Deep Fried and Delicious

by Jo Robertson

Okay, here’s the thing. I just lost ten pounds on Weight Watchers, and I’m feeling a tad smug and a bit self-righteous.

Almost wanna do the Nanna, Nanna Dance.

So I've been thinking of healthy foods even as I crave all kinds of sweets and fried goodies.

Last weekend the city of Stockton, California, held its annual Asparagus Festival. Since I live in the luscious San Joaquin Valley with its rich agricultural bounties, we have a lot of festivals: the Strawberry Festival (a favorite of mine), the Garlic Festival (I kid you not), and the Asparagus Festival among them.

I watched the news about the Asparagus Festival on television, learned it was touted by Sunset Magazine as the best festival ever.

Jeopardy even had a question about it:

"Stockton, California, doesn't have a festival for Britney Spears, but it does for one of these green spears." Would you have guessed correctly?

The TV segment showed thousands of volunteers dipping this beautiful, lovely asparagus into a batter and then deep frying it. Now I love asparagus. Cold or hot, it’s a delicious and healthy vegetable.

But deep-fried? OMG! I admit it’s probably very tasty, but why take a lovely, good-for-you veggie and make it unhealthy?

Now I can see deep-fried Twinkies. They’re unhealthy from the get go, so why not? But veggies deep-fried.

That’s just plain evil.

While surfing the Net I found other deep fried anomalies.

Like Deep Fried Pickles. And Deep Fried Coke.

You can view the coke recipe at http://www.ehow.com/how_5557181_make-deep-fried-coke.html

I was really interested in that one (momentarily forgetting all about Weight Watchers) because I figured I could substitute Pepsi for the Coke, right? There's no sugar in the batter -- they figure the can of coke has enough -- but the final fried ball is rolled in cinnamon and dusted with powdered sugar, then drizzled with -- yep, you guessed it -- Coke syrup!

What about you? Come across any unusual foods (with or without the deep frying)? What’s your favorite unhealthy snack? Okay, and in the name of national health, what’s your fave HEALTHY snack?

What does this have to do with writing, you say? I changed a recent Advanced Placement Language question to fit our romance readers.

"Write about a novel in which a food or banquet scene plays an important role in the book."

The AP folks intended the students to write about the banquet scene in Hamlet or the one in Macbeth where Banquo's ghost appears, but I tweaked the question to fit our romance readers.

Can you think of a food or banquet scene from a romance novel that plays an important part in the book?