Ditch The Frying, Not The Milk Bottles!

  While I admit that sometimes fried food is pretty tasty, I am not a big fan.  I can do without the grease as it makes my stomach queasy just thinking about it.  Mark, on the other hand, would probably eat fried food every day.  As matter of fact, he would probably be one of those folks would would try anything if it was fried...pickles, candy bars, ice cream, watermelon...hey, batter it and throw it in a vat of hot oil and he is good.  He is great about humoring me by trying new dishes sans the frying but I think that grease calls to the man at times.  It seems to run in his family as they all adore anything deep fried.

  Aside of the fact that the mere thought of hot oil makes me nauseous, I am not a fan of the lingering smell and of the cleanup after the fact.  That cleaning is probably what gets to me the most.  I am not a fan of cleaning, in the first place, and cleaning sticky, residual grease is a terrible chore. 

  Atop of the cabinets in the kitchen, there is a line of antique milk bottles from Grandpa's dairy.  When Pop was just a lad, he and his brothers worked the dairy but also would tote bottles of milk along when working the fields or going fishing.  The bottles that I have were discards of their day.  A great number of them were found in the Bayou.  These (I was told) were deposited there during a particularly bad hurricane.  The flood waters washed the bottles from the milk shed and tossed them in the mud.  Now the bottles sit on the cabinet and make me think of old times.  These bottles are unintentional catchers of the grease that floats around the air from the fry pan.  Its disgustingly thick up on that shelf!  The day was spent taking down the milk bottles, scrubbing them, scrubbing the cabinets then replacing the bottles.  Someone once asked me why I put them back up there knowing that they would be greasy again in a couple of months.  Simple.  I like the bottles.  Why should I get rid of something I like just because of something I do not like.  The grease would still be in the air whether the bottles are on the shelf or not.  I like the bottles...not the grease.   I must admit here that it has been about 4 months since I washed the bottles but that gunk gets on there after just frying one mess of oysters or fish.

  Now comes the point.  If those bottles can collect so much grease that they are unrecognizable in just a month, what in the world is that grease doing to our lungs as we fry stuff???  We all know what it is doing to our waistlines but did you ever think that it might be coating the lungs?  I think about things like this and figure that it cannot be overly good for our health, one way or another.  It is probably time to find an alternate cooking method for at least some things.  Our health may depend on it and I know my cleaning time will be cut tremendously!  Ditch the frying...not the milk bottles!