Yesterday, while waiting in line at the Space Needle in Seattle, I got the news that Rabbi David Wucher had died. I can’t overestimate what a personal loss this is for me. Twenty-two years ago, I was 21 and without much direction spiritually. For reasons not important for this story, I had left the Christian roots of my childhood behind and found myself, like the vast majority of the species, seeking meaning, seeking something greater than myself, and seeking a way to connect to it.

I was living on Kanawha Terrace and 13th Street in Huntington, just a few blocks from B’nai Sholom, and working at the Huntington Museum of Art. It was at the museum that I met amazing women such as Rose Riter, Joan Lerner, and Joyce Levy. Joyce invited me to attend the Bar Mitzvah of her grandson, and since it was just a short walk from my apartment, and I had very little to do on a Saturday morning, I went. From the moment I set foot in the sanctuary I felt welcomed and at home. There could have been no better person to be my introduction to the faith and religion than Rabbi Wucher. I already knew that I loved the people, and the love of the ritual, liturgy, language, and music came quickly. I immediately began the weekly practice of attending Friday evening erev Shabbat services, a practice that I kept faithfully and without exception for as long as I lived in Huntington. Week after week I would learn, not just the liturgy and the history of the Jewish people, but more about baseball than I ever cared to know, and generally how to be a Mensch from Rabbi Wucher.

Judy Williams coerced me into joining the choir and my knowledge and love of Judaism continued to deepen. It also allowed for more, and more personal time with Rabbi and Tori Wucher and my fondness for them grew deeper. Leaving B’nai Sholom was the hardest thing about moving to Cincinnati and I always tried to arrange trips home to include an evening there. Rabbi Wucher always asked how I was and would give some interesting tidbit of information about wherever I was living, usually about baseball. If he saw me, but couldn’t get to talk to me, he would, just like his mother Violet had done, flash me the Vulcan “Live Long and Prosper” hand sign.

After 5 years of services and life cycles, I was ready to commit. My conversion to Judaism officially was overseen by Rabbi Wucher. Our regular one on one meetings to discuss my knowledge and commitment to Judaism still remain as some of my fondest memories. When the discussion came about choosing a Hebrew name, I asked if it would be okay for me to honor him, and all that he had done for me, to choose David as my middle name. And so, on June 23, 2006, under the supervision of Rabbi David Wucher, I became Daniel David Ben Avraham V’Sarah.

Today is Friday and in accordance with Jewish custom, the funeral was scheduled for today, before sunset. I am nearly 3,000 miles away and travelling by train so I could not attend in person. One good thing that came from COVID was that “community” became no longer purely physical and I was able to fulfill the mitzvah of helping bury the dead by watching the funeral on YouTube. The downside of that is that it left me ugly crying in a busy train station in Seattle.

As I have moved around, I have sought congregations and Rabbis and places to feel at home and I have been taught and comforted by some awesome Rabbis, Sandford Kopnick, Jean Eglinton, and David Spey to name a few, but no one can ever be such an integral part of whom I have become as a Jew and as a man as David Wucher. I know for sure, that for me, his name IS a blessing. זיכרונו לברכה‎🖖

Everyone is influenced by their teachers. It sort of is the definition of “teacher.” I have had the good fortune to have a lifetime of spectacular educators. That said, when security questions asked “What was the name of your favorite teacher in school?” one name always came to mind first. Hearing of her recent death affected me profoundly. I’m not young, and my high school days are nearly 25 years behind me, so it shouldn’t be such a shock, but some people never change in your mind, always young, attractive, energetic, and a little bit wild and crazy.

Despite being no stranger to funerals, I used to think that a Eulogy was a speech that the person or people closest to the deceased gave as sort of an exposition to those gathered in memory. A few paragraphs to tell a history, some accomplishments, and statistics, but that’s not it at all. A eulogy is a chance for people with unique personal relationships to share with those closest to the deceased that unique perspective, the funny stories, and their unique personal connection. It’s a chance to show just how wide and far-reaching the influence was of their life. There is a theory in physics that says that there is nothing without interaction, that there must be interaction, either directly or through observation, for anything to even exist. As below, so above. Who are we without the interactions we share with others? The time, and the stories, we share with each other is more than precious, it’s how and why we exist.

In the hills of West Virginia, there’s a school we love so well…

I’ve been told, and life has proven it to be true, that it is a very unusual thing to remember 24 years after graduation, whether or not you took French in high school, let alone remember who taught the class, to still know her, to consider her a friend, and to wake up from a dream about her sad knowing that she is gone. Maybe it is a Mountain thing, maybe an Appalachian thing, maybe a West Virginia thing, maybe it is unique to Wayne County, or Wayne High School, or the class of ’99. However rare it may be, I’m grateful to be a part of it.

When I was asked if I remember any funny stories about Mme Oyler I didn’t know where to start.

Charlotte Marie Rachelle Tessier Maille Oyler of New Liskeard, Ontario was a…feisty one, apparently from a very early age.

I know the story of how she took a dare in primary school to lick a cow salt lick, acquired foot and mouth disease from it, which lead to her being jaundice (the French word for yellow is jaune) and how her treatment made it so that she couldn’t take the simple TB test.

I know the story of how, in Catholic Girls School, she used to get in trouble with “Sister RADAR” who always seemed to know when she tried to slip over to the Catholic Boys School next door.

I know that once, either from a dare, defiance, or just curiosity, she ran through the cloistered part of the convent to see the nuns without their habits on, and how she scrubbed the hall with a toothbrush in penance for it.

It is from her that I learned to take confession en français; “Pardonnez-moi mon père, j’ai péché.”

I remember the story of how, waitressing in the family business, she met her bear-hunting future husband, Michel, and fell in love with his shortened diphthong and pronunciation of “ice.”

I know that she loved being an American citizen…all except that it meant that she could no longer go to Cuba.

This is just where my personal funny stories with her begin.
I took six semesters of French Class in the four years of high school, French 1, 2, 3, Advanced French (which was mostly reading back issues of Côte Sud Magazine), and Marshall French 101 with her as the teacher. I have LOTS of fun and funny stories from those years.

One of my first impressions of her was what a good typist she was. Remember, this was when typing was still taught on typewriters and tests were hand-typed. She would set us to work on something and watch us over the typewriter and her glasses, perched on the edge of her nose, as she typed up the tests, her mouth moving silently as the words rolled across her mind and her fingers.

She definitely had a way of making class fun, funny, and something to look forward to, whether she was throwing a Koosh ball at us, pulling out her jeopardy buzzers, making us play time bingo (well, maybe that wasn’t so much fun) or writing plays using the words that we had learned.

Solange (that’s Crystal “with the crystal blue eyes” to most people) and I always did our best to take our little plays to the limit and beyond. Inspired by our field trip to Charleston to see a play by Molière, our “Buying Plane tickets” play went so far beyond that it involved someone “dans la section feumers” catching the plane on fire, a crash, a passenger with a pain in every part of their body we knew the word for, and another passenger who “est tombé et a cassé sa pipe.” She must have thought that we had araignées au plafond (spiders on the ceiling).

Once, she met me and Sarah at the Marshall Artist Series Film Festival showing of The Horseman on the Roof, Le hussard sur le toit, starring Juliette Binoche, who in one scene bares it all. Slowly and quietly her hand came up to cover my eyes. Later, at the Renaissance Bookstore, while we were discussing the film, we had a entertaining conversation about how “tomber et casser sa pipe (to fall and break one’s pipe)” was an idiomatic expression for “to die,” how “sa pipe (one’s pipe)” was a euphemism for one’s…well, you know, and how “la petite mort (the little death)” meant an orgasm, and how the three were weirdly related, somehow…maybe?

Charlotte was indeed an educator. From her I learned to read, to write, and to speak French. That’s a gift that I have used so many many times in my life, way more often than I have used the formula to determine the area of a rug (Mr. Mills), been asked to recite The Raven from memory (Mrs. Hagar), or been called upon to name the genus and species of a wildflower (Mr. Smith), though they come up occasionally as well.

My trip to France came not too long after 9/11, at a time when Americans were not well-loved in France (is there a time we are really?), a time of “Freedom Fries” and other Nationalist rhetoric. “Je m’appelle François Tessier. J’habite à New Liskeard, en Ontario. Je suis canadien.” Charlotte had taught me enough about her language, and her life, that, when accused of being an American, I was able to lie and get away with it. She thought that was hilarious.

Who would have ever thought the need for the French language would have been so great moving to Southern Florida? Did you know that Hollywood, Florida is the number 1 Quebecois tourist destination in the US? Every Canadian woman I saw with short cropped slightly burgundy colored hair made me think of her, and I saw a LOT of Canadian women with short cropped slightly burgundy hair.

Did you know that the third most spoken language in Florida is Haitian French Creole? During the 8 years that I lived in Florida not a single week went past that I didn’t use the skills I learned from Charlotte, how to speak french, but also how to navigate the murky waters of “horse french.” I would hear, “Oh! tu parles français!?” And I would give the answer I learned from her, “Absolument! Tout le monde parle français! C’est la langue de l’amour! (Of course! All the world speaks French! It’s the language of love)” and la glace a été brisée (the ice would be broken).

I went to see her when she was in the hospital after having her brain tumor removed. I knocked lightly on the door and said softly “Bonjour Charlotte. Ca va?” She smiled, barely able to open her eyes and said, “Is that Danny? I was just thinking about you.” The woman had just had a softball removed from her skull! Her head was bandaged up like a turban, and she was thinking about me?

She said that she was trying to remember what signs there might have been that something was wrong. She had noticed that her hair wasn’t parting quite like it used to and that she didn’t care so much about makeup, but thought that could have just been because she was getting older. Though the lack of makeup should have been as obvious of a sign as could be, she thought that it was too subtle. She said the first behavior that really struck her as being off the charts “not normal” was how she didn’t have time to talk to me when I came to visit her at the high school earlier in the year. I had just shown up at the school unannounced during the middle of a class. I didn’t think anything about her being too busy to chat with a former student, but it should have been as obvious as her lack of eye shadow and she knew it. She said that she normally would have put me to work teaching the class for her or at the least had the students translate our conversation in real time. Charlotte always had time for me. Charlotte always had time for anyone and everyone.

One lesson I learned from her that transcends just the words and the language is that in French, the word “toujours” means both “still” and “always.
Charlotte Marie Rachelle Tessier Maille Oyler, vous est ma professeure, et mon amie, pour toujours.

Despite often being plagued with writer’s block, frustrated with editing, and eternally impoverished, writing brings me tremendous pleasure, or else I wouldn’t do it. One aspect of writing with which I have never had a very good control of is Poetry. Yeah, I’ve written a couple homeruns, but it is exhausting wahmish work if it isn’t your gig. NPR has this app on it’s page called the Joy Generator (see https://apps.npr.org/joy-generator/#story=intro&page=0 ) and one of the possible generators of joy was Poetry Writing. They suggest creating a blackout poem, using existing text and blacking out all of the words except those that call to you. They even give you a few sample texts to mark over. We won’t get into what was going on the day I felt I needed joy bad enough to write a poem…but here is the one I came up with. (I also decided to call them “Reductionary” poems instead of “blackout” poems. “Blackout” has the connotation to me of the party’s they have at the bathhouse…but we won’t get into that either).

 Summon the Clouds;
  A Reductionary Poem 
 By
 Daniel Blankenship

 Summon the clouds,
 Ever so high.
 Mount them
 And ride them heavenwards.
  
 Carry the stones.
 Reach the corner of the sky.
 Apply and mend it.
 Do this, and turn attention to the broken pill,
 And mend it.
  
 Mount the clouds.
 Descend to the earth.
 Find all now right…
 But dark. 

When I was in culinary school I had to write a paper on sauces. I will now wahmish you with it…

From antiquity to the present day man has tried to increase the taste, appearance, and mouth feel of meats and vegetables with the addition of sauces.  Over the centuries, the appearance and composition of these sauces has changed dramatically, but their purposes have not.

            References in print to sauce usage date back as far as the early 16^th Century, but sauces were utilized much earlier, dating at least to the late roman period.  The objectives of the sauces used in this period were different than our approaches to sauces are today.  These Roman period sauces were used primarily to cover or conceal the questionable freshness of meats.  They were highly flavorful, often indistinguishable, concoctions of dozens of ingredients.  The cooks of the day would add as many spices as possible to a sauce to confuse the pallet and demonstrate the wealth of the host.  Attention to complimentary flavors was not important.

     Fish stock sauces were among the most popular due in part to the extensive Roman fishing industry and in part to the overwhelming qualities of fish.  One of the most popular sauces was a highly pungent sauce made from sardines known as liquamen.  It was so widely popular that it was mass produced and marketed throughout Rome. (Stradley).^[1]

     Sauces continued to be reformed and perfected over the coming centuries.  In the common court, they continued their role of covering and concealing .  In the aristocratic court where only the finest and freshest meats and produce were prepared and served, chefs were allowed to work and adjust their sauces to be complimentary to, rather than overpowering of, their primary dishes.

     By the height of French Aristocracy, a good chef in the court of a nobleman was a prized possession.  Nothing in his repertoire was more prized than his ability to make a good sauce.  It showed a level of cookery above that of the common cook.  The food of courtly France was produced by guilds, each guild producing a certain aspect of the meal with the Chef in charge of meal planning.  Chefs often acted as saucier, or sauce chef, as the final test of taste and mouth-feel rested on his shoulders. 

     With the fall of the French kingdom, the guilds were abolished and Chefs were allowed to share and combine recipes into common groups.  In the world of sauce production, the French Master Chef Marie-Antoine Careme, simplified recipes into a list of what he referred to as Mother Sauces.  His list began with the two oldest sauces even of that day, hollandaise or mayonnaise and béchamel.  These types of sauces have remained a staple for centuries because they are easily produced and make for a good, adaptable base for a number of other sauces.  The three remaining sauces take longer to produce, have more ingredients, and are more complex in flavor but were still the main base sauces of the French Revolutionary Period as well as the following hundred to hundred and fifty years.  These three sauces are the Brown or Espagnole, Veloute, and Tomato sauces.  Each of these sauces relies heavily on the prior production of a good stock.  To make one of these sauces of notable quality it took as long as several days.  The first day was spent rendering a quality stock from bones and mirepoix, and the next day was spent turning this stock into a high quality, yet highly volatile sauce.  These sauces did not keep well, especially in the days prior to refrigeration and deep freezers, and had to be used immediately and just prior to serving.  The time and effort involved continued to make these sauces for the elite.

     Within France, anyone well to do enough to go to any restaurant could, and still can, eat in a very formal and traditional style complete with small sauces created from Careme’s Mother Sauces.  Even as late as the 1950s in Paris, the saucier was considered a position in a kitchen of great acclaim.  Jacque Pepin wrote in his memoir, “The Apprentice; My Life in the Kitchen,” “…I found opposite my name the words ‘first commis’  If a second commis is the buck private of a kitchen brigade, a first commis is more like a lieutenant, someone who has survived a few battles, who remains calm under fire, and who has earned a measure of trust.  Before my second year was out, I had attained that was considered the ultimate first commis posting: the sauce.  To be considered a great saucier was the highest accolade a cook could receive.  The subtlety, intricacy and lightness of sauce could make a dish.” (Pepin).^[2]

     Outside of France, however, fine French cuisine, and the sauces that came with it became something of luxury that most people would never experience. Over the previous centuries the rift between the fine sauce eating elite and the common man of the villages and rural areas widened.  Cookbooks of the early 20^th Century meant for the common household cook, rarely even mentioned the Mother Sauces.  This was, of course, except for the ever popular béchamel and hollandaise sauces.  Fine French restaurants in London, Berlin, New York, and Chicago still featured all of the complex sauces, at a price however. 

     It wasn’t until the 1960s, when all eyes were turned to the Kennedy White House, that serious French cuisine slipped into the kitchens of mainstream Americans.  The Kennedy’s had as their personal chef, Chef Rene Verdon.  No less scrutinized than the hats of Jackie Kennedy were the fine French meals being served in the White House.  Housewives across America scrambled to snatch up recipies and techniques wherever they were to be found.  One such American housewife was there to provide.

     Having spent several years in Paris with her husband, Paul, a young Californian woman named Julia Child had learned the art of fine French cuisine and, with the help of a circle of other displaced American and British housewives, prepared a cookbook of simplified, yet refined, French recipes.  Upon her return to the United States, she began broadcasting her secrets, the secrets of the French masters, on February 11, 1963 on Boston’s WGBH-TV. (Child).^[3]  The program quickly took off and was widely syndicated.  She was an instant hit.  Everyone was a fan of her, her personality, and her easy to follow classic recipes.

     Within a decade, she had substantial help spreading the word.  Every cook at home, every small restaurant, every caterer, every fine dining restaurant was serving French food, or some vague resemblance to it, again. 

     The 1970s and the early 1980s were a time defined in the kitchen by thick, gluey, improperly prepared sauces.  The only thing classical about this onslaught was that, like the early Roman sauces, these sauces were going a long way to cover less than appetizing main courses.  Cooks, and chefs alike, had forgotten the importance that Careme and Escoffier had placed on sauces being a flavoring enhancer and not the star of the show.  Sauces had become too popular to be sustainable.  Shortcuts were taken in the stock production that carried on through to the final small sauces. 

     It wasn’t long before the consumer was tired of every menu item being “dressed” with some sauce.  A return to the simple, plain, healthy, even organic, was soon to sweep the nation.  There was no room for sauces thickened with flour and finished with butter in this new wave of culinary preference. 

     This wasn’t to say that there was no longer room for sauces, but rather the way that a sauce was defined needed to be rethought.  In the book “The Elements of Cooking” by Michael Ruhlman, a sauce is defined as such; “We tend to think of sauce as something we pour over something else just before serving it, but practically speaking, sauce is any seasoned fat, acid, cooking liquid, juice, plant puree, or combination thereof, that we add to a main ingredient to enhance it, and it’s helpful to the cook to think of it in this fundamental way.” (Ruhlman).^[4]  No longer are we held to the belief that the mother sauces and their small sauces are the Way and the Truth.  Our eyes have been opened to view a whole new world of possibilities.  Many of these other sauce possibilities have been around for decades, or even centuries, themselves but only recently have we given them the endorsement they deserve.

     Eyes turned to the Mediterranean and to Asia for ideas. 

     The Italians had, for the most part, dropped the stock from their tomato sauces.  This eliminated the hours of pre-production time needed.  Italian pesto sauces had existed since Roman times, prior to the introduction of tomatoes from South America, and again became popular.  “Pesto” is Italian for “pounded,” in reference to the herbs and spices being pounded and ground into a paste.  It refers to not only the familiar basil pesto but also other pounded or ground sauces like mustards.

     “Salsa” is the Spanish word for “sauce” and the chunky fresh salsas we have come to know and love from Spain and Mexico are far from the laboriously cooked and processed Mother Sauces of Careme’s day. 

     The Middle East gave the culinary world a wide assortment of dips and sauces from firey tomato and pepper dishes to the soft creamy tahini.

     Asia contributed entire tomes of recipes for sauces.  Simple fermented soy products are used for dipping or as a prepared ingredient in larger main dishes.  Some Asian, or Asian-inspired, sauces, like sweet and sour sauce, take a week or more to produce, but still can not be categorized as any of the Mother Sauces categories.  Spicy sauces on meat and vegetables, pastes of hot wasabi root, and acidic fish sauces are just a few of the myriad of Asian sauces.

     One simple sauce that has survived throughout the ages in both the European kitchen and in the American heart is butter.  A butter sauce can be just a simple piece of raw butter infused with spices and herbs put on a piece of meat, or a melted butter sauce like beurre blanc served with fish.  Even during the nearly sauce-free era of the 1950s, “Butter Steak” was found in every grocer freezer.  Today many steak and seafood chain restaurants still serve steak with infused butters.

     Even desert has it’s list of sauces.  Everything from caramel sauce, syrups, fruit purees, melted chocolate, and the ever present butter sauce top deserts globally.  Perhaps no desert sauce is more prevalent than nature’s own inert sugar sauce, honey.

     No matter how much you think you “don’t really like sauces,” if you look in your refrigerator and check out your menu selections when eating out you‘re certain to see a whole list of things that can be considered a sauce by our new definition.   Everything from sausage gravy you made for breakfast, to the condiment packets handed to you in handfuls at the drive-thru window is a sauce.  Even the 6 bottles of assorted salad dressings in the fridge can be considered sauces for salads.  Sauces, whether we think we like them or not, play a huge role in our menu choices, and are here to stay with us forever.

     It is safe to say in this world of culinary experimentation and awareness of worldwide cuisines, our selections of sauces will only increase.  The Mother Sauces of Careme’s day are still around too, waiting in the shadows, a throwback to an all but forgotten world of cookery.  In our new, more health and time conscious, economically struggling times, we turn our eyes to fresher, healthier, and more easily produced but no less satisfying sauces.  Someday, who knows when, we will again reach a golden age of French Revival Cuisine, and it can be assured that Careme and his list of Mother Sauces will be there again leading the way.

^[1]   Stradley, Linda. “History of Sauces” What’s Cooking America 2004

^[2]   Pepin, Jacques. The Apprentice; My Life in the Kitchen  New York. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003

^[3]   Child, Julia. The French Chef Cookbook New York. Alfred A Knopf, 1996

^[4]   Ruhlman, Michael. The Elements of Cooking; Translating the Chef’s Craft for Every Kitchen New York. Scribner,

In Culinary School I wrote a report on Fried Chicken. It was recently found, and now I share it with you. Total Wahmish…

Fried Chicken is a dish as old as any in the modern repertoire, if not older.  The dish has been produced and altered by every generation and by every chef for thousands of years.  There is something about the subtlety of the spices and the flavor of the oil that have made this “Finger-Licking Good” dish survive the test of time and continue to thrive.

            Chickens are thought to have first been domesticated 10,000 years ago in Vietnam.  They spread over the millennia to encompass the entire globe.  With a population estimated over 24 billion, they are currently the most populous bird on the planet.  It is no wonder that their meat is the most often eaten meat of any animal.

            The Vietnamese, having first domesticated the animal have their very popular fried chicken recipe, Ga Xao, Fried chicken with lemongrass and chili.  The exact origin is unknown but the dish is still served in Vietnamese restaurants daily.        

            The first portrait of a chicken to appear in European artwork was on a piece of Corinthian pottery from the 7^th Century BCE.  The chicken was considered a rarity and a luxury bird used more for divining than for eating.  Over the next few centuries these fattened birds became too much of a temptation for the Romans and in 161 BCE a law was passed in Rome forbidding the consumption of the bird.  Even though the law was renewed a number of times the practice of eating these ever-increasingly populous birds became more common.  

The first fried chicken recipe to grace the pages is in the Apicius of Ancient Rome.  The recipe is similar to the one used today in it’s process. 

By the end of the Middle Ages the English preferred their chicken boiled, or poached.  The Scotts, however, took a greater liking to the Roman method of frying chicken meat in hot oil or fat.  This is the dish that was brought later to the future United States of America with the immigration of Scottish workers to the Southern areas of the continent.

As the nation rose and with it the practice of slavery, the dish fell almost into obscurity, favoring instead the more English approach.  The plantation slaves were rarely had any costly meats but were often allowed to raise the plentiful chicken.  The slave population of the South added their contribution to the plain, breaded, fried chicken of the Scotts by adding cayenne and other spices.

Following the abolition of slavery in the United States the “Jim Crow Laws” of the nation continued to oppress and deny service to many African Americans.  The recipe of fried chicken that had become a mainstay during the years of slavery was now useful in the keeping qualities it gave to the chicken.  Many restaurants denied the service of the former slaves and their descendants so while traveling they would have to take their food with them.  The fried chicken would keep for longer periods and was as edible cold as it was hot.

The term “Southern Fried Chicken” was represented with racial comments and slurs through the early half of this century.  Everyone recognized how good it tasted, but continued to associate it with slavery.  “This was commercialized for the first half of the 20th century by restaurants like Sambo’s and Coon Chicken Inn, which selected exaggerated blacks as mascots, implying quality by their association with the stereotype.” (Wikipedia.com)

By this point in history, the rare off-color comment about fried chicken and watermelon is met with a much-deserving low brow and instead the true taste and quality of the dish is more fully appreciated. 

The recipe we are now going to examine in detail comes from the self-proclaimed “#1 Cookbook in America,” (Better Homes and Gardens Books) the “Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book.”  This book may not be the most Epicurean, nor  the most professional cookbook in print, but it is easily the most widely used in the home kitchen.  Generations of housewives (and househusbands) pass this book on.  It is still a common wedding gift to the not so kitchen-talented new couples.  If the average person in America wanted to make a standard American recipe, this is where they would turn.

The All-American Standard “Buttermilk-Brined Fried Chicken” Recipe can be found in the poultry section of the cookbook.  The initial step of this recipe is the brining of chicken, we however, are going to go back a step for comparative purposes.

In this troubled economic time, meat of any sort is starting to rise in cost.  The simple act of cutting a chicken up can add several dollars to the purchase price.  The recipe calls for “2 ½ to 3 pounds meaty chicken pieces (breast halves, thighs, and drumsticks).”   These can be purchased in bulk packs or as single whole chickens quartered.  A more cost effective option would to be to purchase a whole chicken and vivisect it into pieces, leaving the bone in for added support.  You have the added benefit of being able to personally inspect the entire chicken for signs of ill health as well.

The first step as is listed in the recipe is to brine the chicken pieces in a plastic bag set in a bowl.  Not only does the plastic bag make cleanup easier, it also helps prevent cross-contamination. 

The brine is made from 3 cups of buttermilk, 1/3 Cup of coarse Salt and 2 tablespoons of sugar.  The buttermilk is an acidic product that helps the proteins in the chicken meat denature.  This unwinding of the protein strand and breaking of peptide bonds helps to tenderize the meat.  The salt, which the author warns “Don’t be surprised by the amount of salt in the buttermilk brine.  It gives the chicken great flavor,” helps draw any remaining blood out of the meat, and imparts flavor into the meat via osmosis.  The sugar helps sweeten the otherwise salty and sour brine, adding a complexity of flavor.  The brine smells strongly of the culture in the buttermilk, but the sweetness also carries through to the scent.

After the chicken pieces have marinated in the brine the suggested length of time, a modified breading station is set up.  In the first station is a mix of 2 cups all-purpose flour, ¼ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon black pepper.  A note after the recipe suggests the addition of 1 ½ teaspoons of ground red pepper to the flour mixture for a spicier breading.  The second breading station contains the second portion of buttermilk, ¾ Cup.

The Chicken pieces are removed from their brine and immersed in the flour mixture for dredging.  This wet to dry step holds the four tight to the chicken.  The dredging layer is thin.

 The pieces are then dipped in the buttermilk.  The flour holds to the buttermilk.  The buttermilk will wash off some amount of the four mixture but this is ok because it thickens the buttermilk into a thin batter over time.  The chicken is then placed back into the flour mixture for final breading.  The breading is now two layers thick and, although coats like a batter, is dry to the touch.  The chicken pieces can be all breaded and set aside for frying.  The double breading and the thickness of the buttermilk made the breading very stable. 

One of the secrets to the success of the recipe is the frying oil and its vessel.  The recipe calls for a “deep, heavy Dutch oven, or kettle or deep fat fryer” to be used to heat 1 ½ inches of cooking oil to 350°F.  The amount and type of oil is important here. 

The recipe simply calls for “cooking oil.”  In this age of health-consciousness, we steer away from fried things.  Even the King of Fried Chicken, Kentucky Fried Chicken, changed its name officially in 1991 to the acronym KFC.  It cannot be denied however, that fried food tastes good, perhaps even better.  This is primarily because the fats in the oils used for frying transport the flavors more directly to the taste buds on the tongue. 

We can reduce the ill-effects of cooking oils and fats in our diet by choosing oils and fats that are lower in saturated fat.  The lowest of these commercially available is safflower oil.  It is a very expensive alternative to the more saturated vegetable oils and animal fats, however.  Olive oil is low in saturated fat but has a smoke point too low for deep frying.  Peanut oil runs the risk of causing allergic reactions in persons allergic to tree and ground nuts.  Soy derived oils are another alternative that is now getting a second look.  It is believed by some that an ever-growing prevalence of soy allergies is a result of the over-use of soy bean products.   A good choice that has a high smoke point, is low in saturated fat, and cost effective is canola oil.

The recipe suggests 1 ½ inches of oil in the cooking pot.  This recipe is for a deep fat fried chicken, not a pan fried or fricassee.  The entire piece of meat should be covered in the fat. 

The fat also needs to maintain a temperature between 325°F and 350°F.  This is easily done in an electric fryer or skillet and on the stove is more easily accomplished in a heavy cast iron Dutch oven or deep skillet.  If the fat gets too cool it will not cook the breading quickly enough and the fat will absorb into the breading making it greasy tasting with poor mouthfeel.  If the oil is too hot the breading will overcook before the meat inside has had time to cook completely.

As the pieces of breaded meat are put into the oil, the temperature of the oil will drop slightly so attention must be paid to keep it within ideal range.  The meat neither sinks to the bottom and sits, nor floats to the top like a light doughnut.  Instead, it hovers in the oil, just above the bottom.  The meat bubbles furiously as the water inside the meat is turned to steam and released through the breading.

It takes the larger pieces of meat about 12 to 15 minutes to cook fully. During the cooking the aroma of the hot oil carries the tartness of the buttermilk in the air.  The breading becomes solid within the first minute as all of the liquid from the buttermilk evaporates out. Over the following few minutes a golden brown color begins to appear, first on the bottom of each piece.  The pan should not be over crowded, this is to avoid uneven cooking, and the meat should be turned at least once.

Recipes from the turn of the century had a more hands on view of when the meat was cooked; “The chicken is done when the fork passes easily into it.” (Fisher)  Today most everyone has at least one instant read thermometer.  The temperature should be taken in the thickest part of the meat, without touching bones.  This recipe says that the temperature to look for is 170°F in the breast and 180°F in the thigh or drumstick.  The safe minimum temperature for all parts of chicken are listed at 165°F.  It is unclear why this recipe says to cook the dark meat to a higher temperature than the light meat.  It will, however, take the fattier dark meat longer to reach the safe minimum temperature.

Once the chicken is cooked, it should be drained of excess fat.  The recipe suggests draining on kitchen paper and holding in a 300°F oven until service.  If the fried chicken is covered tightly, the crunchy crispy crust will become soggy and unappealing.

Traditionally in the US we eat fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, and corn, baked beans, or green beans.  The flavors of these sides do not, themselves, enhance the flavor of the chicken, but are instead traditional accompaniments.  Another side item that is popular with fried chicken is coleslaw.  The breading in this recipe uses buttermilk, the tartness of which is brought out by the tartness of the coleslaw.  The subtle seasoning of the meat and the breading make it good with nearly any side item.  In Maryland, fried chicken is often eaten with gravy directly on the meat.  This gravy is made from the frying oil and the brining milk.  A dill pickle slice is often seen as a garnish on fried chicken in New Orleans’ restaurants, a tribute to Austin Leslie.

In the many commercial fried chicken restaurants the method of pressure frying is often used.  In this method the oil and chicken are cooked under the pressure of the steam released from cooking chicken.  This allows the temperature of the oil to be lower and ensures that the meat stays moist as the breading crisps.

A variant of this method is now being studied.  Instead of steam for the element of pressure in the pressure frying method, Nitrogen is being used.  Studies are showing that, “Products fried with nitrogen gas as the pressurizing medium produced samples that were comparable to or exceeding the quality of products generated by frying with steam, as it relates to product crispness, texture, pressed juice, moisture content, fat content and color.” (Ballard)

With the advent of new scientific methods of frying and healthier oils, someday fried chicken might be eaten without concern.  Thanks to the proliferative nature of the chicken, the cheap meat will continue to be eaten globally for thousands of years to come and frying as a method of production will continue to be a favored way for those who value taste over health

Works Cited

Ballard, Tameshia. Application of Edible Coatings in Maintaining. Blacksburg, VA: self published, 2003.

Better Homes and Gardens Books. Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book. De Moines, Iowa: Meredith Corporation, 2003.

Fisher, Abby. What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking. Bedford MA: Applewood Books, 1881.

Wikipedia.com. Fried Chicken. 7 March 2009. 7 March 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_chicken>.

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Public school teachers in my home state of West Virginia have taken to the picket lines for the second time in as many years in protest of the corrupt State government trying to defund education.  This is a problem that extends to the four corners of our nation and beyond.  The reason is simple.  Smart people are harder to control.  Well-educated, critical-thinking individuals are far less likely to hand over power to people that have nothing but their own power gain in mind.  When the government strips education funding from the masses and then follows up with a message of racism, xenophobia, and hatred, the ignorant masses eat it up with a spoon, while those in power are revered as being sent from God Himself to save them from the enemies that they themselves created. 

I’ve encountered a lot of stupid in my life, everywhere I’ve lived and traveled, but it seems that no place is as Hell-bent on perpetuating the situation as in the Great State of West Virginia.  From the creation of the State, mired in political hoodwinkery, through the empty promises of coal mine and steel mill operators, to today’s political snake oil salesmen, the West Virginia public at large, buys into the pipedreams and get rich quick schemes, all the while handing over what little they have to the men in charge.

Education in the State rates 49^th in the nation. Thank God for Mississippi!  The State was also Trump’s largest supporter in 2016…. Coincidence?  I think not.  What’s worse than that is that he’s methodically and systematically kidnapped, in plain sight, their tax returns, their education funding, their healthcare, and their very welfare, and they still worship the quicksand he walks on because he and his hand-picked play into their hatred and fears.  When you strip away a person’s intellect and intelligence, hatred and fear is all that’s left.

There is a movement on Facebook at the moment to name the West Virginia Public elementary, middle, and high school that you attended and express how that education made you into the person you are today.  Mine reads as follows because, though I love my home, and home it shall always be, I’ve all but given up on them.  They have the power to vote and change things and make the State, and the nation, a better place.  So if they want it this way, fine, let them have it.  I want no part of it.

My support is strongly with the teachers!  Few jobs on this planet can be as tough as being a teacher anywhere, but especially in number 49.  What we need, above all else, is to fund education so that our children can salvage this damaged world we are leaving them.  If education became our nation’s highest priority, some bright young kid would figure out every science, medical, environmental, and social problem we can throw at them, and that would truly make America great again.

That said, I’m afraid that the lessons learned here by this strike, by the law-maker’s reactions to it, and to the polls in the following election, will be how easy it is to control the masses the more that’s taken away from them and that it will bring about another generation of power-hungry fascists.  Like a disease, we have to stop the spread of this ignorance, fear, and hate before it takes over the nation.

I am a product of:
Lavalette Elementary School
Wayne Middle School
Wayne High School

Because of the AMAZING teachers and experiences I had in West Virginia public schools I knew when it was time to cut my losses and leave a State, my family, and my friends, that I love dearly. 
I was educated well enough to see when greed and corruption has completely taken over, at the expense of children and the poor. 
I was educated well enough to see when politicians line their own pockets and coddle their special interests at the expense of the land and the people that make their State home. 
I was educated well enough to see when racism and bigotry win out over love and acceptance. 
I was educated well enough to see when people are willing to cut off their own lives and livelihood in order to embrace that hatred of the unknown. 
I was educated well enough to see that lack of opportunities and boredom lead straight to the bottle…pipe…needle… 
I was educated well enough to see that there was no place for me there and that there probably never would be.
West Virginia will always be my home. I will always look to those mountains for my help. My teachers were some of the bravest, most intelligent, and devoted people this world has seen and they produced another generation of teachers just as brave, intelligent, and devoted to the betterment of the State, one child at a time. 
Until the average mountain voter breaks the century old habit of being hoodwinked and sold false promises by the greedy operators, however, and votes for someone that actually CARES about them and their children and their State, the place is doomed. 
My heart breaks for my friends and family who either cannot leave, or have chosen to stay in order to try to recover what’s left of the place. I commend anyone who has chosen to take on that Herculean (or is it Sisyphean) task. The war against ignorance and greed is a noble one. This battle might be won tomorrow, and it very well may be lost. Another battle might be won in 2020, and it too may very well be lost. My best wishes to the soldiers.

Oh, also, I was educated well enough that I dreamed in French last night. Thank you Mme Oyler!