastor Mark has been preaching on Ephesians for months and months—the theology, the discussion of the roles of parents and children and husbands and wives, and the whole armor of God section. But, to me the final blessing contains the most simple, beautiful words in the entire book of the Bible—“with a love incorruptible.”

For us human beings, love seems painfully corruptible. Though parents usually have good intentions, they love their children imperfectly. Misguided intentions and the weight of worldly obligations can drive a wedge between parent and child. Husbands and wives get side-tracked by selfishness, lust, or boredom and fail to live up to the expectations and promises made on their wedding day. Even the idea of loving one’s neighbor continually falls short. We are human, far from perfect, and we never seem to achieve that incorruptible love. By its nature, life corrupts.

So how do I learn how to love that way? The example of Jesus is how I learn. He lived a perfect, sinless life and he gave his life for my salvation. That is a love incorruptible.

Loss of innocence

“For in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”

Ecclesiastes 1:18

I really am not fond of that passage from Ecclesiastes. It’s enough to make a person eschew knowledge. (Does it seem like I just got an assignment to use the word eschew in a sentence? I could have said avoid but I’m feeling rather pretentious in a wordy way and I’ve chosen to use the word eschew. That’s the problem with having a blog of my own—there’s no one to stop me. Tis more the pity.)

So I read that passage from Ecclesiastes about knowledge increasing sorrow and I kept thinking of Robert Preston in The Music Man, singing about the sadder-but-wiser girl:

I snarl, I hiss: How can ignorance be compared to bliss?
I spark, I fizz for the lady who knows what time it is.
I cheer, I rave for the virtue I'm too late to save
The sadder-but-wiser girl for me.

Is ignorance bliss? What happens when we realize that life will never be what we expected it to be? Does it harden us when we truly understand the fallible nature of humankind?  Does it diminish our own spirits when we learn that we can’t trust our fellow human beings?

Ten years ago today, on the morning of September 11, 2001, I was at work at my office outside of Washington, DC. The airplanes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York. A plane flew into the Pentagon and another into a field in Pennsylvania. We heard a rumor that a bomb had exploded near the White House. And my first thought was, is John okay? I prayed, please, Lord, let him be okay. John was my ex-husband and he worked near the White House. We had an ugly divorce, yet from my heart, my first concern was about him. Fast forward. . . . he was unhurt on September 11, 2001, but died three years later from brain cancer.

I know this sounds like I need serious medication—I’m mixing Ecclesiastes, Robert Preston, 9-11, and my former husband. But it makes sense to me in that swampy mess inside my head. It’s about a loss of innocence. Scripture tells us that with knowledge comes sorrow. This sadder-but-wiser girl wanted to believe that the world was a safe place, that no terrorist plot could ever reach American soil. This sadder-but-wiser girl wanted to believe that guy met girl, they fell in love, they married, had a happy family, and did not part ‘til death. This sadder-but-wiser girl didn’t want to lose her innocence. This sadder-but-wiser girl didn't want to know that there is grief in wisdom.

Runaway

“You can't run away from things, Siddalee. You've got to stay in this house where your life is. Don't you think I want to run off and hide in a bookmobile or join the circus? We all do. But we have responsibilities.”

—from Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells

Doggonit, I do want to run away from home. The woes of the world are weighing heavy on me, especially the death of my brother. Funny how sometimes I go through the days, doing the mundane things of life, and it doesn’t sink in that my brother was murdered. And then it hits me again—that in early April he was senselessly shot and killed. He’s gone and I’ll never see him again. Sometimes it’s just too real—like now.

Rationally I know that I can’t run far enough, that I just have to be present, to stand firm and take the blows of grief. I know that life is fragile and sometimes sorrowful. I know that I have a responsibility to my family, to myself, and to God to endure. But I’d love to hide in a bookmobile or join the circus. Just in case, maybe I should learn to walk on a tightrope or swallow fire or something.

Southern style tomato sauce with pasta

My friend Kathy’s brother is in the final days of his life and has been put into hospice care. They asked him what he wanted to eat. His choice—liver and onions and banana cream pie. What? They can give me liver and onions and banana cream pie if I’m dying and I’m totally unconscious. Can’t you just see those hospice people pureeing liver and onions, throwing in a pie, and putting it in my feeding tube? I really don’t want to go to my maker having just eaten liver and onions. It would be my version of hell.

The whole idea of food for terminal illness got me to thinking about what I would really want to eat, presuming I wanted to eat at all on my death bed. If I can request music for my funeral then surely I can request food for before my funeral. (I’ll come back to haunt you if you play any of the following at my funeral: Amazing Grace, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, or Country Roads. Given time to think, I’ll probably add to the list of banned songs.)

So here’s one of my most perfect recipes, what I could eat every day, including my final meal:

Southern Style Tomato Sauce with Pasta

1 32 ounce jar Rao marinara sauce

1 stick unsalted butter (or more to taste)

1 pound imported capellini

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese (not the stuff in the green can!)

Warm the marinara sauce over low heat. Meanwhile, cook the capellini in boiling salted water until cooked al dente. Drain the pasta. Add butter to sauce until it just starts to melt. Put cooked capellini onto a platter, pour marinara sauce on top, and add grated Parmesan.

Mucous train like a snail

Inspired by the last day of August, a freewriting exercise . . . choose a line from a book, eyes closed, and just write, working up to the line.

The Dog of the South—Charles Portis, p. 124

“The old man left a mucous train behind him like a snail.”

“Maveen! Maveen!” he shouted, “get down here and find me a switch so I can beat your scrawny ass.” Maveen and I were sitting on the roof again, trying to see if we could get a glimpse of the big cargo ships sailing up the channel toward the port in Baltimore. Maveen didn’t have a scrawny ass and soon as her daddy hollered for her to find a switch he’d forget what he was mad about. Everyone called her daddy Young Chester or Big C but he was neither young nor big. He was a runt of a man, old as the hills, and purely mean, but in his old age Big C forgot what made him so mean. Still, out of habit, he yelled and threatened Maveen just so he could blow off steam. Maveen said she wasn’t sure how old her daddy was but he lost his arm fighting in the big war and was a widower twice over when he married Maveen’s mother, Ada, who was only 16 at the time. We figured he had to be at least 50 years older than his teenaged bride. It was a big town scandal when Big C and Ada got married—a shotgun wedding no less. Big C gained the loud disapproval of the town’s women and the unspoken esteem of the town’s men. In a small town like that no one’s sins were kept secret. Maveen had a crush on a merchant marine who called himself Ace. Ace was working a big cargo ship out of Baltimore. Maveen had met him down at the beach early in the summer. She gave Ace a huge shark’s tooth—the pride of her daddy’s collection—just because he admired it so. He told her he would hang it on a chain around his neck, that it would be near his heart to keep remind him of her. Maveen ate up that sweet talk. She was sure she was in love. Ace sent her occasional postcards from ports in Africa and he promised he was going to see her as soon as he got back to Baltimore. He wrote that he would be back sometime in late summer, so around about the first of August she made me sit with her for hours, scanning the bay for the cargo ship that she was certain she would recognize. Just before Labor Day I was sure that all the waiting and pacing and sitting on the roof had finally made her crazy. She swore that one of those big ships—the one with the big orange stripe on the hull—was Ace’s ship. She said he flashed her some sort of signal from the deck. I couldn’t talk any sense into her and I couldn’t convince her to wait until she heard from Ace. She insisted that he was in port and she was going to get to him before she had to wait one minute longer. She grabbed a six-pack of National Bohemians and a bucket of ice and sat them at the feet of her daddy who was sitting on the back porch. He chuckled and said, “You do something wrong, Maveen? You trying to make up to me for something?” She said, “No, Daddy, not at all. I just thought you looked thirsty.” He drained one after the other and his head began to nod just as the sun slipped behind the pine trees. She grabbed the keys off the hook in the kitchen and headed for her daddy’s truck in the side yard. Big C was old and drunk and had just one arm but he caught up with her before she could get the truck into drive. He jumped off the porch and reached through the truck window and grabbed the steering wheel. “Just where you think you’re going, missy?” Big C didn’t know that Maveen was as strong as he was and nearly as mean. She pushed the door open as hard as she could, smashing her daddy in the face and knocking him to the ground. She floored the ignition and flew down the driveway, spewing gravel in her wake. He pulled himself out of the dirt and hobbled after the truck in vain. The old man left a mucous train behind him like a snail.

Grandbabies

My children have made me proud in so many ways. But the best thing they have ever done for me is to give me grandchildren. I have five now and I've spent most of August visiting with them in Telluride and Seattle. Here they are in order of birth.

This is Scarlet. She is five years old, she lives in Seattle, and she just started school today!

This is Lucy. She lives in Austin and she is going to be five years old on September 10th.

This is Harper. She lives in Austin and she's going to be five years old on September 10th also. Isn't that an amazing coincidence?

This is Theo and he lives in Seattle. Theo just turned three a few days ago and we had a birthday picnic for him on Lake Washington.

This is Ignatius, born two months ago, the newest addition to the Seattle contingent of grandbabies. Aren't they fabulous?

Parsnips

I’m feeling bad for parsnips. Parsnips are America’s least favorite vegetable. I don’t detest parsnips, but truthfully I haven’t paid much attention to them and don’t think they’ve ever been on my shopping list. So now I feel like I’m part of the problem. Parsnips aren’t pretty; they’re not the sexy darlings of trend-setting foodies; they’re just lowly root vegetables.

This information about the popularity of vegetables came out in a poll by Consumer Reports this year. Here’s a summary of the vegetables American like and dislike.

The most popular vegetables were:

§          lettuce

§          tomatoes

§          carrots

§          potatoes (not sweet potatoes)

§          broccoli

§          corn

§          peppers

By contrast, the least popular vegetables were:

§          parsnips

§          Swiss chard

§          bok choy

§          turnips and rutabagas

§          artichokes

§          eggplant

§          okra

Parsnips were the biggest loser—87 percent said they rarely or never ate them. Parsnips lost out to okra? I thought the slime factor would have put okra at the top of the least popular list. I've cooked with everything else on the unpopular list, and lest you think I'm prejudiced against unattractive root vegetables, I must confess that I'm a bit of a rutabaga fanatic. I guess I just don’t understand my fellow countrymen and their vegetable preferences. Frankly, I thought potatoes would be on the top of the popular list. Isn’t this the supersized nation that eats a ton of French fries per capita each year?

I’m trying to do my part to rescue the humble parsnip from the top of the hated vegetable list. So I found a recipe for a parsnip side dish that sounds delish. Please note that I haven’t made this dish yet, but I’m going to look for parsnips at the farmers market and try it. Soon, I promise. (I have not been compensated by the National Parsnip Advisory Board for this product endorsement.)

Sauteed Parsnips and Carrots with Honey and Rosemary

(source Bon Appetit, November 2007)

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 pound carrots (about 4 large), peeled, cut into 3¼ by ¼ inch pieces

1 pound large parsnips, peeled, halved lengthwise, cored, cut into 3¼ by ¼ inch pieces

Coarse kosher salt

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary

1 ½ tablespoons honey (such as heather, chestnut, or wildflower)

3 ounces sliced pancetta (optional)

Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add carrots and parsnips. Sprinkle with coarse kosher salt and pepper. Sauté until vegetables are beginning to brown at edges, about 12 minutes. DO AHEAD: Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and chill.

Add butter, rosemary, and honey to vegetables. Toss over medium heat until heated through and vegetables are glazed, about 5 minutes. Season to taste with more salt and pepper, if desired. 

Optional: To add richness, sauté three ounces sliced pancetta until crisp; crumble over before serving.

NOTE: Carrots can take a bit longer to cook than parsnips, so if the carrots are large and mature, sauté them for a minute or two to soften slightly before adding the parsnips.

Truth, fairy tales, belief, and unbelief

She asked me if I ever doubted the existence of God. “Yes, I often have doubts,” I admitted, “but I prefer belief to unbelief.”

She said, “But I just don’t get it—the whole thing about Adam and Eve, the predictions about the birth of Jesus, his miracles, his death on the cross to save us, and his rising from the dead. Doesn’t it seem like a fairy tale to you?”

No, it’s not a fairy tale. To me, the difference between truth and a fairy tale is that the truth changes your life and a fairy tale is just a story. So whenever I have doubts I remind myself of the passage from the Gospel of Mark where a father asks if Jesus can cast out a demon from his son:

And Jesus said to him, “If you can! All things are possible for one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24)

Although this father’s natural inclination was to be a skeptic, he saw that indeed Jesus was able to heal his afflicted son. His skepticism dissolved when he saw tangible results of the existence of God.

Like the troubled father, I see tangible results of the existence of God. The most powerful result I see is when lives are changed because of belief—the lives of others and my own life. Belief gives my life focus, a grounding that I could never find in unbelief. And because of that belief I know all things are possible.

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.)