Sizzling

B hasn't always been a quadriplegic. He was 24 years old when he had the swimming accident that left him paralyzed so he's actually spent less than half his life being, as he terms it, a professional cripple guy.

Back in his old life B was a cook. A chef actually - chef in the European way of using the word meaning that he was not only a cook but was the boss of the kitchen and he did the hiring, assigned duties, set the menus, did the purchasing and all the other management of the kitchen that is the responsibility of a chef. The restaurant where he worked was a basic German restaurant and that's his speciality - classic German dishes.

B's no longer able to cook or really get in and our of our kitchen so I'm the one responsible for food preparation in our family and that's fine. While I can't say I particularly enjoy cooking I don't mind it either and what I cook tastes good so I consider that to be a success. On occasion B will say he wishes he could cook for me and wistfully he'll describe to me what he'd like to treat me with and how he'd thoroughly enjoy the whole process from picking out the menu to cleaning up after eating.

While I'd love to be spoiled with having meals planned and prepared for me I'd gladly give it up if B were able to do one thing for me. Fry.

I'm a Southerner. Southern with a capital S. And being Southern means that if I want to eat foods from my homeland I need to on occasion indulge in frying them.

Here's the drawback. I'm terribly afraid of frying anything. I'm not very good with heat or fire as it is and frying takes it to a whole new level. The qualms I have about taking hot dishes from the oven and me even feeling warmth through my oven mitts is magnified tenfold when one considers that with frying I may not just feel warmth but have actual burning hot oil spritzing on my bare skin.

I know. You're thinking "It's just tiny droplets of oil that barely sprinkle on you! Stop being such a wuss!". Oh it's more than that, my friends, and I have the scar on my hand to prove it. My reticence to fry foods was at one time rather mild until the fateful day when while frying chicken water came from underneath the skin, splashed into the hot oil and a wave of it sloshed up and onto my bare hand leaving me with a round scar between my middle and ring fingers on my right hand. Okay, you can barely still see the scar because it did happen nearly 25 years ago but the memory is still fresh! From that time I've carried the mental scar from frying gone wrong.

Health concerns and my fear of the oil should keep me from frying anything now but I still have to ocassionally fry the odd schnitzel or fish filet or bacon. I've tried a few methods to ease me through the process. I've used splash screens and they help right on up to the time when you have to turn the food and then you're just as exposed as before. I've tried taking the pan off the burner, waiting until the frying frenzy subsides for a moment and then quickly doing the food turning before putting the pan back on the heat. Fairly effective for turning but you still have to get your hand on the pan's handle and that spritzing oil doesn't give a damn what you're doing, it still splashes.

I finally came across the best frying method, humiliating as it may be. I began to wear an old woolen glove on my right hand when I had to handle the frying food. I call it the "frying glove". B calls it the "frightening glove" becuase he says I look like a half-assed strangler with it on. Creepy looking or not, it worked very well until I discovered that I was still getting spattered with hot grease on my bare arm when frying in short sleeves. Not giving up, I soon modified my summertime frying method to include me putting on a light jacket so I'd have my arms covered as I turned the food frying all golden brown.

Please. I don't want you to miss fully appreciating this scene. I want you to imagine me in my non-airconditioned apartment with the blazing summer sun streaming through the windows as I fry chicken while wearing a tan cotton jacket and one gray wool glove.

Try to out-nerd me. Just try to come up with something more humiliating and ridiculous than that scene. I dare you.

But while I freely admit that I look like a complete idiot at that moment, it works. I can fry with success. Or so I thought.

The grease has found a way to splash me on my face. Just the other day when frying fish I had a splash come up and burn my face just below my eye and naturally I freaked out.

I'm now seeking to have a full body Ove Glove made.