Dip It, Dip It Good - Awesome Sauce Sauce

Completing tasks is a brutally difficult thing when you've got what I have.  Nonetheless I have to push myself to do what I have to do. Today that was blood tests (sure, let me bleed a little more) and a new set of nails.

Listen, I cut my own hair and groom the dogs myself, and clean the house - okay that last is a slight exaggeration - but I simply do not know how to do my own nails.  I have to have acrylic nails applied because my own nails break easily and after 45 years biting my nails, it bothers me to have ugly fingertips.  Having long nails, I admit, is my one vanity, the longer the better.

So I sat while Tammy fixed my nails - and they seriously needed fixing, after working in the garden they were breaking bad - I had the spooky feeling I was anywhere but the United States. No one was speaking English.  And no one was speaking Spanish, even though I was in a mostly Latino neighborhood.  Vietnamese and Russian.  God bless America.

Window Cat

I love fried food.  It has always been a guilty pleasure, something we did not have at home when I was growing up.  It wasn't until I left to go to college that I was able to indulge in fast food.  I know where my "Freshman 20" came from, and it wasn't Hasbrouck Dining Hall, but a certain fast food restaurant in the same parking lot as the Stewart's, where my roommate Kathy worked. (We were freshman then, she's a grandma now.)

I also know where it ended up - on my rear end, where it stayed until 2003.  

I don't fry at home all that often, although I fry a lot more often than did my grandma. I have no compunctions about frying breaded eggplant slices, or making fried green tomatoes, or fried pickles, or going whole hog (in a matter of speaking) and making my Brooklyn Fried Chicken, or even Chicken Fried Steak with Cream Gravy.  Yeah, that'll kill you.

But what makes fried food even better - if such a thing can be imagined - is dipping it into a mayonnaise-based sauce (because your arteries aren't clogged enough).  Oh, those crazy Belgians!

Truthfully, when it comes to French fries, I still prefer Heinz ketchup, and a lot of black pepper.  If it happens that those French fries came from Nathan's, so much the better.  My favorite fried food is probably onion rings, followed by fried shrimp, but thats another blog post.  A well-made blooming onion is a beautiful thing, but even a pedestrian onion ring from Burger King can make me smile.

Onion rings CAN be dipped into ketchup, but SHOULD be dipped into a mayonnaise-based sauce. THIS mayonnaise-based sauce.  This tastes like the sauce you are given when you order a blooming onion, ONLY BETTER.  This is my recipe, based on several copycat recipes I saw online, which I combined and tweaked and adjusted and re-seasoned.  You definitely have to make this ahead of time and then let it sit in the refrigerator for several hours or preferably overnight. Then start dipping those fried onions.  And fried pickles and fried green tomatoes.

You're welcome.  Anything for a steady customer.

Awesome Sauce Sauce

1/2 cup Hellman's Real Mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Heinz chili sauce
2 tablespoons Kraft creamy horseradish sauce 
1/2 teaspoon Gold's prepared horseradish
1/4 teaspoon Hungarian paprika
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon granulated garlic 
1/8 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Combine all the ingredients, and mix with a rubber spatula.  Refrigerate and then taste and re-season if necessary.  You can adjust the heat by adding more cayenne pepper.  

And now, I want to make my own egg rolls and duck sauce.  I've already pulled a bunch of recipes to study.  Still have to prepare the chile rellenos.  Thinking about fried pickles, the way they used to make them at Uncle Bubba's, using the spears rather than the slices.

Keeping busy.  Eating well.