Mary tried to explain:
>> Mary spaketh thusly:
>>
>>> Anyone hear the comic who said he ate so much
>>> okra as a child that he couldn't keep his socks up?
>>
>> OK, anybody else who doesn't get it, raise your spatula...
>>
>> --
>
> Have you ever had fried okra? It is kind of like deep-fried
> slime. Very slippery. It is almost as though southerners
> were hard pressed to find something to deepfry and settled
> for something that would hold its shape just long enough for the
> batter to brown.
But okra doesn't *have* to be slimy. Pickled okra isn't slimy, is it?. Fried
okra doesn't have to be slimy either: The trick is to buy small pods and
leave them whole. In fact, I did that exact thing last night, and the okra
wasn't slimy at all. I got that tip from Cook's Illustrated's _Perfect
Vegetables_ -- which means it's probably in at least a couple other Cook's
Illustrated books.
For the record, Southerners are *never* hard-pressed to find something to
deep-fry. They'd be hard-pressed to find something they *wouldn't*
deep-fry.
Bob