I keep posting videos with the hashtag #foodblogger in it and it occurs to me, I haven’t posted jack shit on the website since the New Orleans trip. In my defense, it was along ass post and I figured it would keep ya’ll busy for a while.

I have been writing, though. Working on the first cookbook which is picking up where the Sunday Suppers series left off. I’m going to have to make some money somewhere and from my perspective, I’d like to have a tangible product for people to buy, so the plan for Sunday Suppers has become a cookbook. When it comes out, it’ll be called “Another Damn Cookbook: Sunday Suppers”. As I’m testing the recipes to make sure they work in an average home kitchen, I can’t help but notice everything is brown. I mean sure, there are other colors in there, but it’s largely earthtones. Southern food is like that. I really want to call the book “Fifty Shades of Brown”, but I’ve got the whole Another Damn branding thing to consider.

I am working on different branding for other food related enterprises, but it’s too early to roll that out. Also, I have no idea how.

In other news, I finally got my hands on some green tomatoes and fried them up yesterday. They turned out as intended, so that was nice.

I’ve been trying to diet off and on. That doesn’t work, of course. I did fairly well for the first couple weeks back from New Orleans, but in the last two weeks, it’s gone to shit. I hate dieting. The food is depressing, it’s not much fun to cook, it’s less fun to eat and it just sucks the pleasure out of life. There’s also the knowledge of what it will take to get back down to 225 and then, worse, what I’d have to do to stay there.

I stayed down for so long, which was OK at the time because I had pretty much decided that my corporate persona and financial goals were more important than my immediate gratification and pleasure. God that sounds so fucked up now. Even more fucked up than that is the very real fact that my ability to lose all that weight and keep it off for all those years was a factor in my success.  I’ve written about that before. Fat discrimination is a very real thing. I wish it weren’t, but it is.

So here I am, bouncing around 265 and I’m seriously torn. I’d like to get back down to 225. I genuinely would. I also know that I can. And there are very real tangible benefits to getting back down. Mobility is one. I really would like to have that mobility back. Not just my personal articulations, but my ability to navigate a crowd. I miss that.

Holding me back are stupid things like my attitude. I really resent that it seems like I am less acceptable now. Oh, well. It’ll be or it won’t. Neither will matter in 50 years.

But this is a food blog, so let’s address some food.

Overall, the fried green tomatoes turned out fairly well. As mentioned in the video, the iron skillet was a mistake, at least in that context. I was using it on one of those portable induction burner things and apparently the induction bit is only about 6 inches in diameter, and did not heat the pan evenly. Works great for deep frying though, so there’s that for next time.

Skinning the tomatoes, albeit a bitch, worked well for the breading. As I’ve stated before, fried vegetables should be about the fried vegetable and not the breading. Or the dipping sauce, usually ranch.

I made two for this one, neither of which made it to the video. I mean, shit, I only have 59 seconds.

The flavor on the black pepper peach gastrique was exactly what I wanted, but I should have let it reduce longer. I also threw down a ginger-soy concoction at the last minute that turned out fairly well. Next time I’ll use arrowroot instead of cornstarch to thicken, it’s not a sauce that should be cloudy, but the flavor was what I wanted and did not obfuscate my green tomato flavor.

If you decide to peel your green tomatoes, go five minute in the boiling water, making sure you fully submerge each one, and then plunge into the ice water bath to keep them from going squiffy.

Until next time, happy cooking.