My daddy loved to cook, whether we were on a camping trip or at home. My momma was always delighted that he did, because she wasn’t what you would call a “domestic goddess.”

Not by a long shot.

She never learned to cook until after she married, and (as much as I loved my momma) I have to say she never mastered the art. Daddy, on the other hand, could have been a chef if he had so desired. The problem was that daddy hated cleaning up dishes. When he cooked, there were lots of messy dishes.

Daddy enjoyed chopping stuff. Maybe it’s a guy thing with the sharp knives, I don’t know. He’d start chopping fruit for a salad. His first bowl would be about the size for salad for a family of six. Then, he’d keep chopping. He kept graduating to bigger bowls until he had to have a bowl the size of a garbage can and could have fed the whole Dallas Cowboys football team.

Daddy also enjoyed deep fat frying, broiling, baking, and boiling. He liked to concoct new dishes.

At some point, my daddy discovered the joys of using aluminum foil instead of pots and pans for his oven experiments. He liked to take a round steak and hammer it thin, then fill it with finely chopped vegetables, roll it like a jelly roll, wrap it in foil and bake it. I liked that dish, but I went delirious when he cooked an onion or a cabbage!

He quartered either vegetable, put salt, pepper, a garlic clove and a strip or two of bacon in it, wrapped it and either baked it or threw it on the grill. Oh, my word! It was delicious! It’s the bacon, of course, that makes it so.

Even though I grew up watching daddy cook with foil, I very rarely used it until recently (when I got sick and tired of washing the broiler pan). Pam Anderson, the author of several cookbooks, had an article in USA Weekend called “It’s A Wrap.” She offers recipes that mix and match ten vegetables, a choice of meats, and three flavor options to create meals in 15 minutes! You simply mix them together and bake at 500 degrees.

For you vegetarians out there, Marcia, I’m thinking you could use a portabello mushroom, another vegetable, and one of the flavorings, and you’d probably love it. We have enjoyed the Italian flavoring on both chicken and pork. I plopped the cooked concoction on top of some pasta and added mozzarella cheese. With some fruit on the side, it made a great meal.

Print off Anderson’s recipes and give it a try. They are designed to serve four people; we halved it and the servings were generous. I’d offer one other flavoring combination: Tex-Mex!

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 4 large garlic cloves, minced
• 4 large green onions, thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup of chopped fresh cilantro
• 1/2 (to 3/4) cup of your favorite picanti sauce
• 1 tsp. each, salt and ground black pepper

While that cooks, make some guacamole and you have yourself a meal!

Anybody else have any flavoring ideas? Or, other recipes to cook in foil? Now that I’m “foiled again,” I almost like cooking!

Y’all, these days you don’t have to look far to find controversy. If you have the mind to do it, you can debate politics, the war in Iraq, the merits of various sports teams, or the price of tea in China. For me, the only controversy bubbling around here is:

Beans or No Beans.

That’s right. It’s a cold day, and I’m talking chili.

Here in Texas, there are chili aficionados who think that chili cooking is a science. Others think it is a high art form. In the summer time, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting another town having a chili cook-off. Why in thunder would anyone want to eat chili in the unrelenting Texas heat? That beats me, but folks do it.

It’s hilarious talking to some of the chili cooks, because chili making is a serious subject. There is no room for levity. Every one of them has a special recipe with a “secret” ingredient. Some cooks make chili with chicken. Those cooks aren’t from Texas, of course. Chili is made with beef!

At a chili cook-off, the cooks try to get exotic, and it can get pretty dadgum disgusting. I’ve tasted chili that purportedly contained ostrich, or buffalo, or quail, or squirrel, and one cook even claimed to have included armadillo. One can only hope that it wasn’t “road kill.” All those meats taste like chicken, if you were wondering. I’ve even seen vegetarian chili, which is just downright un-American, if you ask me. You didn’t ask me, but I told you anyway.

Now, I love to eat chili, but I don’t claim any secret recipe. Heck, I’ll eat Wolf Brand chili if I must. Neighbor, how long has it been since you had a big steaming bowl of Wolf Brand chili? Well, that’s too long.

My favorite chili recipe comes in a package:

And, my “secret” ingredient is:

Yep, the Two Alarm Chili is pretty darned good, and you can adjust it to be One Alarm, or No Alarm, if you choose. We usually make it about One and a Half Alarm. Add some beer to it, or drink the beer. Either way, it makes the chili go down good.

Again, the boiling controversy is Beans or no Beans. I want your point of view, so here is your chance to vote. If your state has already had the primary elections, you’ve already gotten the chance to practice voting. If not, then this will be a good exercise for you. Which do you choose? This handy counter will measure the velocity of your eruptions.

Beans or No Beans
	Gimme chili with beans!
	No beans sully my chili!
Free polls from Pollhost.com

We chose to add beans this time. I’ll spare you any commentary about the velocity of our eruptions.

If you have been around this blog before, you may be aware that I am a woman who loves bacon. I am a Texan, and we fry. Therefore, I prefer my food fried in bacon grease. I mean to tell you that even Brussel sprouts are palatable wrapped in bacon and deep fat fried.

But, I realize that I am getting older and should be eating a more healthy diet. I’ve never eaten much fish. Now, every magazine I pick up tells me I should be eating fish for its health benefits. The Omega-3 oils in fish protect the immune system and play a role in protecting the body from arthritis, inflammation, heart disease, depression, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and I forget what else.

The only fish (that wasn’t in a can) that I consumed as a child was crappie (pronounced as krŏp’ē, if you are unfamiliar with it). We were always excited when Daddy said “the crappie are running,” because that meant he was going fishing and there would be a fish fry! The fish was cut into filets, rolled in cornmeal and deep-fat fried. It was served with heaping mounds of fried potatoes, fried hush puppies, and lots of ketchup. Occasionally, one had a teaspoonful of cole slaw on the plate, but we considered it a waste of stomach space. We never discovered a way to deep-fat fry cole slaw.

I’ve only eaten baked fish a handful of times in my life, and I try hard not to gag at the table, because my Momma taught me manners. The most notable time was when Mr. Ex and I had a fancy-schmancy meal at a hotel in Colorado. I ordered a baked trout, and I was as surprised as a puppy with his first porcupine when that waiter placed the plate in front of me. That fish was staring me right in the eye! I have no idea what expression might have come over my face, but evidently the waiter had seen it before. He pulled out his chopping knife, whacked that fish’s head plumb off, scooped it on a plate and carried it away.

It was too late. I no longer had an appetite.

All that being said, I don’t know what came over me yesterday in the Kroger Store. I got a wild hair to buy a package of catfish (it’s a little known fact that my brother-in-law, C.S. Tucker is an internationally renowned expert on catfish farming) and decided to “oven fry” them. OK, I admit that I would have fried them in a deep-fat fryer if I had one. But, I didn’t get custody of the deep-fat fryer in the divorce settlement, so there you go.

[aside: Y’all do know the difference between a lawyer and a catfish, don’t you? One is a bottom-dwelling, scum-sucking scavenger. The other is a fish. Ba-dum-bum]

I went to the internet to find a recipe that might be acceptable. The first recipe for oven-fried catfish at Cooks.com indicated that the fish should be rolled in egg whites and then in crushed corn flakes. Ick! All I had in the cabinet were Frosted Flakes.

Tony the Tiger would not have thought that was “GRRRRRREAT!”

The second recipe called for rolling the fish in cornmeal, but didn’t want the egg whites. Corn meal sounded more like something a Texas girl would eat, and I had a package of Morrison’s Corn-Kits. But, cornmeal doesn’t stick very well, so I decided to mix the two recipes. My Mamaw taught me never to follow a recipe. It’s just supposed to point you in the right direction.

Here’s what I came up with:

OVEN FRIED CATFISH:
About a pound of catfish filets, washed and patted dry
A package of Morrison’s Corn-Kits, or failing to find that, a cup of cornmeal
1 1/2 teaspoons of garlic powder
1 1/2 teaspoons of crushed parsley
1 teaspoon of lemon pepper
2 egg whites mixed with about two tablespoons of water
A dab of butter (”dab,” in this case, means a little more than a tablespoon)

First, melt the butter in the microwave and use it to coat the bottom of a glass pan (large enough to lay all the filets flat)

Mix the garlic, parsley, and lemon pepper with the cornmeal or Corn-Kits

Roll the filets in the egg whites, then the cornmeal until they are coated, then spread them in the buttered pan

Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes.

Whip up some tartar sauce, or grab the bottle of ketchup and you’re in business.

Mr. Tucker liked this recipe, and says I have his permission to cook it again (like he thinks I need permission or that he could stop me if I wanted to do something!). I even liked it, and pronounced it “bloggable.” It’s not as delicious as fried crappie, but it’s pretty dadgum tasty.

I might even decide to try other fish recipes. Do you have one that I might be able to stomach?