Fried Okra Patties and Jalapeno Poppers

Mister and I laid down the law in the kitchen last night. A full menu that we'll be eating for the next two days: steak (local, hormone free, grain fed beef), baked potato, french bread, salad w/feta cheese, jalapeno poppers (made from jalapenos grown in my beautiful friend Melissa's garden), okra patties (made from okra out of our garden) and corn on the cob. I'm full just reading that.

Anyone that knows me and reads this is probably having a cow - okra patties??? Yep, I grew 'em, made 'em, and ate 'em. All by my lonesome! :) (well, Mister helped too...).

We were going to try just plain old fried okra, until I came across this recipe for Okra Patties - we have okra coming out our ears right now so I figured why not?

This is the first time I've cooked okra and I quickly discovered that you don't want the larger sized okra - only the  minis. The larger ones are very thick (harder to slice) and the seeds are huge. The smaller ones are more tender with a less woodsy flavor.

The only thing I did different from the published recipe was add garlic salt.

So, turns out okra is disgustingly snotty and slimy when it's cut up.

Frying the little puppies up. We didn't shape them and they took about 3 minutes on each side to cook completely.

The final product - Fried Okra Patties. They were surprisingly good! Mister couldn't get enough of them. Insisted on saving the two that were left to eat tonight (not too sure how they'll reheat). He ate his plain, but I dipped mine in bleu cheese dressing and thought it was delicious. Something about the taste reminded me a little bit of a really good pico de gallo. Delicious :)

Like I said above, we also made some Jalapeno Poppers - well, Mister made those. He's the one that loves spicy food.

He cleaned and hollowed out the jalapenos and then filled each with provolone cheese, apple sausage, and some with chorizo.

Then covered them in batter; fried the crap out of them...

...and voila! :) More food to contribute to our high cholesterol medication costs in ten years.

'til next time... ♥